Allison C. Everett, DDS, is Clinical Assistant Professor, Loyola University Medical Center; Olivia S. Anderson, PhD, RD, is Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Nutritional Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Michigan; Mary C. Wright, PhD, is Director, Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, Brown University; and Margherita Fontana, DDS, PhD, is Professor, School of Dentistry, University of Michigan.
J Dent Educ. 2018 Sep;82(9):921-928. doi: 10.21815/JDE.018.088.
Critical thinking and problem-solving are two of the most frequently desired goals for dental student learning, but greater understanding is needed of how students' critical thinking skills develop from the beginning to the end of the curriculum. The aim of this study was to use students' performance on critical thinking assessments at five time points from the first to the fourth years to longitudinally assess their critical thinking development across the curriculum. In 2014-16, the performance of students in two successive graduating classes at one U.S. dental school was collected from five assignments designed to, among other things, assess critical thinking. Those assignments ranged from a case study in the Cariology I course in fall of the first year to an OSCE completed before graduation. Students were divided into four quartiles from lowest- to highest-achieving based on the first (baseline) assessment, and those quartiles were tracked to determine each student's progress over the four years. The results showed that, for both cohorts, students who ranked in the top quartile remained in the top of the class for all subsequent assessments. Also in both cohorts, the students who had the lowest scores on the initial assessment of critical thinking skills showed statistically significant improvements over time, increasing their scores by 9.4% (cohort 1, p<0.001) and 4.6% (cohort 2, p=0.003) in each consecutive assessment. These results suggest that implementing critical thinking assessments early in the curriculum can assist in predicting students' future performance on critical thinking assessments. Furthermore, a dental curriculum intentionally designed to promote critical thinking capacities can help students improve these skills over time, whatever their level at the beginning.
批判性思维和问题解决是学生学习口腔医学的两个最常期望的目标，但需要更深入地了解学生的批判性思维技能如何从课程开始到结束发展。本研究的目的是使用学生在第一年至第四年五个时间点的批判性思维评估表现，对整个课程中的批判性思维发展进行纵向评估。在 2014-16 年，从设计用于评估批判性思维等多项任务中收集了一所美国牙科学校的两个连续毕业班级的学生表现。这些作业从第一年秋季 cariology I 课程的案例研究到毕业前完成的 OSCE 不等。根据第一次（基线）评估，学生从成绩最低到最高分为四等份，跟踪这些等份以确定每个学生在四年中的进步。结果表明，对于两个队列，排名在前四分之一的学生在所有后续评估中都保持在班级的前四分之一。此外，在两个队列中，批判性思维技能初始评估得分最低的学生随着时间的推移表现出统计学上显著的提高，他们的分数分别提高了 9.4%（队列 1，p<0.001）和 4.6%（队列 2，p=0.003）在每次连续评估中。这些结果表明，在课程早期实施批判性思维评估可以帮助预测学生未来的批判性思维评估表现。此外，精心设计的促进批判性思维能力的口腔医学课程可以帮助学生随着时间的推移提高这些技能，无论他们的起点如何。
