title: Dental students' perception of their approaches to learning in a PBL programme.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To compare dental students' perceptions of their learning approaches between different years of a problem-based learning (PBL) programme. The hypothesis was that in a comparison between senior and junior students, the senior students would perceive themselves as having a higher level of deep learning approach and a lower level of surface learning approach than junior students would. This hypothesis was based on the fact that senior students have longer experience of a student-centred educational context, which is supposed to underpin student learning.
  
  
  METHODS
  Students of three cohorts (first year, third year and fifth year) of a PBL-based dental programme were asked to respond to a questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) developed to analyse students' learning approaches, that is deep approach and surface approach, using four subscales including deep strategy, surface strategy, deep motive and surface motive. The results of the three cohorts were compared using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). A P-value was set at <0.05 for statistical significance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The fifth-year students demonstrated a lower surface approach than the first-year students (P = 0.020). There was a significant decrease in surface strategy from the first to the fifth year (P = 0.003). No differences were found concerning deep approach or its subscales (deep strategy and deep motive) between the mean scores of the three cohorts.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results did not show the expected increased depth in learning approaches over the programme years.
authors.affiliation: Malmö University, Faculty of Odontology, Malmö, Sweden.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Haghparast
authors.affiliation: Malmö University, Faculty of Odontology, Malmö, Sweden.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ghorbani
authors.affiliation: Malmö University, Faculty of Odontology, Malmö, Sweden.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rohlin
mesh_terms: D004497:Education, Dental; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D018794:Problem-Based Learning; D013335:Students, Dental / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden
keywords: approaches to learning, problem-based learning; educational methods, dental students; student-centered learning