Student and Faculty Views of an Occupation: A Study of Changing Student Perceptions of Dentistry.

This paper is the report of a research project that focused on the professional socialization of dental students in the context of interaction with faculty, other students, the structured curriculum, and patients. Four sets of questions regarding the advantages of dentistry, the disadvantages of dentistry, the characteristics of the dental profession, and the characteristics of a good dentist were issued to the dental students 3 times in a year and once to their professors. By comparing student median response categories with the faculty median, the extent of professionalism of the students was obtained. The results show that student opinion coincided with faculty belief on only one question in the set dealing with the advantages of dentistry. For the set dealing with the disadvantages, however, student and faculty response were in total agreement as was the result of the set of questions regarding the characteristics of the dental profession. The final set of questions about the characteristics of a good dentist found the students and faculty to be in almost total agreement. From these results, it would appear that the significant factors involved in the acquisition of beliefs about the profession are related to experiences prior to entrance into dental school. (Author/HS)