Teaching recognition skills to improve products.
All 86 first year dental students in a Conservative Restorations course completed five sets of instructional tasks. Tasks followed a discrimination learning paradigm, a sequence based on the principal that recognition skills are a prerequisite for production skills. Recognition skill measures and production quality measures were collected for pre- and post-test Class 1 amalgam preparations. Significant improvement was found in three of the five recognition skill measures and in quality of production. Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that a measure of student agreement with faculty evaluations accounted for 46.3 percent of the variance in post-test production scores whereas traditional admissions measures accounted for less than 4 percent of the variance. Additionally, students who improved recognition skill showed a corresponding improvement in products. The paradigmatic teaching model appears to be valid for Class 1 cavity preparations.
Knight
G W
GW
Department of Cariology and General Dentistry, School of Dentistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-1078.
Guenzel
P J
PJ
Fitzgerald
M
M
D003723:Dental Amalgam; D003793:Dental Restoration, Permanent / Q000592:standards; D003814:Dentistry, Operative / Q000193:education* / Q000592:standards; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004497:Education, Dental; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*
D003723:Dental Amalgam