Changing Attitudes About Elementary School Dental Health Education: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The American Association of Dental Schools requires dental hygiene (DH) programs to graduate students who meet entry-level health competency in promotion and disease prevention and community involvement. Competencies include promotion of the values of oral health to the public and organizations within and outside the profession. Gaining a better understanding of the attitudes of first-year DH students toward oral health presentations in the community will aid DH educators in establish teaching strategies to formulate positive attitudes of students. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Bandura (1977), this research has been conducted to determine teaching strategies that strengthen self-efficacy in order to promote a perceived value of DH students in providing health education to the community. The purpose of this study was to measure changes in attitudes of DH students toward providing a dental health presentation to elementary school students after a 10-week undergraduate course in health education. The teaching strategies include lecture, online and class discussion, demonstration and activities, small group assignments, presentation to peers, and written and verbal reflection. An 8 question pre-survey and post-survey was distributed to a convenience sample of 30 female first-year DH students. The pre-survey indicated that 100% of the students felt that there was a need for dental professionals to provide oral health education in the schools, while 67% were somewhat likely to do a dental health presentation once working independently. In addition, this will be the first presentation in front of an elementary classroom for 77% of the students, and 73% were somewhat anxious about presenting. Comments obtained during online and class discussion indicated an increased self-efficacy toward providing oral health presentations.