Tutors’ Perception of their Assessment by Students of a Medical Course

ABSTRACT Among the active pedagogical methodologies, Problem-Based Learning provides new roles to the agents of the teaching-learning processes. The teacher passes from the role of single knowledge holder to facilitator of the learning process. On the other hand the student’s role also changes from passive subject to active participant in this knowledge construction. This study aimed at analyzing the meaning given by tutors to assessments made by medicine students at Montes Claros State University on their professional performance. It is a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study, the subjects of which were 11 tutors of the Content Specific Module of first and fourth year students in the second semester of 2009. We used structured interviews to collect data, the results of which were analyzed and interpreted according to thematic content analysis. The tutors were mostly female who held a specialization qualification and master’s degree; the predominant working week was 40 hours. The following thematic categories were derived from the interviews: aspects that influenced the decision to work as a tutor: invitations from and needs of the institution; tutor training: only some teachers received training, some became tutors through observing other tutors at work; awareness of the student assessment at the end of each module: the student assessment is not performed in a committed manner; teachers and managers do not engage in the results; and finally the categories of how the tutors conceive the assessment and perceive it via the Intranet: it was observed that all the subjects are aware of the importance of such a process, but some teachers are not interested in the student assessments. It is expected that the results will contribute to improving teachers’ view of their role in building and organizing the curriculum and, consequently, in the training of new medical professionals, as set out in the Pedagogical Political Project for this course.