SELF-REGULATED LEARNING MICROANALYSIS FOR THE STUDY OF THE PERFORMANCE OF CLINICAL EXAMINATIONS BY PHYSIOTHERAPY STUDENTS
Abstract Background Understanding how health sciences students learn to perform clinical examinations is required to inform feedback that improves performance. Self-regulated learning (SRL) is an essential component of effective feedback. The key self-regulated learning processes can be identified using microanalysis. Self-regulated learning microanalysis is increasingly used to assess and inform the training of clinical skills in medical education but there are no studies on the use of self-regulated learning microanalysis to understand the performance of clinical examination by physiotherapy students. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of using self-regulated learning microanalysis to understand how physiotherapy students use key self-regulated learning processes while performing a clinical examination. Method SRL microanalysis assessed the self-regulated learning processes of second year physiotherapy students of a Spanish university (n= 26) as they performed a goniometric evaluation. An analysis of inter-rater reliability was also performed to evaluate the degree of agreement among raters. Results There were differences in the use of key self-regulated learning processes between successful (n= 15: 57.0%) and unsuccessful performers (n= 11: 43.0%), with differences in strategic planning, self-monitoring and the self-evaluation phases. There was good inter-rater reliability for scoring strategic planning (k=0.792), self-monitoring (k=0.946) and self-evaluation (k=0.846). Conclusion SRL microanalysis is a feasible approach to identify the key self-regulated learning processes of the performance of clinical examination by physiotherapy students. Further research with larger number of students and a variety of tasks is recommended.