A qualitative study of six medical students in a problem-based curriculum: Toward a situated model of self-regulation.

Abstract

The authors followed 6 first-year medical students through their first semester in a problem-based learning curriculum to understand how they self-regulated their learning. The study, using a situated research strategy, resulted in a grounded theory built around the central phenomenon of stance. In short, learners illustrated different types of stances-proactive, reactive, retroactive, interactive, and transactive-that served to govern their perceptions of themselves and the environment, their selection of goals, and their adoption of learning strategies. Furthermore, recursive patterns of stances were longitudinally described as either evolving or shifting. Findings indicated that more successful students demonstrate an evolving, interactive-transactive stance that affected the ways they participated in the learning environment and the professional identities they were beginning to develop.The purpose of this naturalistic study of first-year medical students in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum was to generate a substantive, or grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) that could explain the development of and differences in students' strategic learning behaviors and performance outcomes. Consonant with this methodology, the phenomenon of focus, stance, emerged through the course of data collection and ongoing analyses undertaken over a period of one semester within the day-to-day context of the medical school. From the outset, the research investigated how medical students in a PBL context self-regulated their learning. Contextual BackgroundThe first self-regulated activity performed by the majority of first-year medical students, whom we call the "traditionals," at Valley Medical College was to organize a cooperative note-taking pool. 1 The "scribe service" assured subscribers that they would not

International Perspectives on Problem-based Learning: Contexts, Cultures, Challenges, and Adaptations

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“…Educators are struggling to find practical instructional methods to promote critical inquiry and sustainable self-directed learning [11][12][13][14][15]. PBL has been heavily promoted in the literature and in educational conferences as the preferred method of promoting critical inquiry.…”

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“…Despite the overlap between this and other purposes of education, learning about the self deserves separate treatment as a purpose of education. In fact, some empirical evidence supports the connection between learning about the self and PBL (for example, Evensen, Salisbury-Glennon, and Glenn, 2001).…”