Page 149 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

Summary
In this thesis I have wri en a variety of chapters explaining how medical students learn in a clinical context. More speci cally, I have tried to address the research ques- on: How do medical students self-regulate their learning in a clinical context? The ra onale for choosing this ques on is discussed in chapter 1. Many theories have been developed to describe the process of self-regulated learning (SRL), origina ng from various scien c elds. The majority of these describe a three or four phase cyclical process, that is ini ated by goal se ng, followed by deciding on a strategy to try and achieve that goal, then monitoring progress towards that goal, and nally re ec ng on a aining the goal and the process itself using feedback from others, resul ng in new goals and learning strategies. This learning process has proved to be very e ec ve in classroom and voca onal se ngs. It is of importance for medi- cal educa on because we expect doctors to be lifelong learners. This means that they should be able to iden fy their own weaknesses, have e ec ve strategies to improve, and to re ect on this process. The competencies associated with lifelong learning signi cantly overlap with those associated with SRL. Students do not self- regulate their learning all by themselves. This happens in interac on with the context one is learning in, and therefore a context may have a signi cant in uence on SRL and should support this process. Therefore we wanted to understand how the pro- cess of SRL happens in a clinical context.
To understand the e ect a context has on SRL, chapter 2 reports a study in which we tried to understand how standard prac ces in a students’ clinical learning con- text, clinical departments, in uence students’ SRL. To increase our understanding of this, we performed a focus group study. A er analyzing data of six focus groups, we found that students perceived departments’ rou nes to a ect their SRL in many ways. We iden ed two themes in the rou nes students discussed. 1) Rou nes could enable or hinder students to create and maintain professional rela onships with sta members, and 2) rou nes could make students perceive e ort was invested in their learning. These rou nes highlighted how SRL is a social process and how important rela onships are for students’ SRL.
The rou nes discussed in chapter 2 gave us insight in how departments in uence students’ SRL, and also some clues as to how students experience other individuals to in uence their SRL. Chapter 3 studied this in more detail, where we presented an interview study, supported by the visual Pictor methodology, to understand the in uence of others in a clinical context on students’ SRL. A er analyzing data of four-
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Appendices: Summary