title: Investigating the effect of distance between the teacher and learner on the student perception of a neuroanatomical near-peer teaching programme.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Near-peer teaching (NPT) is a highly valuable resource for the education of medical undergraduates with benefits to the students, teachers themselves, and the faculty. To maximise the effectiveness of such teaching programmes, the aim of this study was to determine how the student learning experience, and underpinning social and cognitive congruencies changes as the learner-teacher distance increases.
  
  
  METHODS
  Second-year medical students at the University of Southampton participated in a series of neuroanatomy, extra-curricular revision sessions taught by the third-, fourth-, and fifth-year medical students and junior doctors. The students completed a validated questionnaire after the session rating various aspects of the teaching.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Although all teachers delivered sessions that we rated highly with a mean perceived gain in knowledge of 18 % amongst all students, it was found that the third- and fourth-year medical students delivered a session that was rated significantly better than the fifth-year students and junior doctors across all, but one areas of feedback.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We believe that these findings may be explained by the diminishing social and cognitive congruencies shared between learner and teacher with increasing distance. From our results, we hypothesise that graduation is an important threshold, where there is a significant drop in congruencies between the learner and teacher, therefore, having a significant impact on the perception of the NPT session.
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, Centre for Learning Anatomical Sciences, University of Southampton, Mailpoint 845, South Academic Block, Tremona Road, Southampton, SO16 6YD, UK. jonny08@hotmail.co.uk.
authors.forename: Jonny R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Stephens
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, Centre for Learning Anatomical Sciences, University of Southampton, Mailpoint 845, South Academic Block, Tremona Road, Southampton, SO16 6YD, UK.
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, Centre for Learning Anatomical Sciences, University of Southampton, Mailpoint 845, South Academic Block, Tremona Road, Southampton, SO16 6YD, UK.
authors.forename: Matheus Gesteira
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Andrade
authors.affiliation: Division of Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, Centre for Learning Anatomical Sciences, University of Southampton, Mailpoint 845, South Academic Block, Tremona Road, Southampton, SO16 6YD, UK.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Border
mesh_terms: D015331:Cohort Studies; D003479:Curriculum; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D009445:Neuroanatomy / Q000193:education*; D010379:Peer Group; D010465:Perception; D012929:Psychological Distance; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013663:Teaching
keywords: Cognitive congruence; Medical education; Near-peer teaching; Neuroanatomy; Social congruence