Page 94 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

92
Abstract
Students feel insu ciently supported in clinical contexts to engage in ac ve learn- ing and achieve a high level of self-regula on. As a result clinical learning is highly demanding for students. Because of large di erences between students, supervisors may not know how to support them in their learning process. We explored pa erns in undergraduate students’ self-regulated learning behavior in clinical contexts, to improve tailored supervision, using Q-methodology. Q-methodology uses features of both qualita ve and quan ta ve methods for the systema c inves ga on of sub- jec ve issues by having par cipants sort statements along a con nuum to repre- sent their opinion. We enrolled 74 students between December 2014 and April 2015 and had them characterize their learning behavior by sor ng 52 statements about self-regulated learning behavior and explaining their response. The statements used for the sor ng were extracted from a previous study. The data was analyzed using by-person factor analysis to iden fy clusters of individuals with similar sorts of the statements. The resul ng factors and qualita ve data were used to interpret and de- scribe the pa erns that emerged. Five resul ng pa erns were iden ed in students’ self-regulated learning behavior in a clinical context, which we labelled: Engaged, Cri cally opportunis c, Uncertain, Restrained and E or ul. The ve pa erns varied mostly regarding goals, metacogni on, communica on, e ort, and dependence on external regula on for learning. These discrete pa erns in students’ self-regulated learning behavior in a clinical context are part of a complex interac on between stu- dent and learning context. The results suggest that developing self-regulated learn- ing behavior might best be supported regarding individual students’ needs.