94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1512232
This article is part of the Research Topic The Importance of Faculty Development in Medical Education View all 9 articles
Characterising student engagement across medical universities in Iran: a national qualitative study
Provisionally accepted- Khoy University of Medical Sciences, Khoy, Iran
Introduction: Student engagement is an out-breaking and trending concept in higher education and it has been defined as a quality measure for medical universities. The aim of this study was to explore the student engagement in Iran medical universities through a national study.Methods: Using qualitative phenomenological approach, this study has explored the student engagement in Iran medical universities in 2024. Participants were selected purposively from students who were actively participated in student committee of medical education development in medical universities. An open-ended goal-driven questionnaire along with demographics was used for data collection. Inductive conventional content analysis method was employed for data analysis through MAXQDA 18. Lincoln and Guba criteria including dependability, credibility, transferability, and confirmability were used for results rigor.Results: Totally 48 students participated from 34 medical universities. The mean age of the participants was 22. Student engagement was identified as a mutual benefit strategy for students and the universities. A broad spectrum of activities from training, curriculum planning, educational evaluation and governance were believed to be engaged by students. To overcome the identified barrier of student engagement (SE) such as low incentives for students, lack of partnership culture and time restriction, participants outlined making stronger agency of the students, professors active participation, SE valuation and encouraging fair engagement opportunities.Conclusions: Student engagement in medical universities in Iran is of interest to students while it faces with barriers in various domains. Developing virtuous and value-based engagement process through promoting partnership culture, stronger students agency, establishing SE strategies in governance, professors mentoring and participation and real acknowledgement of students will promote SE in medical universities which lead to learning environment enhancement.
Keywords: student engagement, Phenomenology, Medical university, Iran, qualitative research
Received: 16 Oct 2024; Accepted: 24 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Saadati, Sabri, Motaarefi, Bayrami and Karimkhani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Mohammad Saadati, Khoy University of Medical Sciences, Khoy, Iran
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.