Page 61 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

unable to navigate a clinical workplace culture because of a lack of understanding of their role in it. Novice students expect others to ac vely engage in their learning. Novice students themselves only ac vely involve people they have frequent interac ons with in their SRL. Experienced students on the other hand tried to build rela ons with many people they worked with. They more ac vely tried to engage consultants in their learning and bene t from it.
Novice students reported their SRL to be hindered by a feeling of being of li le added value or even being a nuisance to a clinical team. This feeling may be founded by their preclinical educa on and re ect how they are historically trained to learn, as a person’s SRL is in uenced by history and experiences.9 Novice students had di culty coping with this emo onal stress because it made them feel unwanted. They explained this could decrease their mo va on for SRL and required emo onal support from peers to overcome these feelings. Emo onal support by peers could be inhibited if there was a feeling of compe on among students.
The transi on from novice to experienced student appeared to rely on an adequate understanding of a clinical context. This closely relates to theories regarding communi es of prac ce.27,28 This perspec ve strengthens the case for longer clinical placements, because longer exposure facilitates students’ understanding of a clinical community of prac ce, and consequently what a student’s role in a team might be.
Strengths and limita ons
A strength of our study lies in the use of the Pictor technique. This technique allowed us to study the subject holis cally using a construc vist paradigm. It also func oned well as a prompt for the semi-structured interview and made intangible barriers visible. Nonetheless, interviews and in fact all recall studies su er to some degree from memory-bias, e.g. increasing the role of one’s own conscious will.29 Addi onally, par cipants may have reported more consciously how others in uenced their SRL, than they would have if they were unaware of the topic of this study.
Because the interviewer explained that he only has had a short postgraduate, non- medical, career to the students before the interview, there was li le to no hierarchical barrier present, allowing for more disclosure. However, students’ experiences that were similar to experiences of the interviewer may have provoked more follow-up ques ons than experiences that did not feel familiar to the interviewer.
59
How clinical medical students perceive others to in uence their self-regulated learning
Chapter 3