Relational reasoning in medical education: Patterns in discourse and diagnosis.

Abstract

Relational reasoning, which has been defined as the ability to discern meaningful patterns within any informational stream, is a foundational cognitive ability associated with education, including in scientific domains. This study entailed the analysis of instructional conversations in which an attending clinical neurologist and his team of residents made diagnostic and therapeutic decisions about actual patients in a hospital setting. The primary goal was to investigate the role of 4 manifestations of relational reasoning (i.e., analogy, anomaly, antinomy, and antithesis) in medical education and diagnostic and therapeutic decision making. Results indicated that the degree to which members of the medical team used the 4 forms of relational reasoning depended on their role and expertise, as well as the time point in the problem-solving process. Specific reasoning patterns that emerged in the discourse and a prototypical model of the reasoning process are described and implications for research and practice are considered.

Individual differences in college‐age learners: The importance of relational reasoning for learning and assessment in higher education

“…While I have illustrated the forms of RR with sample items from TORR, it should be understood that these forms have been documented in everyday discourse and group problem solving. For instance, all four forms were evident in the verbalizations of mathematics and science teachers, undergraduate engineering students working on a design task, and residents and their attending physician diagnosing patients’ conditions (Dumas, Alexander, Baker, Jablansky, & Dunbar, ; Jablansky et al ., ; Sun, Alexander, & Zhao, ).…”

“…We witnessed this with the residents and attending physicians diagnosing patients’ conditions and determining appropriate treatment, a science teacher trying to instruct her students about weather patterns, and the engineering students coming up with a viable design for their senior project (Dumas et al ., ; Sun et al ., ). One particular form of reasoning utterance was predictably followed by another (see Dumas et al ., for an detailed example of the pattern among medical doctors). Collectively, these studies are critical reminders that the forms of RR are not only important singularly in problem solving, but also collectively.…”

Developmental differences in relational reasoning among primary and secondary school students.

“…Based on previous analyses of the four forms of relational reasoning as demonstrated in real-time discourse (e.g., Dumas et al, 2014), we have reason to believe that these forms may not operate in complete isolation. Rather, particular forms may operate in concert, depending on the task.…”

Development and calibration of the student opportunities for deeper learning instrument

“…Such cognitive activities are termed here opportunities for complex problem solving , because they are designed to allow for the development of problem solving and reasoning ability in students. Indeed, perhaps no aspect of deeper learning and higher‐order thinking has been more researched than complex problem solving within the psychological literature (e.g., Dumas, Alexander, Baker, Jablansky, & Dunbar, ; Wüstenberg, Greiff, Vainikainen, & Murphy, ), with the proximal link between such problem‐solving activities and higher‐order thinking skills being well‐established (Goswami & Brown, ; Greiff et al, ; Richland & Simms, ). Therefore, student opportunity for complex problem solving was considered a component of deeper learning in this investigation.…”