Acts of resistance: Exploring undergraduate medical students' experiences with social spaces

INTRODUCTION: Scholars in higher education have long theorised the relational and political dimensions of social spaces, including their potential impact on students' wellbeing, sense of belongingness and identity, but this is a largely unexplored topic in health professions literature. To address this gap, we explored how student common rooms in a medical school were allocated and managed, and how these processes shaped student experiences. Our specific research question was: how does the design and management of student social space influence students' experience of this space? We adopted a constructivist perspective and drew upon Lefebvre's idea of space as a sensitising lens to guide our analysis. METHODS: We conducted an institutional ethnography (IE) informed qualitative study using documents and semi-structured interviews for data collection to understand what influenced students' experiences of social spaces ('House rooms'). We purposively sampled 22 participants: 13 students, seven personal tutors, and two administrators to gather diverse perspectives. We also analysed institutional guides and handbooks, and historical meeting minutes. RESULTS: The medical school conceptualised these rooms as dedicated student spaces to foster students' sense of belongingness and identity. Room planning was 'top down' with minimal student involvement. While the school positioned these rooms as public, students gradually reimagined them as private, social, and safe spaces. The students, the users, claimed the rooms as their own through agency and subtle acts of resistance. DISCUSSION: Our study illuminates that social space involves not just those people who use it, but also those who manage it. In our example, tacit understanding seemed to be struck between the institution and students, where the latter mostly accepted institutional monitoring and surveillance in exchange for a space within the campus that they could call their own. How social spaces are managed and used are reflections of the relationship between providers and users.