Cultural Variation in the Effectiveness of Feedback on Students' Mistakes

Medical students', residents', and nurses's feedback to clinical educators in Taiwan: A qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Feedback is a crucial element in learning. While studies in the field of healthcare professions education have highlighted the process of educators feeding back to learners, relatively little investigation exists on learners feeding back to educators in Asian cultures. Studies show that recipients of effective feedback develop educational skills and reflective practice, but the process of giving feedback seems to have been mainly studied through surveys and questionnaires. Such research offers little to no insights on feedback providers' and recipients' experiences of feedback. To fill the gap, in the context of multi-source feedback, we investigate medical students, residents, and nurses feedback giving to clinical educators (and their receiving of this) following a case presentation training course. We aim to understand the facilitators and inhibitors that encourage and/or prevent feedback provision alongside educators' uptake and reactions.

METHODS

We used semi-structured group interviews. Participants comprised five different categories of participants: year-4 medical students (n = 6); residents (n = 5); nurses (n = 4); junior clinical educators (n = 9); senior clinical educators (n = 3). We asked them about their experiences of providing feedback to educators and educators receiving of feedback on their teaching. Group interviews were conducted in the largest healthcare institution in Taiwan. Data were analysed using thematic Framework Analysis and managed in ATLAS.ti 8.0.

RESULTS

We identified two major themes with respective sub-themes: (1) Factors affecting feedback giving (including desire for improvement, feedback content, process of feedback, feedback fears, feedback prevention and medical hierarchy); and (2) Educators' reactions to receiving feedback (including validity of feedback, face-saving and emotional reactions to receiving feedback).

CONCLUSIONS

Feedback provision to educators on their teaching, and educators' receiving of this feedback in an Asian culture brings forth issues around medical hierarchy, in-person feedback and face-saving, which have important implications for effective and optimal delivery of feedback. Curricular developers should consider the context of feedback (e.g. anonymously online), facilitating students as active participants for the development of educational quality, and educators' mindful practice when engaging with student feedback.

Memory Monitoring and Control in Japanese and German Preschoolers

Prior studies explored the early development of memory monitoring and control. However, little work has examined cross-cultural similarities and differences in metacognitive development in early childhood. In the present research, we investigated a total of 100 Japanese and German preschool-aged children's memory monitoring and control in a visual perception task. After seeing picture items, some of which were repeated, children were presented with picture pairs, one of which had been presented earlier and the other was a novel item. They then were asked to identify the previously presented picture. Children were also asked to evaluate their confidence about their selection, and to sort the responses to be used for being awarded with a prize at the end of the test. Both groups similarly expressed more confidence in the accurately remembered items than in the inaccurately remembered items, and their sorting decision was based on their subjective confidence. Japanese children's sorting more closely corresponded to memory accuracy than German children's sorting, however. These findings were further confirmed by a hierarchical Bayesian estimation of metacognitive efficiency. The present findings therefore suggest that early memory monitoring and control have both culturally similar and diverse aspects. The findings are discussed in light of broader sociocultural influences on metacognition.

Examining the association between cultural self-construal and dream structures in the United States and Japan

Cultural differences in self-construal, human relationships, and values between Western and East Asian people have been suggested. The aim of this article is to investigate cultural difference in dreamers' self-construal based on their dreams. We examined the dreams sampled via online questionnaires from 300 non-clinical participants from America and Japan, respectively. The free response for the contents of "impressive dreams in childhood" "recent impressive dreams" was categorized into the five general dream structural patterns. Besides, the participants were asked to answer the scales to investigate participants' cultural self-construal. The current results revealed the prevalence of the independent view of self in American participants and the interdependent view of self in Japanese participants. In addition, we found significant cultural differences in the dream length and structural patterns. For American dreams, the dream-ego had a clear will and strong mobility, and there were obvious ends of dream events. Conversely, for Japanese dreams, the weak agency and vague conscious of the dream-ego were shown, and others could play a main role in one's dreams. These results suggested that each characteristic of the American and Japanese samples may be influenced by the differences in self-construal or in the process of self-formation between American and Japanese cultures.