Office of Program Evaluation, Education and Research, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
Med Teach. 2013 May;35(5):376-80. doi: 10.3109/0142159X.2013.769678. Epub 2013 Feb 27.
A school's learning environment is believed to influence academic performance yet few studies have evaluated this association controlling for prior academic ability, an important factor since students who do well in school tend to rate their school's environment more highly than students who are less academically strong.
To evaluate the effect of student perception of the learning environment on their performance on a standardized licensing test while controlling for prior academic ability.
We measured perception of the learning environment after the first year of medical school in 267 students from five consecutive classes and related that measure to performance on United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1, taken approximately six months later. We controlled for prior academic performance by including Medical College Admission Test score and undergraduate grade point average in linear regression models.
Three of the five learning environment subscales were statistically associated with Step 1 performance (p < 0.05): meaningful learning environment, emotional climate, and student-student interaction. A one-point increase in the rating of the subscales (scale of 1-4) was associated with increases of 6.8, 6.6, and 4.8 points on the Step 1 exam.
Our findings provide some evidence for the widely held assumption that a positively perceived learning environment contributes to better academic performance.
人们认为学校的学习环境会影响学习成绩，但很少有研究在控制先前学业能力的情况下评估这种关联，这是一个重要因素，因为在学校表现出色的学生往往比学业成绩较差的学生对学校环境评价更高。
在控制先前学业能力的情况下，评估学生对学习环境的感知对他们在标准化执照考试中的表现的影响。
我们在 5 个连续班级的 267 名学生中测量了他们在医学院第一年结束后的学习环境感知，并将该测量结果与大约 6 个月后进行的美国医师执照考试（USMLE）第 1 步的成绩相关联。我们通过包括医学院入学考试（MCAT）成绩和本科平均绩点（GPA）在内的线性回归模型来控制先前的学业表现。
五个学习环境子量表中有三个与 Step 1 表现呈统计学关联（p<0.05）：有意义的学习环境、情绪氛围和学生间互动。子量表的评分增加 1 分（1-4 分制）与 Step 1 考试成绩分别增加 6.8、6.6 和 4.8 分相关。
我们的发现为广泛持有的假设提供了一些证据，即积极的学习环境有助于提高学业成绩。
