Deliberate reflection upon clinical cases as an instructional approach to foster Learning of scientific texts

This thesis was dedicated to examining the effects of deliberate reflection upon clinical cases on medical students’ learning of scientific texts. It concludes that, relative to generating a differential diagnosis, deliberate reflection during practice with clinical cases fosters learning from a subsequently studied scientific text and promotes interest in the subject matter to a larger extent. It also suggests that the positive effect of reflection on learning is mostly a consequence of cognitive mechanisms, such as the activation of students’ prior knowledge.