130 | Chapter 6 The justification of SRL is usually twofold. Firstly, SRL is considered to help learners during education, as those learners with a high degree of SRL are expected to learn more effectively than those with a low degree of SRL.6 Proof for this idea is often provided by research that showed a positive correlation between the degree of SRL (usually measured with the use of self-evaluation surveys) and academic performance (e.g. grade point average).7-9 Secondly, those with a high degree of SRL are supposed to engage more easily in lifelong learning after education, as the two constructs are theoretically linked.10 This second justification can explain the increased popularity of SRL within medical education in particular. In the last decades medical training has focused on lifelong learning, as it is expected that a mindset favouring lifelong learning helps physicians to adequately respond to the ever-changing demands of their profession.11 Consequently, medical training institutes aim to invoke SRL in learners during education. This aim is substantiated by research that has shown that it is possible to foster SRL, not only through direct instructions and/or guidance of faculty, but also by various aspects of the learning environment (e.g. enthusiasm of teachers, technology used).12,13,14,15 However, as we just described how difficult it is to explicate what is (not) SRL, it is not surprising that there are also studies that show that efforts to foster SRL are not always successful, especially in the busy clinical context where it can be difficult for learners to keep track of individual learning needs.16,17,18 Therefore, it is important to ask questions about our attempts to foster this ambiguous concept within medical education. The ‘treasure hunt/dropping-continuum’ Before we will question efforts to foster SRL, we propose the ‘treasure hunt/dropping-continuum’ as a metaphor for approaches to foster SRL. On one end of the continuum there is the treasure hunt that resembles approaches where learners are clearly instructed to perform specific learning activities during an assignment (e.g. learners are obligated to formulate and evaluate three SMART learning objectives). In contrast, the dropping resembles approaches where only the assignment itself is defined, so learners themselves should decide which learning activities are valuable to fulfil this assignment. While we will focus on the two ends of the continuum during this reflection, there are naturally also approaches that hold a middle ground between these two extremes (e.g. learners are provided with a selection of learning activities from which they can choose).
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