Teaching the affective domain in community-based medical education: A scoping review

Abstract

Background: The affective domain is one of the essential areas in the assessment of the learning outcomes of medical students, apart from the cognitive and psychomotor domains. Community-based medical education (CBME) is a common instructional program for medical students in learning about these domains. However, preceptors and researchers pay less attention to the affective domain as compared to the other two learning domains.

Aim: To describe the state of the literature on teaching the affective domain through CBME and to develop an initial model for instructional purposes.

Methods: A scoping review of the literature was conducted. Out of the 971 references initially retrieved, 22 published references were selected. Relevant data from these references were extracted and analyzed through thematic analysis.

Results and Conclusion: The various affective outcomes of CBME in the literature are commonly taught through role modelling and mentoring, providing opportunity to apply knowledge, and immersing in local organizations and communities. However, these teaching strategies will be optimized through a structured and rigorous process of reflection. Reflection is central to the learning experience of medical students, especially that affective outcomes are commonly less apparent. The findings of this review resulted to a proposed initial model in teaching the affective domain in CBME.

Keywords:

• Affective outcome
• service-learning
• reflection
• scoping study

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Glossary

Community-based medical education: The use of the community as the learning environment wherein stakeholders are actively engaged in providing medical education that are relevant to the community needs.

Mennin S, Petroni-Mennin. 2006. Community-based medical education. Clin Teach. 3(2):90–96.

Affective domain: One of the three domains of learning in accordance with Bloom taxonomy that emphasizes a feeling tone, an emotion, or a degree of acceptance or rejection. It is classified from simple to complex level: receiving phenomenon, response to phenomenon, valuing, organization and internalizes values.

Krathwol DR, Editor. 1964. Taxonomy of educational objectives – its use in curriculum building. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press.

Science Education Resource Center [SERC]. 2016. Student motivations and attitudes: the role of the affective domain in geoscience learning. Carleton (USA): Carleton College; [accessed 2018 April 20]. https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/intro.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Celso P. Pagatpatan

Celso P. Pagatpatan, Jr., DrPH, is an associate professor at the College of Medicine, De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute, Philippines. He is a holder of academic status of lecturer at the Discipline of Public Health, Flinders University, Australia.

Joshua Alexander T. Valdezco

Joshua Alexander T. Valdezco, BSc and Jeff Daniel C. Lauron, BSc, are both clinical clerks at the College of Medicine, De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute, Philippines.

Jeff Daniel C. Lauron

Joshua Alexander T. Valdezco, BSc and Jeff Daniel C. Lauron, BSc, are both clinical clerks at the College of Medicine, De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute, Philippines.