132 | Chapter 6 reasoned that no person can exert authority over another person, in a time that political sovereigns had complete power. With the wish for political freedom came a plea for intellectual independence; no one but you should decide what is true. While the political system was reformed long since, this line of thinking still echoes in modern day society where autonomy is a value in itself. While SRL shares commonalities (and is sometimes conflated) with theory on learner autonomy,25,26 its relationship with autonomy is actually rather complex. This is resembled by studies that show the importance of guidance by teachers during (the development of ) SRL.7,12 Furthermore, there are concepts like co-regulated learning (i.e. somebody else helps you to structure your learning) and socially shared regulated learning (i.e. learning is regulated in collaboration with peers), that also stress the importance of social interaction during SRL.27,28 Besides the presence and value of social interaction, autonomy of learners also varies on basis of the degree and specificity of instructions that are provided. Some learning activities provide learners with more autonomy to approach the activity (e.g. a project where learners should come up with a solution to a common health problem) than others (e.g. a class on how to perform chest compressions). In theory learners can engage in SRL in all these situations, as they can always decide on their desired goal-level (‘how do I wish to perform during this activity?’), assess their own performance, etc.29 However, it is imaginable that learners are more inclined to engage in SRL when they experience some leeway to make personal choices. But what is the preferable amount of leeway to foster SRL of learners? This is probably dependent on personal characteristics of learners, such as tolerance to uncertainty.30,31 Additionally, experience with learning activities can be an important factor. Where a five-year-old is not equipped to participate in a dropping, a teenager might be bored during a treasure hunt. Likewise, approaches to foster SRL are probably most effective when they include more structure (treasure hunt-style) at the start of education than at the end of education where a dropping-style might be the preferred approach. This aligns with theory about the acquisition of SRL skills.32 How much risk are we willing and able to take when fostering SRL? While we ended the previous question by stating that external structure can be preferable when fostering SRL during the early stages of education, we also suggested that learners are more inclined to engage in SRL when they have some leeway to make personal choices. This brings us to another conundrum of fostering SRL; how much risk are we able and willing to take during education? Because learners can only experience leeway when medical training institutes hand off some control. However, current (Dutch) curricula are actually highly controlled, as they are designed to reduce potential risks, such as learners dropping-out or graduation of learners that are unsuitable for the profession.33 This is exemplified by the level of detail included in many
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