Tutors´ and Students’ Agreement on Social and Cognitive Congruence in a Sonography Peer-assisted-learning Scenario

PURPOSE: Peer-assisted learning has become an integral part within medical education and has been proven to be effective in teaching medical skills. Cognitive and social congruence are important factors that explain the effectiveness of peer-assisted learning. However, although theory suggests this, there is no study to date that demonstrates that students and tutors agree upon the level of cognitive and social congruence. Thus, we compared tutors’ and students’ perception of cognitive and social congruence and their agreement on the causes of congruence. METHODS: 36 students and 9 tutors from 9 courses were asked to answer questionnaires for their perception of cognitive and social congruence in a peer-assisted learning sonography scenario. RESULTS: Students and tutors experienced cognitive congruence (t = 0.8277, df = 8, p = .4318, 95% CI = [-0.232; 0.491]) and social congruence (t = 0.962, df = 8, p = .364, 95% CI = [-0.145; 0.354]) similarly. In contrast, students and tutors disagreed on causes of cognitive congruence (agreement = 53.90%) and social congruence (agreement = 58.49%). Tutors rated their empathy and interest toward students as the main cause. Students rated the helpfulness, effectiveness, and approachableness of the tutor as the main cause. CONCLUSIONS: Our study filled the gap in previous research on cognitive and social congruence. Consistent with theoretical considerations, it was shown that students and tutors do indeed experience cognitive and social congruence similarly. Nevertheless, differences also emerged that may carry more or less weight depending on the research question. Future studies should therefore carefully examine whether the assessment of cognitive and social congruence of students and tutors is necessary.