The transition to self‐regulated learning for first‐year dental students: threshold concepts

Abstract

Research shows that when students arrive at university they are often not prepared for independent learning. New students enter a period of transition during their first year, which is often characterised by emotional destabilisation, as they move towards becoming more self-regulating in their new learning environment. In this small-scale qualitative study, data from an in-depth pair interview were triangulated with data from a questionnaire, to explore participants' experiences of self-regulated learning in the first year of a Dental Surgery course. Five threshold concepts relating to learning in transition emerged from the analysis of the data. These concepts were as follows: learning how to learn using a range of self-chosen sources instead of a single textbook, learning how to organise incoming information without guidance, distinguishing between main ideas and detail during revision, coping with a heavy workload, and knowing what to expect from examinations and coursework. Strong emotions (feeling confused, overwhelmed and scared) were associated with negotiating these threshold concepts. However, the study illustrates how the participants adopted new cognitive and metacognitive strategies to become more self-regulating over time. The findings of the study suggest that lecturers, tutors, study advisers and peers all have an important role to play in explicitly guiding first-year students as they grapple with troublesome threshold concepts relating to self-regulated learning. Furthermore, structural changes to the content-heavy, lecture-based curricula often associated with first-year Medical and Dental courses would help ease students' transition to independent learning, which may make an impact on student attainment.

What can dental education gain by understanding student experience of the curriculum?

“…While there is a body of the literature developing about threshold concepts in health practice education, there has not been any more work specific to the dental context. This kind of research finding gives important encouragement for dental educators to chart some of the other threshold concepts in dental education, and to build this threshold concept and any others that are identified into curricula, so that dental education can really help students master challenging aspects of practice.…”

“…The dental curriculum has been the subject of much interest by dental educators over the decades, and particularly since 2000, some innovative curriculum models have been proposed . More recently, this interest is accompanied by efforts to shift focus from curriculum models that are grounded in conceptual and skill‐based learning outcomes, to establish ways to educate dentists who are equipped for contemporary practice The ongoing nature of these calls in dental education invokes Whitehead and her colleagues’ metaphor of the “curriculum carousel” in medical education—and being “captive on the carousel.” They point out that while the desire for change is evident, frequently the same cultural issues and discourses repeatedly circle around efforts to reform education. Revealing historical and cultural influences on and within the educational environment is critical to knowing how to make effective change.…”

Becoming a dentist: faculty perceptions of student experiences with threshold concepts in a Canadian dental program

“… 9 , 10 Studies of threshold concepts in dental education have discussed them in general and attempted to define them specifically within dentristy. 11 - 14 Our study examined threshold concepts required to become successful novice dentists upon completion of a Canadian dentistry program from the faculty perspective.…”

Influence of Preparatory Workshops on Dental Students’ Academic Performance and Stress on Their First Operative Dentistry Psychomotor Exam

“…The average total GPA of the UFCD Class of 2018 was 3.65. However, the curricula of dental schools require more than just didactic knowledge; they also require exhibition of fine psychomotor and cognitive skills 4 . Students’ reliance on skills such as memory, perception, judgment, reasoning, and critical thinking that have resulted in previous academic accomplishments is usually of little consequence as they strive to master psychomotor skills 5 , 6 .…”