Participatory Action Research: Meaningful Student Involvement in Medical Curriculum Development

Our medical school aimed to involve students in changes to the Year 4 curriculum. We had feedback from graduates; however, there was little guidance available on how to meaningfully involve students. Most literature regarding curriculum co-design in medical schools are case reports, with few using students in partnership such as in participatory action research (PAR). We used this process to determine how best to involve students in curriculum design.

We recruited Year 4 medical students to discuss their experiences of the current curriculum, their opinions on potential new curriculum options and their reflections on the experience of this co-design process. The PAR approach allowed researchers and participants to work in partnership to identify and analyse themes raised. We analysed transcripts of focus groups using reflexive thematic analysis.

Six students attended three focus groups, sharing congruent experiences from diverse perspectives. We considered students' perspectives on partnership working in curriculum design in terms of three major relationships: the student-faculty relationship, the relationship to curriculum and the peer-to-peer relationship. We discuss these findings in relation to pedagogic and feminist theories and use Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation to assess our current and prospective level of involvement.

Previous research has shown that involving students in curriculum design has benefits for both the students and the teaching institution. Our action-research project allowed the review of a potential new curriculum by the students and combined practice and theory to generate guidelines to be used for future involvement of medical students in curriculum co-design.