Page 27 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

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Students face heavy expecta ons to seize appropriate learning opportuni es in the clinical workplace and to learn autonomously.1 To do so, medical students need to take control of their own learning and engage in self-regulated learning (SRL).2–5 Students are known to struggle with SRL when transi oning to a new context, because they require support to become aware of e ec ve learning strategies in a context.5 SRL results from a complex process that happens in the interac on between individual and context in a dynamic fashion.6 Therefore, both individual and context have a profound in uence on students’ SRL and a context should foster an individuals’ SRL.5 A broad variety of contextual factors have been described that in uence SRL in structured environments designed for learning, such as curriculum pedagogy, possibili es for guided and independent prac ce, and social factors.2,7,8 However, less is known about the di erent contextual factors in uencing students’ SRL in more complex environments, such as a clinical workplace.5,6 This knowledge is vital for clinical teachers to be er understand and support medical students’ SRL in clinical contexts.9
Students learn in clerkships, ergo these clerkships cons tute their learning contexts. Clerkships take place in hospital departments and community health se ngs. In clerkships, students learn from par cipa ng in clinical prac ce and from teaching sessions.10–13 To understand the in uence hospital departments have on SRL, we need to know more about their teaching sessions and the standard clinical prac ces students are supposed to par cipate in and learn from. Standard clinical prac ce of a department involves recurring pa erns in behavior to achieve a certain goal, otherwise known as rou nes.14 Rou nes are context-dependent, recurrent pa erns of behavior, which are collec ve in nature, and shaped by history.14 This may for instance involve supervision strategies in a clinical department or a well-established feedback culture. It is largely unknown how students’ SRL is a ected by rou nes of clinical departments. Thus, to address this gap in literature we performed a focus group study to answer the research ques on: How do undergraduate medical students perceive rou nes of clinical departments to in uence their self-regulated learning in clerkships?
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Rou nes of clinical departments that in uence students’ self-regulated learning Chapter 2