Key elements in assessing the educational environment: where is the theory?

Abstract

The educational environment has been increasingly acknowledged as vital for high-quality medical education. As a result, several instruments have been developed to measure medical educational environment quality. However, there appears to be no consensus about which concepts should be measured. The absence of a theoretical framework may explain this lack of consensus. Therefore, we aimed to (1) find a comprehensive theoretical framework defining the essential concepts, and (2) test its applicability. An initial review of the medical educational environment literature indicated that such frameworks are lacking. Therefore, we chose an alternative approach to lead us to relevant frameworks from outside the medical educational field; that is, we applied a snowballing technique to find educational environment instruments used to build the contents of the medical ones and investigated their theoretical underpinnings (Study 1). We found two frameworks, one of which was described as incomplete and one of which defines three domains as the key elements of human environments (personal development/goal direction, relationships, and system maintenance and system change) and has been validated in different contexts. To test its applicability, we investigated whether the items of nine medical educational environment instruments could be mapped unto the framework (Study 2). Of 374 items, 94% could: 256 (68%) pertained to a single domain, 94 (25%) to more than one domain. In our context, these domains were found to concern goal orientation, relationships and organization/regulation. We conclude that this framework is applicable and comprehensive, and recommend using it as theoretical underpinning for medical educational environment measures.

A qualitative exploration of chiropractic and physiotherapy teachers' experiences and conceptualizations of the educational environment

“…In the present work, we did not explicitly set out to study teachers' conceptions regarding whether learning is an outcome of or is influenced by the environment. However, in order to lever findings to a more general level, we assert, in congruence with Scho¨nrock-Adema et al, 19 that sociocultural frameworks can assist in helping to broaden the perspective and help frame and better understand the phenomenon. There are various strands of sociocultural theory, all of which share perspectives on mind, action, context, culture, and the dynamics of learning.…”

From good to excellent: Improving clinical departments’ learning climate in residency training

“…Traditional research into learning climate instruments for PGME has mainly focused on the soundness of items used and uncovering domains in instruments by using variable-centered approaches such as factor analysis and structural equation models (Schonrock-Adema et al 2012). In contrast, a person-centered approach, such as cluster analysis or finite mixture analysis, can consider heterogeneity of departments and as such provide insight into the grouping of departments (Muth en and Muth en 2000; Oberski 2016).…”

“…It follows that highquality learning climates are of paramount importance to both residents and patients. However, the learning climate is a complex and multidimensional (Roff et al 1997;Clapham et al 2007;Boor et al 2011;Riquelme et al 2013;Colbert-Getz et al 2014) construct that resembles the formal and informal context of learning (Roff and McAleer 2001;Schonrock-Adema et al 2012), including residents' perceptions of departments' common policies, practices and procedures as well as the overall atmosphere (Genn 2001b;Schonrock-Adema et al 2012). When learning climate dimensions are distinctly represented across clinical departments, there might be multiple learning climate groups that may require differing efforts to achieve learning climate improvement.…”

Development and validation of a Supportive Learning Environment for Expertise Development Questionnaire (SLEED-Q)

“…According to Moos (1974), each human environment-irrespective of the type of setting-can be described by three dimensions: Relationship Dimensions (the nature and intensity of personal relationships within the environment and the extent to which people are involved in the environment and support and help each other), Personal Development Dimensions (standard pathways for personal growth and selfenhancement) and System Maintenance and Change Dimensions (orderliness, clarity of expectations, degree to which control is exerted, responsiveness to change). The LEI (Fraser et al 1982), CES (Moos and Trickett 1987), ICEQ (Fraser 1990), MCI (Fraser and O'Brien 1985), College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI; Fraser and Treagust 1986), Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI; Fraser and McRobbie 1995), QTI (Wubbels and Brekelmans 1998), CLES (Taylor et al 1997) and WIHIC (Fraser et al 1996) are examples of questionnaires that focus on the psychosocial aspects of the classroom environment (Fraser 1998;Schönrock-Adema et al 2012;Van der Sijde and Tomic 1992). Instruments which assess the physical learning environment focus on the physical, ergonomic, chemical and biological factors that can affect a student's ability and capacity to learn (Zandvliet and Straker 2001).…”