Dealing with conflicts on knowledge in tutorial groups

Abstract

The aim of our study was to gain understanding of different types of conflicts on knowledge in the discussions of problem-based learning tutorial groups, and how such conflicts are dealt with. We examined first-year medical and dental students' (N = 33) conflicts on knowledge in four videotaped reporting phase tutorials. A coding scheme was created for analysing verbatim transcripts of 43 conflict episodes in order to find out whether the conflict episodes were about factual or conceptual knowledge and how the students elaborated the knowledge. Conflict episodes were relatively rare (taking up 7.6 % of the time) in the videotaped groups. Conflict episodes were more frequently about factual knowledge (58 %) than conceptual knowledge (42 %), but conflicts on conceptual knowledge lasted longer and were more often elaborated. Elaboration was, however, more frequently done individually than collaboratively. Conflict episodes were generally fairly short (mean duration 28 s). This was due to a lack of thorough argumentation and collaborative elaboration of conflicting ideas. The results suggest that students' skills to bring out differences in each other's conceptual thinking, the depth of argumentation and the use of questions that elicit elaboration need to be improved. Tutors' skills to facilitate the collaborative resolving of conflicts on knowledge call for further study.

Group interaction in problem‐based learning tutorials: a systematic review

“…By searching in the journals, 4082 additional papers were retrieved – Academic Medicine ( n = 401), Medical Education ( n = 1063), Medical Teacher ( n = 1576), BMC Medical Education ( n = 177), Advances Health Sciences Education ( n = 322), Teaching and Learning in Medicine ( n = 299), Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem‐Based Learning ( n = 20), European Journal of Dental Education ( n = 44) and Journal of Dental Education ( n = 180). Taken together, a total of 10,579 papers were identified – with 3630 remaining after removal of duplicates of which 35 were found to match the research questions , one of them was identified by searching the reference list of other studies included in the final analysis. Seven studies were identified in two edited research books .…”

“…Only student's views were considered in one study, and the study design did not explore student-student and student-tutor interactions and what exactly occurs in PBL tutorials (24). Also, one study focused on one aspect only, that is, conflict episodes, and did inform us what students do throughout the tutorial (27). The materials used in assessing group interaction varied a lot depending on the methodology design and the purpose of the study.…”

“…• Small studies using data from a single tutorial group and a shorter period of time (19,24,25,27,28,55,56,58). Table 1 shows that the majority of studies 43% were from Europe, 24% from North America, 24% from Asia, 7% from Australia and 2% from South America.…”

Challenges Experienced by Korean Medical Students and Tutors During Problem-Based Learning: A Cultural Perspective

“…Indeed, cognitive conflicts encountered while interacting with peers with different perspectives can trigger students to articulate conflicting ideas, to seek more information, to explain and justify their ideas, and to negotiate possible solutions (Aarnio, Lindblom-Ylanne, Nieminen, & Pyorala, 2013;de Grave, Schmidt, & Boshuizen, 2001;Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008;Nieminen, Sauri, & Lonka, 2006). On the other hand, a collectivistic culture needs to be cultivated in a way that students, as members of a group, will take responsibility for maintaining an effective group process for negotiated goals, mutual rewards, and shared resources (Azer, 2005;Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980;Johnson et al, 2007).…”

Research on problem‐based learning: future challenges

“…More recently, Aarnio et al. 25 demonstrated in an observational study that conflicts or discussions about disagreement took only a very small percentage of the time in tutorial groups and were very short. These studies make it clear that the quality of interactions in PBL requires further improvement and that both students and tutors need further training and feedback on how to enhance a deep group discussion.…”