Exploring the performance and self-regulation of medical students through an intervention aimed at regulating the way they feel

Abstract

Research has shown that how individuals feel affects their performance (Doell et al., 2006; Durand-Bush et al., 2005). Since felt experiences in the context of medicine have been shown to be of importance (Novack et al., 1997; Sotile & Sotile, 2002), and self-regulation skills have been found to help foster learning (Zimmerman, 1990), the purpose of this study was to examine the self-regulation of the felt experiences of four medical students through an intervention guided by the Resonance Performance Model (RPM) (Newburg et al., 2002), and determine how it affected self-defined standards of performance. Results of this multiple case study (Stake, 2006) showed that each student was able to identify and experience, the way they wanted to feel within their performance environment, and reach an optimal level of performance during the intervention process by attuning to and regulating the way they felt. Implications for future research on performance as a self-defined process, and the provision of opportunities for self-regulated learning in medical education are discussed.