Impact of Classroom Learning Environment on Graduate Health Science Students' Clinical Reasoning

• In Event: 51.036 - Learning and the Educational Environment

Abstract

This qualitative study investigated how participation frameworks in two graduate health sciences courses affected students’ opportunities to learn clinical reasoning. Novices need practice and coaching to achieve the competencies in reasoning expected by their certifying institutions. Two graduate health science instructors and 62 graduate health science students participated. Data included 36 hours of instructor-student classroom discourse, instructor interviews, and detailed field notes. Analysis was conducted using Garrison’s Community of Inquiry framework. Key findings were first, the active learning frameworks instructors adopted impacted the students’ clinical reasoning. Second, instructors perceived that they engaged students in discourse more often and for longer periods than they actually did. Finally, while instructors included active learning opportunities, they inadvertently limited opportunities for students’ clinical reasoning.

Authors

• Diane L. Laverty, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

• Carol Cuthbertson Thompson, Rowan University