School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44106-7504, USA.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, USA.
Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2024 Jul;29(3):803-812. doi: 10.1007/s10459-023-10279-y. Epub 2023 Sep 7.
Medical educators and programs are deeply interested in understanding and projecting the longitudinal developmental trajectories of medical students after these students are matriculated into medical schools so appropriate resources and interventions can be provided to support students' learning and progression during the process. As students have different characteristics and they do not learn and progress at the same pace, it is important to identify student subgroups and address their academic needs to create more equitable learning opportunities. Using latent class growth analysis, this study explored students' developmental trajectories and detected group differences based on their coursework performance in Anatomy within the two years of preclinical education in one medical school. Four subgroups were identified with various intercepts and slopes. There were significant group differences between these subgroups and their standardized scores in MCAT and UCMLE Step 1. The study provides evidence about the heterogeneity of the student population and points out future research directions.
医学教育者和项目都非常有兴趣了解和预测医学生在进入医学院后长期的发展轨迹,以便在学生学习过程中提供适当的资源和干预措施来支持他们的学习和进步。由于学生具有不同的特点,他们的学习和进步速度也不同,因此确定学生群体并满足他们的学习需求以创造更公平的学习机会非常重要。本研究使用潜在类别增长分析,基于一所医学院前两年临床教育中解剖学课程表现,探讨了学生的发展轨迹,并根据课程表现发现了学生群体差异。共确定了四个具有不同截距和斜率的亚组。这些亚组在 MCAT 和 UCMLE Step 1 的标准化分数上存在显著差异。该研究提供了学生群体异质性的证据,并指出了未来的研究方向。