Dealing with conflicts on knowledge in tutorial groups Matti Aarnio • Sari Lindblom-Yla ¨nne • Juha Nieminen • Eeva Pyo ¨ra ¨la ¨ Received: 28 October 2011 / Accepted: 6 March 2012 / Published online: 28 March 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract The aim of our study was to gain understanding of different types of conflicts on knowledge in the discussions of problem-based learning tutorial groups, and how such conflicts are dealt with. We examined first-year medical and dental students’ (N = 33) conflicts on knowledge in four videotaped reporting phase tutorials. A coding scheme was created for analysing verbatim transcripts of 43 conflict episodes in order to find out whether the conflict episodes were about factual or conceptual knowledge and how the students elaborated the knowledge. Conflict episodes were relatively rare (taking up 7.6 % of the time) in the videotaped groups. Conflict episodes were more frequently about factual knowledge (58 %) than conceptual knowledge (42 %), but conflicts on conceptual knowledge lasted longer and were more often elaborated. Elaboration was, however, more frequently done individually than collaboratively. Conflict episodes were generally fairly short (mean duration 28 s). This was due to a lack of thorough argumentation and collaborative elaboration of conflicting ideas. The results suggest that students’ skills to bring out differences in each other’s conceptual thinking, the depth of argumentation and the use of questions that elicit elaboration need to be improved. Tutors’ skills to facilitate the collaborative resolving of conflicts on knowledge call for further study. Keywords Conflicts on knowledge Á Collaborative learning Á Problem-based learning Á Tutorial discussions Á Verbal interactions Introduction Problem-based learning (PBL) is a widely used small-group learning method where complex problems mirroring real-life situations are used as a stimulus for learning. M. Aarnio (&) Á J. Nieminen Á E. Pyo ¨ra ¨la ¨ Research and Development Unit for Medical Education, University of Helsinki, PO Box 63, Haartmaninkatu 8, 00014 Helsinki, Finland e-mail: matti.aarnio@helsinki.fi S. Lindblom-Yla ¨nne Á J. Nieminen Centre for Research and Development of Higher Education, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland 123 Adv in Health Sci Educ (2013) 18:215–230 DOI 10.1007/s10459-012-9366-z