Why a teacher-centered medical school curriculum may result in a poor educational environment?

Abstract

Eiad Abdelmohsen Al-Faris, Naghma Naeem,Riaz Qureshi1, Cees van der Vleuten, Farhana Irfan, Amr Jamal

Students’ achievements, satisfaction, and success have been found to correlate with their perception of their educational environment (EE). Objectives: The objectives of the present study were to identify (a) the medical students’ perceptions of their EE at a school with a teacher-centered curriculum (b) the reasons behind the items with low ratings and (c) ways to improve the EE at this school. Methods: In this article, the focus will be on the qualitative part of the mixed method of study, which was conducted at a large medical school in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during 2006-2007. A total of 1132 students filled out a bilingual (Arabic and English) version of the Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) inventory. Five focus group discussions with 28 students were conducted. The low scoring areas of the DREEM were used as input for the discussion.