Professional practice unit as a knowledge construction area: the medical students' perspective at Famema

• Grant number: 11/22927-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): April 01, 2012
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Educational Teaching and Learning
• Principal Investigator: Sílvia Franco da Rocha Tonhom
• Grantee: Lucas Noda Fleury
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina de Marília (FAMEMA). Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Econômico (São Paulo - Estado). Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Marilia Medicine College (Famema) has constructed an integrated and oriented dialogic competence curriculum, and the Professional Practice Unit (PPU) is one of educational units developed in the teaching and learning process. In PPU, pedagogical cycles are achieved in order to facilitate the knowledge construction from professional practice experiences; the learning process is carried out by discovery and the contents will be understood as they make sense toward the experienced situation. The problem based pedagogy is used, and activities, with the professor's guidance, are organized to carry out the individual and collective health care in different contexts as well as the organization and management of the health work process as it occurs in the labor world. To that end, the following steps are developed: practical experience; practical reflection by drawing up the first synthesis in group, recognizing the prior knowledge and their deficits, raising hypotheses and formulating learning questions; individual information quest in various sources; discussion of answered questions based on practical reflection aiming to change it, and drawing up a new synthesis. The process evaluation, a professor and students' achievement, is the pedagogical cycle completion. These moments are recorded in reflective portfolios. Another moment to PPU learning is set up at the Professional Practice Laboratory (PPL), which is structured from the simulation of practical situations, providing the students a security environment and competence development. To be integrated and consistent with curriculum principles, the teaching and learning process evaluation had intensified the diagnostic function, and contemplated the expected performance for each grade. The professor evaluates the way how the student articulately mobilizes the cognitive, psychomotor and affective resources developed in teaching-learning activities, in real or simulated situations, and from the student's performance evaluation demonstrates his/her professional competence. The evaluation has some criteria as reference and may be satisfactory or unsatisfactory. In this context it is still noticed a strong change in services and health professionals' roles in professional training; change in school and teachers' roles in relations between students/professionals and with partners. Considering a defined curriculum and empirical perceptions, there have been questions whether the PPU process at Famema is a knowledge construction area; whether weaknesses have been found in knowledge construction in PPU activities; how the active teaching and learning process is happening; which is the professor's role in this process and how it is daily understood by students on the basis of a oriented dialogic competence curriculum. Thus, this study aims to analyze the teaching and learning process in the Professional Practice Unit (PPU) from medical students' view at Marília Medicine College, and a qualitative study will be developed with the consent of Famema Ethics Committee in Research Involving Human Beings, opinion nº 911/11. The individuals' selection will be made by intentional sample with three students from each grade randomly chosen. Each one must belong to a distinct PPU group totalizing 18 students. If necessary to extend the sample, the progressive inclusion will be considered and interrupted when reaching the saturation. For data collection will be carried out recorded and transcribed semi-structured interview, and for data analysis the content analysis technique. (AU)