‘Perceptions of medical and dental students with regards to an effective medical teacher in the light of the rhetorical relational goal theory- A mixed method study.’

Abstract

Abstract Background The qualities of medical teachers in accordance to the Rhetorical and Relational goal theory have been aforementioned in literature several times. However, additional qualities have since evolved due to the ever changing field of medical education, which requires further exploration. Methods This was a convergent mixed method study in which the quantitative and qualitative strands were run concurrently at Shifa Colleges of Medicine and Dentistry, Islamabad. Quantitative tool was a pre-validated survey which was adopted after slight modification according to the local context. For the qualitative component, four focus groups were conducted, two each from Shifa colleges of medicine and dentistry respectively. Quantitative study sample included 212 students, while qualitative component included 24 students. Qualitative data was analyzed with the aid of NVivo software while the principles of thematic analysis were followed while quantitative results were analyzed by SPSS software. Once the results were obtained from both the data sets, integration was done by following the non-crossover horizontal mixed analysis as devised by Onwuegbuzie and meta-inferences were drawn accordingly. Results Results from the quantitative component concluded that students gave equal preferences to all qualities once given the necessity budget. However, clarity (rhetorical quality) was given the highest priority by the students once they were given the luxury budget while disclosureand assertiveness (relational qualities) were amongst the lowest rated qualities. In the qualitative findings however, there was a mix of opinions and a number of qualities from both the categories (rhetorical and relational) emerged; the students preferred their teachers having relational qualities like being open to communication, encouraging and empathetic. They also emphasized that teachers should be competent, knowledgeable and teach using interactive methods. Integration of results from both the paradigms however, showed convergence in two qualities, clarity and humorous while divergence in disclosure. Conclusion Individual findings from both the data sets revealed that the students in this study perceived that a good teacher should have a blend of both, relational and rhetorical qualities. However, after integration and meta-analysis, the students in our study exhibited a slightly greater preference for their teachers having rhetorical qualities as compared to relational ones. To add to the growing corpus of knowledge, further investigation into rhetorical and relational qualities is required by following a mixed method technique similar to this study.