Page 51 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

Data collec on
The rst author conducted all the interviews. Because he has recently experienced the clerkships himself, he was able to relate to the students’ narra ves and envision their experiences. This allowed for meaningful follow-up ques ons to enhance insight in the experience and ques ons regarding emo onal reac ons to the experience described. The rst author’s experience in SRL research allowed for speci c ques ons regarding constructs related to various SRL theories as described by Sitzmann and Ely.6 A possible adverse e ect might have been that follow-up ques ons were too focused or colored by personal experiences. By con nuously reminding himself of this, by frequently reading interview transcripts with other team members, and by itera vely gathering and analyzing data, we a empted to appropriately balance this.
A er obtaining informed consent and some background informa on regarding demographics and medical interests, the interviewer brie y explained that self- regulated learning refers to direc ng ones’ own learning through goal se ng, planning, monitoring, re ec ng on progress, and thinking about future learning. Next, he asked par cipants to construct a representa on of roles and rela onships of other people in a speci c se ng following the Pictor technique as originally described by King et al.23 Students were instructed to write all people or groups in uencing their self-regulated learning on arrow shaped adhesive notes and to s ck these notes to a large sheet of paper, crea ng a visual representa on or story of how their SRL was in uenced by the people depicted on the arrows. Par cipants were not limited in any way to portray their experiences. They were invited to include explanatory words, arrows or other visual tools and were allowed to change their Pictor chart throughout the interview. We used the visual representa on as a prompt to help par cipants tell their stories not only through words but also visually. The interviews following the crea on of the Pictor charts lasted for approximately one hour.
The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verba m. We gave all students an alias. The rst author performed a preliminary analysis a er each interview and provided par cipants with a half page summary of the interview to enable a member check. Par cipants also received a picture of their charts and were asked if any supplemental changes were desired. Nine par cipants veri ed the summary of the interview, one of them recommended small changes and one supplied addi onal informa on that was not addressed during the interview. All of these eleven par cipants agreed with the Pictor chart. Three par cipants did not respond to the request.
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How clinical medical students perceive others to in uence their self-regulated learning
Chapter 3