Understanding and appraising medical students’ learning through clinical experiences: Participatory practices at work

© The contributors. This author accepted manuscript book chapter is made available after an embargo period of 18 months from date of publication (December 2018) in accordance with the publisher's archiving policy.This chapter explores the participatory practices of some medical students’ learning through their clinical experiences. Participatory practices are those that comprise a duality between what is afforded by the social institutions in which individuals participate (e.g. educational and healthcare settings), on the one hand, and how individuals elect to engage in and learn through those practices (i.e. their processes of experiencing), on the other. Privileged here is not only the contributions to learning from these social settings and what individuals already know, can do and value, but also the relations between them. Indeed, the explanatory account of these students’ learning is founded on the concept of relational interdependence. That is, the relational nature of the interdependence between the social norms, forms and practices that individuals are afforded in these settings, and their experiencing of, and learning from what is afforded them. These concepts offer an account of the learning process associated with medical education, in which judgements about the educational worth of these programs are founded on the kinds and qualities of experiences provided for students, their relationships with the kinds of learning that arise from them, and ultimately, how students come to engage within them. This engagement includes, but is not wholly dependent upon, how students perceive the invitational qualities of these experiences