Self-Explanation as a Strategy for Supporting the Development of Diagnostic Reasoning in Medical Students: An Exploratory Study on Knowledge Development

Our results did not show quantitative changes of biomedical or clinical knowledge expressed by students using SE when tested at one week interval. The level of students and the short observation period may explain the negative findings. Alternatively, the assumption that knowledge transformation could be captured by simple quantitative measures might be too simplistic. To document and qualify the effects of SE on the medical knowledge, future studies will need to combine different instruments and/or observe its development over a longer period of time.