Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
The aim of the study was to develop and
consider the usefulness of a new mixedmethods
approach to evaluate the
student-centredness of teaching and
learning on undergraduate medical
courses. An essential paradigm for the
evaluation was the coherence between
how teachers conceptualise their practice
(espoused theories) and their actual
practice (theories-in-use).
METHODS:
The context was a module within an
integrated basic sciences course in an
undergraduate medical degree
programme. The programme had an
explicit intention of providing a studentcentred
curriculum. A content analysis
framework based on Weimer's dimensions
of student-centred teaching was used to
analyze data collected from individual
interviews with seven teachers to identify
espoused theories and 34h of classroom
observations and one student focus group
to identify theories-in-use. The
interviewees were identified by purposeful
sampling. The findings from the three
methods were triangulated to evaluate the
student-centredness of teaching and
learning on the course.
RESULTS:
Different, but complementary,
perspectives of the student-centredness of
teaching and learning were identified by
each method. The triangulation of the
findings revealed coherence between the
teachers' espoused theories and theoriesin-
use.
CONCLUSIONS:
A mixed-methods approach that combined
classroom observations with interviews
3 / 6
from a purposeful sample of teachers and
students offered a useful evaluation of the
extent of student-centredness of teaching
and learning of this basic science course.
Our case study suggests that this new
approach is applicable to other courses in
medical education.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 157-164 |
Journal | International journal of medical education |
Volume | 5 |
Early online date | 14 Aug 2014 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 14 Aug 2014 |
Keywords
- Student-centred learning
- espoused theories
- mixed methods
- theories-in-use