An assessment of the intellectual development of dental students

William Perry proposed that students' underlying reasoning structures can be assessed by eliciting their perceptions of their educational experiences. His research demonstrated that cognitive development occurs in stages and that not all students at the same educational level display the same level of intellectual development. He suggested that curricular interventions are necessary to enable students at lower stages to develop the cognitive structures that facilitate such higher level tasks as making critical judgments and evaluating alternatives. The present study determined the level of intellectual development of first-year, fourth-year, and postdoctoral dental students using the Perry model. Scores on the Measure of Epistemological Reflection (MER), used to indicate Perry level, suggest that these students, on average, are in the early multiplicity stage of development. Comparison of mean scores indicated significantly different Perry levels only between first- and fourth-year dental students.