Page 95 - Medical students’ self-regulated learning in clinical contexts

introduc on
Self-regulated learning (SRL) behavior is essen al for future doctors’ life-long learn- ing in their clinical context.1,2 Many undergraduate students struggle with SRL and feel insu ciently supported because the primary aim of health care is to provide care to pa ents, rather than to educate students.3 Furthermore, students may have di culty ng into their new roles as an aspiring doctor and learner in a clinical con- text, and coping with the unpredictability of a clinical context.4 As a result, students employ diverse, more or less self-regulated learning strategies that vary in e ec v- ity, including proac vely modula ng a ec ve, cogni ve and behavioral processes to direct their learning in a clinical context.5–8
Theore cally, SRL consists of a cyclical process ini ated by goal se ng, followed by deciding and implemen ng a strategy to achieve that goal, monitoring progress to- wards that goal and re ec ng on the process a erwards and formula ng new goals.9 SRL is a process of the individual, but it is not an individualis c endeavor, being in- extricably linked to learning context.10–13 A growing number of studies on SRL has focused on more complex contexts such as a clinical workplace.11,12,14–19 Recent re- search noted that large individual di erences existed in students’ SRL behaviors in clerkships.14 However, much about these individual di erences is s ll unknown, such as whether dis nct pa erns exist and whether di erent individuals require di erent types of support. To best support students’ learning in the clinic it is important to gain a more thorough understanding of how students’ self-regulate their learning in a clinical context, and to know if di erences in learning behavior re ect dis nct pa erns in students’ SRL behavior. With this knowledge, be er strategies to support students’ self-regulated learning in a clinical context can be developed.
To improve our understanding of SRL behavior in a clinical context, we formulated the following research ques on: what pa erns in students’ self-regulated learning behaviors in a clinical context can be iden ed, and what are their most important characteris cs? We studied this by using Q-methodology,20 asking clinical students to sort a set of statements about SRL behaviors. This methodology has been advocated as a more robust technique than alterna ve methods such as Likert-type measure- ment scales to study a tudes in health educa on.21
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Chapter 5 Pa erns in clinical students’ self-regulated learning behavior: a Q-methodology study