Flexible or Concrete: Goal-Setting Behaviours in Canadian Medical Students

Active goal setting and metacognition are components of self-regulated learning, helping medical students thrive in high-pressure environments. To support self-regulated learning and well-being, we must better understand the types of goals medical students set, how they formulate goals, their metacognitive awareness of goal setting and how these factors impact well-being. The overarching objective of this study is to explore how medical students develop goal-setting behaviours and abilities. We also characterised their metacognitive ability around goal setting and probed how they felt their behaviours impacted well-being.

In this qualitative reflexive thematic analysis study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 medical students in all years from 6 Canadian medical schools. The study received ethics approval.

Our analysis revealed three major themes around goal-setting behaviours, student metacognition and implications: (1) Students have limited awareness of their goal-setting process, preferences and the associated consequences. (2) Students' goal-setting tendencies and processes can be described by goal-setting scripts-flexible or concrete. (3) Goal-setting scripts are modified in response to external factors, occasionally leading to approaches that may be incongruent with a student's preferred goal-setting style.

This research offers important insight into goal-setting behaviours of medical students. Flexible and concrete goal-setting scripts introduce another framework through which educators and learners alike can examine and reflect upon goal-setting strategies. Implications of the scripts being modified due to external drivers need to be considered to support learners. Students have limited awareness and purposiveness around their goal-setting behaviours.