Development of a questionnaire to measure teachers' student-centred perspectives based on the Onion Model.

BACKGROUND: Teachers with a teacher-centred perspective have difficulties applying student-centred approaches in Problem Based Learning (PBL) because they are inclined to show teacher-centred behaviours. The six aspects explained in Korthagen's Onion Model (environment, behaviour, competencies, beliefs, identity, and mission) are assumed to contribute to teachers' perspectives, showing that both the environment and personal characteristics influence behaviours. For teachers to function properly in PBL, those six aspects should reflect a student-centred perspective. Previous instruments to measure teaching perspectives focused on only a few of these relevant aspects. Therefore, we developed the Student-Centred Perspective of Teachers (SCPT) questionnaire with subscales for each aspect in the Onion Model. This study aimed to provide evidence for its internal and external validity. METHODS: The SCPT was distributed in a survey to 795 teachers from 20 medical schools. For the internal validation, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed to analyse theoretical fit model validation, convergent validation, and discriminant validation. For the external validation, teachers' perspective scores were compared among three groups of amount of PBL training using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc Least Significant Difference (LSD) tests. The p-value for all tests was set at .05. RESULTS: A total of 543 out of 795 teachers (68.3%) participated. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed the evidence of the SCPT's internal validation with acceptable fit for the six subscales measured by 19 items and the following Composite Reliability scores: environment (.72), behaviour (.74), competencies (.63), beliefs (.55), identity (.76), and mission (.60). All items' factors loadings reached a good standard (.5 or greater). Only the environment subscale had the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) score higher than .5 and the Maximum Shared Variance score lower than the AVE score. ANOVA and Post-hoc LSD tests showed that teachers who participated in more PBL training showed significantly higher student-centred perspectives, providing evidence for external validity. CONCLUSION: The SCPT is a reliable and valid instrument to measure teaching perspectives. Identifying aspects that do not represent the adoption of a student-centred perspective may provide valuable input for faculty development in the context of PBL.

Holistic processing only? The role of the right fusiform face area in radiological expertise.

Radiologists can visually detect abnormalities on radiographs within 2s, a process that resembles holistic visual processing of faces. Interestingly, there is empirical evidence using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for the involvement of the right fusiform face area (FFA) in visual-expertise tasks such as radiological image interpretation. The speed by which stimuli (e.g., faces, abnormalities) are recognized is an important characteristic of holistic processing. However, evidence for the involvement of the right FFA in holistic processing in radiology comes mostly from short or artificial tasks in which the quick, 'holistic' mode of diagnostic processing is not contrasted with the slower 'search-to-find' mode. In our fMRI study, we hypothesized that the right FFA responds selectively to the 'holistic' mode of diagnostic processing and less so to the 'search-to-find' mode. Eleven laypeople and 17 radiologists in training diagnosed 66 radiographs in 2s each (holistic mode) and subsequently checked their diagnosis in an extended (10-s) period (search-to-find mode). During data analysis, we first identified individual regions of interest (ROIs) for the right FFA using a localizer task. Then we employed ROI-based ANOVAs and obtained tentative support for the hypothesis that the right FFA shows more activation for radiologists in training versus laypeople, in particular in the holistic mode (i.e., during 2s trials), and less so in the search-to-find mode (i.e., during 10-s trials). No significant correlation was found between diagnostic performance (diagnostic accuracy) and brain-activation level within the right FFA for both, short-presentation and long-presentation diagnostic trials. Our results provide tentative evidence from a diagnostic-reasoning task that the FFA supports the holistic processing of visual stimuli in participants' expertise domain.