Assessment of Critical Thinking in a First-Year Dental Curriculum
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Assessment of Critical Thinking in a First-Year Dental Curriculum Dharini van der Hoeven 1
&
Thuy Trang LeAnn Truong 2 & Julian Nathaniel Holland III 2 & Ryan L. Quock 3
# International Association of Medical Science Educators 2020
Abstract We studied how students in a Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) program perceived the importance of critical thinking and the extent to which critical thinking was perceived to be included in each of 25 courses of the first-year curriculum at The University of Texas School of Dentistry at Houston (UTSD). Sixty-nine of the 102 second-year students who were invited participated in an online survey. The survey had three parts, with all statements of each part evaluated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The first two parts assessed the importance of critical thinking in dental education and the criteria by which critical thinking in didactic curriculum can be measured. In the third part of the survey, students evaluated how well each course of the first-year curriculum achieved critical thinking. More than 90% of the respondents strongly agreed/agreed that critical thinking is essential to making clinical decisions. Students strongly agreed/agreed that 19 of 25 of the courses incorporated critical thinking. However, when students were asked to rank the top five of the 25 courses, only two courses (Human Biology, Neuroscience) emerged above all others in their weighted ranks, with another seven courses standing out, leaving 16 courses with low weighted rankings for their inclusion of critical thinking. In summary, students agreed on the importance of critical thinking in dental education, and on the criteria by which the incorporation of critical thinking should be measured in didactic and pre-clinical courses. Keywords Critical thinking . Dental curriculum . Student perception
Introduction Critical thinking, commonly referred to as rational, logical thought, is a rich concept with its roots in philosophy and dating back to Socrates [1]. Critical thinkers exhibit contextual perspective, creativity, inquisitiveness, confidence, and better problem-solving skills [2]. Critical thinking is emphasized in dental education of North America. In fact, one of the standards for the accreditation of
* Dharini van der Hoeven [email protected] 1
Department of Diagnostic and Biomedical Sciences, School of Dentistry, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 7500 Cambridge, Houston, TX 77054, USA
2
School of Dentistry, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA
3
Department of Restorative Dentistry and Prosthodontics, School of Dentistry, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA
dental schools is the measurement of critical thinking in students [3]. More recently, the concept has gained heightened attention due to the introduction of the integrated national dental board examination (INBDE). Dental curricula have increasingly reflecte
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