Medical educators and programs are deeply interested in understanding and projecting the longitudinal developmental trajectories of medical students after these students are matriculated into medical schools so appropriate resources and interventions can be provided to support students' learning and progression during the process. As students have different characteristics and they do not learn and progress at the same pace, it is important to identify student subgroups and address their academic needs to create more equitable learning opportunities. Using latent class growth analysis, this study explored students' developmental trajectories and detected group differences based on their coursework performance in Anatomy within the two years of preclinical education in one medical school. Four subgroups were identified with various intercepts and slopes. There were significant group differences between these subgroups and their standardized scores in MCAT and UCMLE Step 1. The study provides evidence about the heterogeneity of the student population and points out future research directions.

中文翻译：

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使用潜在班级增长分析来检测临床前医学教育中的群体发展轨迹。

医学教育者和项目对了解和预测医学生进入医学院后的纵向发展轨迹非常感兴趣，以便可以提供适当的资源和干预措施来支持学生在此过程中的学习和进步。由于学生具有不同的特征，并且他们的学习和进步速度不一致，因此识别学生群体并满足他们的学术需求以创造更公平的学习机会非常重要。本研究利用潜在班级成长分析，探索学生的发展轨迹，并根据在一所医学院两年的临床前教育中的解剖学课程表现来检测学生的群体差异。四个亚组被确定为具有不同的截距和斜率。这些亚组之间及其在 MCAT 和 UCMLE 第 1 步中的标准化分数存在显着的组间差异。该研究提供了有关学生群体异质性的证据，并指出了未来的研究方向。