129 Philosophical discussion | 6 The NewYork Times dedicated an article to a typical Dutch example of hands off parenting: ‘the dropping’.1 During a dropping, teenagers are ‘dropped’ in the woods at night-time with the assignment to find their way back home. Droppees are usually blindfolded and/or disoriented on the way to the drop off point and only have access to limited resources (e.g. a compass or simple GPS device). Droppings typically take place during summer camps, but can also be organised as an exciting birthday party activity. While many parents (also Dutch ones) will lose some sleep thinking about the potential risks of a dropping, it is exactly these risks that characterise the dropping. Because when all risks are cancelled out (“let’s tell them which direction to go first, in order to make sure that they don’t get stuck near the river”, “maybe we should also give them a map”) a dropping is no more than an ordinary treasure hunt, where children can find a ‘treasure’ by following directions, completing assignments and/or answering questions. This philosophical paper uses the principles of treasure hunts and droppings as a metaphor to reflect on the endeavours of medical training institutes to foster self-regulated learning (SRL), as we noticed that efforts to foster SRL are not always successful. While many approaches to philosophy exist, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin distinguished philosophy from other scientific disciplines on basis of the questions asked, or more specifically how those questions can be answered.2 He stated that, in contrast to empirical questions, for philosophical questions the method to find an answer is ambiguous, as is the way of evaluating the answer (or even knowing if there is a single answer or multiple possible answers).2 We formulated four interrelated philosophical questions about SRL. These questions were not formulated with the intention to provide clear-cut answers, but were instead meant to evoke contemplation of the ways in which medical training institutes try to foster SRL. Before we go into this, it is important to consider the origin and importance of SRL. The origin and importance of SRL The first models of SRL were introduced in the field of educational psychology around 1986 to better understand the cognitive, motivational, and emotional aspects of learning.3 In the years that followed, authors from different disciplines developed and adjusted models of SRL.4 Panadero compared six influential models and concluded that all models present SRL as cyclical and consisting of different phases and subprocesses. He describes SRL as an umbrella term that refers to a variety of constructs related to learning, that cover different domains: (meta)cognition, behaviour, motivation, and emotion.3 Accordingly, it is difficult to provide a distinct definition of SRL. For the purpose of this article, we will use a definition of Zimmerman, who was one of the first to propose a model of SRL: ‘the degree to which students are metacognitively, motivationally, and behavio[u]rally active participants in their own learning process.5 (p. 167)
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