Journal of dental education
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This article describes a curricular change project designed to improve instruction in biochemistry. After years of unsatisfactory outcomes from a dental hygiene biochemistry course, a decision was made to change the traditional lecture-based course to an online format. Using online technology and principles of educational pedagogy, a course was developed that fosters application of biomaterials principles to dental hygiene practice and provides a bridge between prerequisite chemistry coursework and biochemistry in a health professions program. ⋯ While the results are based on only two classes, the positive outcomes suggest that the revision was a worthwhile endeavor. The use of technology in teaching holds the potential for solving many of the curriculum and instruction issues currently under discussion: overcrowding of the curriculum, lack of active learning methods, and basic sciences taught in isolation from the rest of the curriculum. It is hoped that the results of this change will be helpful to other faculty members seeking curricular change and innovation.
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For over twenty-five years, dental education has had the benefit of environmental analyses and institutional planning for change. Strong programs for leadership development have emerged to give direction to these efforts. Leading and thriving, not merely surviving, are universal aspirations, yet we remain vexed by finances, structures, and traditions. ⋯ Using the work of Heifetz and Linsky, the relationship between authority and adaptive leadership is defined. Resistance to change is presented as reaction to loss, which needs to be addressed in a fundamental way, through leadership activity and engagement. If change and innovation are to be sustained, leadership must be less accidental, less technical, and more adaptive.
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There have been many calls for strengthening the level of critical thinking among dental students and faculty members, but few analyses of how such curricular experiences actually affect them. This report provides a rich, multifaceted description of eight years' experience teaching a course in critical thinking. ⋯ Personality factors emerged as predictive of both critical thinking and clinical performance, and students' approaches to learning appeared to be influenced by their practical considerations of what is needed to practice, rather than by the logic of good science. This analysis argues for designing curricula on the full concept of competency (knowledge, skills, and values needed to function as a dental practitioner) and for exploring a third pedagogy of reflective practice to supplement the traditional ones of didactic and skill teaching in dental education.
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This article reports the findings of a survey-based study conducted to determine U. S. dental schools' institutional protocols regarding the practice of students' administering local anesthetic injections to fellow students as part of their process of learning this skill. The majority of schools ask students to practice local anesthetic injections on each other without obtaining informed consent.