A longitudinal study about professional self-efficacy, emotional challenges and moral stress in Teacher and Medical Education

Working in school and healthcare includes high psychological, cognitive and emotional demands on professionals.

There is currently a lack of knowledge about how students during teacher and medical education develop professional self-efficacy in a Swedish context.

In this project, we aim to investigate teacher and medical students´ professional development in relation to professional self-efficacy, emotional challenges, and moral stress during the first years of their education. We will investigate how professional self-efficacy is related to emotional challenges and moral stress.

The project uses both qualitative and quantitative research in parallel, in a convergent mixed methods design.

In a survey study we follow student teachers and medical students longitudinal during their first three years of their professional educationto investigate how their professional self-efficacy change over time. The project includes a longitudinal qualitative interview study. We will investigate how students’ reason about professional self-efficacy, emotional challenges and moral stress.

Finally, differences between the students are analyzed in comparative studies with quantitative and qualitative methods.

The study contributes to previous studies, combining professional self-efficacy, emotional challenges, and moral stress.

Following students longitudinal, utilizing both quantitative and quantitative methods, provides additional opportunities that contribute with unique knowledge.