The aim of this study was to assess whether clinical reasoning and factual knowledge questions used in team-based learning (TBL) enhanced dental students' performance in esthetic dentistry. Ninety-seven third-year dental students enrolled in esthetic dentistry in a dental school in Korea in 2018 were assigned to 16 teams consisting of five or six students each. A four-step TBL sequence (pre-study, readiness assurance test, appeal/feedback, and final test) was designed to examine how clinical reasoning and knowledge questions affected academically high- and low-achieving students. The analysis was conducted with 87 students' data because ten students failed to answer some questions. The results showed that team performance in TBL was consistently better than individual performance. The TBL sessions enhanced students' critical thinking skills, though it did not affect their knowledge acquisition. The clinical reasoning questions especially benefited the academically low-achieving students. Overall, TBL was an effective method for teaching these dental students using small-group learning in esthetic dentistry. Team-based cooperative learning facilitated a deeper understanding of esthetic dentistry because students were motivated to think critically and solve problems rather than simply memorize factual knowledge.
Keywords: clinical skills; critical thinking; dental education; educational methodology; esthetic dentistry; team-based learning.
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