an appraisal of students awareness of self-reflection in a first-year pathology course of undergraduate medicaldental education学生的自我反省意识的评价在本科一年级病理学medicaldental教育.pdfVIP

Kanthan and Senger BMC Medical Education 2011, 11:67 /1472-6920/11/67 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access An appraisal of students’ awareness of “self- reflection” in a first-year pathology course of undergraduate medical/dental education * Rani Kanthan and Jenna-Lynn B Senger Abstract Background: Self-reflection and reflective practice are increasingly considered as essential attributes of competent professionals functioning in complex and ever-changing healthcare systems of the 21st century. The aim of this study was to determine the extent of students’ awareness and understanding of the reflective process and the meaning of ‘self-reflection’ within the contextual framework of their learning environment in the first-year of their medical/dental education. We endorse that the introduction of such explicit educational tasks at this early stage enhances and promotes students’ awareness, understanding, and proficiency of this skill in their continuing life-long health professional learning. Methods: Over two years, students registered in first-year pathology at the University of Saskatchewan were introduced to a self-reflection assignment which comprised in the submission of a onereflective document to a template of reflective questions provided in the given context of their learning environment. This was a mandatory but ungraded component at the midterm and final examinations. These documents were individually analyzed and thematically categorized to a “5 levels-of-reflection-awareness” scale using a specially-designed rubric based on the accepted major theories of reflection that included students’ identification of: 1) personal abilities, 2) personal learning styles 3) relationships between course material and student history 4) emotional responses and 5) future applications. Results: 410 self-r