13
668 Journal of Dental Education Volume 78, Number 5 The Effects of Student Self-Assessment on Learning in Removable Prosthodontics Laboratory David W. Chambers, Ed.M., M.B.A., Ph.D.; Eugene E. LaBarre, D.D.S., M.S. Abstract: It has been consistently shown that there is a weak association between student self-assessment and faculty member as- sessment of student projects in preclinical technique laboratory settings and that students overestimate their performance. Greater overestimation is observed among students judged by faculty to be the weakest, and these students also use a wider range of scores. This study hypothesized that student self-assessment is a function of capacity to perform, accuracy of understanding grad- ing standards, and psychological factors. Further it hypothesized that learning, defined as change in performance, is a function of ability and self-assessment. Dental students at one U.S. dental school self-assessed their performance on two projects in a remov- able prosthodontics laboratory course separated by a six-month period. Faculty evaluations of these projects were used to deter- mine students’ understanding of the criteria for the projects, and a standardized psychological test was used to assess the learning orientation of the students. A statistical correction was made for the artifact of regression toward the mean. The study found that self-assessment was a better predictor of future learning under these circumstances than was evaluation by faculty members. Dr. Chambers is Professor of Dental Education, University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry; and Dr. LaBarre is Associate Professor of Integrated Reconstructive Dental Sciences, University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry. Direct correspondence to Dr. David W. Chambers, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, University of the Pacific, 2155 Webster Street, San Francisco, CA 94115; 415-929-6438; dchambers@pacific.edu. Keywords: technique learning, self-assessment, faculty consistency, dental education, dental students, assessment Submitted for publication 4/3/13; accepted 10/16/13 T he role self-assessment plays in student learn- ing is still poorly understood. The hope that students with a greater capacity for accurately judging the quality of their performance will im- prove more quickly on similar future tasks has often failed to be confirmed in research studies. Although there are a number of studies of this effect in the health science education literature, progress toward understanding this relationship has been slowed by not having a common concept of self-assessment or insight into how it works. A model will be proposed in this article that works with three variables as predictors of self- assessed performance: student ability to perform the type of task in question, student ability to assess performance against standards, and personality characteristics of students that cause them to filter their self-assessments. It is suggested that these three factors intervene between successive performances and bend the rate at which learning takes place. The general notion is that if students cannot reliably recognize discrepancies between their performance and the expected standard or if they distort such perceptions based on personal needs, their path to improvement will be slowed. This model will be tested in the context of a preclinical laboratory course in removable prosthodontics. Building a Model of the Effect of Self-Assessment on Learning In our model, self-assessment is an indepen- dent variable, and learning, defined as change in performance, is the dependent variable of interest. As will be explained in this section, straightforward correlational tests of this relationship are subject to methodological challenges. The relationship between experience or practice and subsequent learning is accepted. Self- assessment has generally been implicated as part of this process, 1-6 with some exceptions reported. 7-9 In studies in which students repeatedly self-assess themselves across similar activities over a curricu- lum, the gap between student and faculty evaluations diminishes. This is especially the case when the task is specific. Exceptions to this smooth improvement occur when students move to new contexts, e.g., from the laboratory to the clinical environment or from school to a clerkship. Student and faculty member ratings of the same performance are moderately associated, according to previous research. Projects that are judged better by

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  • 668 Journal of Dental Education Volume 78, Number 5

    The Effects of Student Self-Assessment on Learning in Removable Prosthodontics Laboratory David W. Chambers, Ed.M., M.B.A., Ph.D.; Eugene E. LaBarre, D.D.S., M.S. Abstract: It has been consistently shown that there is a weak association between student self-assessment and faculty member as-sessment of student projects in preclinical technique laboratory settings and that students overestimate their performance. Greater overestimation is observed among students judged by faculty to be the weakest, and these students also use a wider range of scores. This study hypothesized that student self-assessment is a function of capacity to perform, accuracy of understanding grad-ing standards, and psychological factors. Further it hypothesized that learning, defined as change in performance, is a function of ability and self-assessment. Dental students at one U.S. dental school self-assessed their performance on two projects in a remov-able prosthodontics laboratory course separated by a six-month period. Faculty evaluations of these projects were used to deter-mine students understanding of the criteria for the projects, and a standardized psychological test was used to assess the learning orientation of the students. A statistical correction was made for the artifact of regression toward the mean. The study found that self-assessment was a better predictor of future learning under these circumstances than was evaluation by faculty members.

    Dr. Chambers is Professor of Dental Education, University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry; and Dr. LaBarre is Associate Professor of Integrated Reconstructive Dental Sciences, University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry. Direct correspondence to Dr. David W. Chambers, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, University of the Pacific, 2155 Webster Street, San Francisco, CA 94115; 415-929-6438; [email protected].

    Keywords: technique learning, self-assessment, faculty consistency, dental education, dental students, assessment

    Submitted for publication 4/3/13; accepted 10/16/13

    The role self-assessment plays in student learn-ing is still poorly understood. The hope that students with a greater capacity for accurately judging the quality of their performance will im-prove more quickly on similar future tasks has often failed to be confirmed in research studies. Although there are a number of studies of this effect in the health science education literature, progress toward understanding this relationship has been slowed by not having a common concept of self-assessment or insight into how it works.

    A model will be proposed in this article that works with three variables as predictors of self-assessed performance: student ability to perform the type of task in question, student ability to assess performance against standards, and personality characteristics of students that cause them to filter their self-assessments. It is suggested that these three factors intervene between successive performances and bend the rate at which learning takes place. The general notion is that if students cannot reliably recognize discrepancies between their performance and the expected standard or if they distort such perceptions based on personal needs, their path to improvement will be slowed. This model will be tested in the context of a preclinical laboratory course in removable prosthodontics.

    Building a Model of the Effect of Self-Assessment on Learning

    In our model, self-assessment is an indepen-dent variable, and learning, defined as change in performance, is the dependent variable of interest. As will be explained in this section, straightforward correlational tests of this relationship are subject to methodological challenges.

    The relationship between experience or practice and subsequent learning is accepted. Self-assessment has generally been implicated as part of this process,1-6 with some exceptions reported.7-9 In studies in which students repeatedly self-assess themselves across similar activities over a curricu-lum, the gap between student and faculty evaluations diminishes. This is especially the case when the task is specific. Exceptions to this smooth improvement occur when students move to new contexts, e.g., from the laboratory to the clinical environment or from school to a clerkship.

    Student and faculty member ratings of the same performance are moderately associated, according to previous research. Projects that are judged better by

  • May 2014 Journal of Dental Education 669

    members as a proxy for this value, but other indexes are possible, such as average scores on several proj-ects or even grade point average (GPA) across all related laboratory courses. The term error in this equation does not mean mistakes. It stands for the influence of all factors that have not been measured. It is assumed that this error is random and not sys-tematically associated with any of the terms that are measured.

    The first measurement problem is that faculty assessments are fuzzy. A particular project may be judged differently by a faculty member on differ-ent occasions (intrarater inconsistency), or various faculty members may differ from each other on a specific occasion (interrater inconsistency). Reports in the literature on faculty consistency in evaluating dental laboratory projects range from 0.200 < r < 0.700.49-58 An r-value at the high end of this range would still mean that barely half of the true differ-ences reported for student performance are captured in faculty member assessments. Lack of consistency among evaluators used as the standard places a limit on what can be learned in any research study using such measurement. If there is no consistency at all in the standard, no conclusions can be drawn from the research. The relationship is given precisely by the formula that the agreement between a measure-ment of interest (student self-assessment) and the standard (faculty member assessments) can never be greater than the square root of the agreement within the standard.59 Using a blunt instrument masks what can be learned about how well people can use it. One reason why student self-assessments are not strongly associated with faculty member assessments of the same work is the inconsistency in faculty members judgments.

    The second hypothesis to be addressed in this project is whether accuracy of student self-assess-ment plays a role in learning. Learning is systematic improvement in performance, which in this case is hypothesized to be influenced by accuracy of student self-assessment. Those studies that have looked at this question before have taken the simple correla-tion between student self-assessed value on the first project and either self-assessed or faculty-assessed performance on the second project. These compari-sons are methodologically inadequate.

    Looking at learning as change in performance introduces a new measurement issue. Performance that is very good on the first occasion will tend on average to be closer to the mean on a subsequent per-formance, and performance that appears especially

    faculty members are also judged better by students. Consistency coefficients have been reported from as low as r=0.100 to as high as r=0.850, but the center of gravity in such associations is in the range of 0.250 < r < 0.400.10-17 Students demonstrate a consistent bias in their favor when compared with faculty member ratings.18-21 When peer ratings are included in the mix, peer ratings rank in favorability between faculty member and self-ratings.14,17,22-27

    It has frequently been found that the over-assessment bias is stronger for students who perform poorly than for those who perform well.6,28-35 Such an effect requires an explanation beyond saying that it is a deficient understanding of the criteria on students parts. Presumably a student with a faulty grasp of standards would be equally likely to underestimate or overestimate the quality of a work product. It is necessary to distinguish between the direction of the poor self-assessment and the absolute magnitude of the error.

    Some personality filter could be assumed to be one factor in a performance-by-assessment in-teraction. There are studies showing that students modify self-assessments for personal psychologi-cal reasons.36-39 One line of reasoning suggests that students self-handicap in circumstances where they know they will be judged by authorities.40-44 This is a protective behavior since overconfidence both increases risks for disappointment and is re-garded as professionally unseemly. It has also been suggested that filtering involves stable personality characteristics that vary across individuals.45-48 Tory Higginss work in achievement orientation47,48 is such an example. His research team has demonstrated the existence of two stable personality constructs that guide performance. Prevention Orientation character-izes individuals with a life habit of pursuing success by avoiding errors. The other approachPromotion Orientationis to seek success in life by looking for opportunities to take risks for rewards.

    Hypotheses The expectations suggested by the literature on

    student self-assessment on future performance can be summarized in the following hypothesis:

    Self-Assessment = Capacity for Performance + Accuracy of Understanding the Standards + Psychological Characteristics + error

    Capacity for performance must be estimated. It is traditional to accept assessments made by faculty

  • 670 Journal of Dental Education Volume 78, Number 5

    grinding-in minimizes embrasures, tooth length and overlap, group function, no balancing or protrusive prematurities, anatomy restored, wax bulk appropri-ate, smooth, pre-formed palate uniform, gingival and rugae contours reproduced, and teeth clean and ready to process. In most cases, the overall score was the sum of the scores for individual criteriabut not always. Both students and faculty members freely overrode the specific criteria, using half points and approximating the overall score.

    The denture set-up and immediate denture projects were self-assessed by students on the day they were completed and were then marked by both a single, randomly assigned faculty member and by the course director. Overall point scores were con-verted to a 100-point scale (percentage) to facilitate comparison between the two projects. Students were told that their self-assessments would not factor in their course grade, and faculty members did not have access to the students self-assessments. Directly after turning in the immediate denture in winter quarter, students were randomly assigned to evaluate another students immediate denture project using the same criteria they had just used for self-assessment and which faculty members would use for evaluating the projects. The peer assessments were anonymous.

    Differences between overall faculty and student assessments of the same project were expressed in two forms. S-F Gap was the term given to dif-ference in overall score obtained by subtracting the faculty member score from the student score. A positive gap score indicated cases in which students rated their work more favorably than did faculty members. An average gap score of 0.0 would indicate that students and faculty members, on average, as-signed the same score to each case. But an average agreement could be achieved by combining widely optimistic students appraisals with ones that were overly modest. Thus an S-F Absolute Gap score was also calculated, using only the absolute value of the differences. Large values on this variable signify that the student was wide of the mark, without regard to over- or underestimating the score.

    Information was gathered on faculty calibration in two ways. As part of the marking of each project, faculty members were instructed to assess several randomly chosen projects that had been previously marked by other faculty members. These measure-ments are referred to as Field Consistency Ratings. Additionally, nine examples from the immediate denture project were chosen by the course director

    poor will generally improve. This is not a phenom-enon of learning: it is a law of statistics that applies wherever r < 1.00. This is known as regression toward the mean. Frequently, reports in the literature that remedial programs for poorly performing students showed improvement on subsequent testing are noth-ing more than a statistical artifact. The magnitude of the shrinkage toward the middle increases as the consistency of the evaluations declines.

    The second hypothesis in this study is ex-pressed here in operational terms. The inclusion of an Ability term is used to manage the measurement problem posed by regression toward the mean:

    Learning = Ability + Accuracy of Self-Assessment + error

    Materials and Methods This project was approved by the Institutional

    Review Board at the University of the Pacific in the expedited category, Protocol #10-33.4. The dataset for this investigation was based on two laboratory projects in the preclinical removable prosthodontics course at the University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry. In 2011-12, 135 D.D.S. students took this course in their second year of the three-year program, and twenty-two International Dental Studies students took the course together with the D.D.S. students in the first year of their two-year program. Data were also gathered from ten faculty members who served as laboratory instructors and participated in the grading sessions.

    Two practical projects were used. A denture set-up was performed at the end of summer quarter. This project was evaluated on seven criteria using a 0-to-3 scale, with a maximum summary score of 20. The criteria for this project included anterior ar-rangement, occlusal placement, ridge relationship, centric, wax-up, articulator settings, and readiness for processing. At the end of winter quarter (six months later), an immediate denture was fabricated during multiple laboratory sessions. The maximum point value was 25, and eighteen dimensions were appraised on the evaluation sheet, with 0 as the lowest possible score and either 1 or 2 as the highest. The cri-teria considered for the immediate denture included casts centered in articulator, settings and incisal guide table, vertical dimension, simulate natural position, tooth length, stable centric, occlusion, minimum one stop per tooth, buccal cusp corridor, axial orientation,

  • May 2014 Journal of Dental Education 671

    r=0.783 for Prevention Orientation and r=0.641 for Promotion Orientation. The scores for the two ori-entations were uncorrelated (r=0.100).

    ResultsThe three measures of faculty consistency

    Field Consistency, Test Case Consistency, and con-sistency between faculty members and the course directorwere all modest: r=0.575, 0.565, and 0.577.

    Means, Standard Deviations, and Basic Correlations

    The basic values and relationships among the variables measured in this study are shown in Table 1. There are five, color-coded groups of measures, each having a structure that tells a story. The pattern of responses for student and faculty ratings on the denture set-up project in summer quarter is high-lighted in green in the upper left. It is apparent that students gave themselves slightly higher marks than did faculty members (82.20 vs. 80.05, p=0.05). (The S-F Gap score shows that students overestimated their scores by 4 percentage points. The reason this number is greater than the difference between 82.20 and 80.05 is that the S-F Gap score is calculated only for cases where there were both a student and a faculty score for each case. Some projects were not self-assessed during this quarter.) The Absolute Gap value is larger than the S-F Gap because overesti-mates and underestimates in the S-F Gap measure are not allowed to cancel out in the absolute measure. The standard deviations are large. There is only a weak r=0.262 (but still significant at p

  • 672 Journal of Dental Education Volume 78, Number 5

    between performance on the two projects as judged by faculty members was more modest, but still sig-nificant (r=0.313, p

  • May 2014 Journal of Dental Education 673

    Tabl

    e 1.

    Mea

    ns, s

    tand

    ard

    devi

    atio

    ns, a

    nd c

    orre

    lati

    ons

    amon

    g va

    riab

    les

    in a

    stu

    dy o

    f fac

    ulty

    sco

    res

    and

    stud

    ent

    self-

    asse

    ssm

    ent

    and

    peer

    ass

    essm

    ent

    on a

    den

    ture

    set

    -up

    and

    imm

    edia

    te d

    entu

    re p

    roje

    ct (

    n=15

    0 ex

    cept

    whe

    re t

    here

    are

    mis

    sing

    dat

    a)

    2

    3 4

    5 6

    7 8

    9 10

    11

    12

    13

    14

    15

    16

    17

    18

    M

    ean

    SD

    Cor

    rela

    tion

    Sum

    mer

    (de

    ntur

    e se

    t-up

    )

    1. S

    tude

    nt s

    core

    82

    .20

    10.0

    7 .2

    62

    .605

    .1

    92

    .541

    .0

    35

    .445

    -.

    168

    .054

    .1

    40

    -.06

    0 .0

    29

    .212

    -.

    203

    -.13

    5 -.

    360

    .139

    .0

    68

    2. F

    acul

    ty s

    core

    80

    .05

    10.7

    5

    -.61

    0 -.

    471

    .231

    .3

    13

    -.05

    9 -.

    230

    -.02

    2 -.

    025

    .003

    .0

    68

    .870

    -.

    741

    .294

    .0

    21

    .319

    .3

    62

    3. S

    -F G

    ap

    4.01

    12

    .19

    .546

    .2

    83

    -.19

    1 .4

    33

    .086

    .0

    68

    .196

    -.

    076

    -.05

    9 -.

    531

    .421

    -.

    096

    .287

    -.

    105

    -.20

    9

    4. S

    -F A

    bsol

    ute

    9.84

    8.

    20

    .1

    88

    -.12

    7 .2

    90

    .157

    -.

    027

    .128

    -.

    121

    -.18

    3 -.

    397

    .323

    -.

    183

    .019

    -.

    018

    -.10

    3

    Win

    ter

    (im

    med

    iate

    den

    ture

    )

    5. S

    tude

    nt s

    core

    86

    .70

    8.81

    .4

    07

    .604

    -.

    232

    .003

    .1

    03

    -.07

    9 -.

    029

    .356

    .0

    44

    .108

    .1

    07

    .192

    .1

    73

    6. F

    acul

    ty s

    core

    86

    .55

    8.01

    -.48

    3 -.

    185

    .217

    -.

    032

    .198

    -.

    137

    .741

    .4

    06

    .127

    .0

    21

    .212

    .2

    60

    7. S

    -F G

    ap

    0.10

    9.

    19

    -.06

    0 -.

    234

    .135

    -.

    294

    .055

    -.

    308

    -.30

    9 .0

    02

    .092

    -.

    003

    -.06

    5

    8. S

    -F A

    bsol

    ute

    6.91

    5.

    98

    -.

    049

    .042

    -.

    072

    .066

    -.

    260

    .087

    -.

    241

    -.01

    6 -.

    195

    -.14

    9

    Peer

    rat

    ing

    (im

    med

    iate

    den

    ture

    )

    9. S

    tude

    nt s

    core

    87

    .31

    8.80

    .1

    84

    .658

    .0

    41

    .106

    .1

    87

    -.00

    7 .0

    31

    -.01

    0 .0

    07 1

    0. F

    acul

    ty s

    core

    84

    .03

    8.43

    -.61

    9 -.

    337

    -.04

    7 -.

    015

    -.08

    3 .1

    76

    -.08

    4 -.

    156

    11.

    S-F

    Gap

    3.

    28

    11.0

    1

    .2

    90

    .118

    .1

    56

    .070

    -.

    132

    .058

    .1

    28 1

    2. S

    -F A

    bsol

    ute

    9.12

    6.

    95

    -.

    010

    -.14

    3 .1

    90

    -.12

    9 .0

    52

    .078

    Ove

    rall

    perf

    orm

    ance

    13.

    Abi

    lity

    83.5

    7 7.

    58

    -.31

    2 .2

    83

    .033

    .3

    37

    .366

    14.

    Lea

    rnin

    g 6.

    55

    11.1

    3

    -.18

    4 .0

    04

    -.16

    0 -.

    172

    Prom

    otio

    n or

    ient

    atio

    n in

    vent

    ory

    15.

    Pro

    mot

    ion

    23.0

    5 3.

    22

    .100

    .2

    52

    .255

    16.

    Pre

    vent

    ion

    18.0

    1 3.

    60

    .0

    07

    -.03

    2

    Lab/

    clin

    ic G

    PA in

    all

    cour

    ses

    17.

    Sum

    mer

    3.

    10

    .39

    .895

    18.

    Win

    ter

    3.14

    .3

    7

    Not

    e: G

    reen

    sho

    ws

    patte

    rn o

    f res

    pons

    es fo

    r st

    uden

    t and

    facu

    lty r

    atin

    gs o

    n th

    e de

    ntur

    e se

    t-up

    pro

    ject

    in s

    umm

    er q

    uart

    er a

    nd s

    ix m

    onth

    s la

    ter

    in th

    e ra

    tings

    of t

    he im

    med

    iate

    den

    ture

    pro

    ject

    an

    d pe

    er r

    atin

    gs. R

    ed s

    how

    s as

    soci

    atio

    ns b

    etw

    een

    scor

    es a

    cros

    s th

    e tw

    o pr

    ojec

    ts. P

    urpl

    e sh

    ows

    corr

    elat

    ions

    invo

    lvin

    g av

    erag

    e sc

    ores

    acr

    oss

    both

    pro

    ject

    s an

    d ga

    in in

    sco

    res

    betw

    een

    proj

    -ec

    ts. B

    lue

    show

    s re

    latio

    nshi

    ps in

    volv

    ing

    the

    pers

    onal

    ity in

    vent

    ory

    scal

    es P

    rom

    otio

    n O

    rien

    tatio

    n an

    d Pr

    even

    tion

    Ori

    enta

    tion.

  • 674 Journal of Dental Education Volume 78, Number 5

    highest and the twelve who scored lowest on the first project (denture set-up) are shown. All students in the bottom group improved on the immediate denture projectsome dramatically so. Three-quarters of the students in the top group declined in performance on the second project. The effect of regression toward the mean was not the same magnitude for initial high and low performers.

    The columns containing blue numbers in Table 1 show relationships involving the personality inven-tory scales Promotion Orientation and Prevention Orientation. Generally, associations involving these traits and other characteristics of the study were small. Students reporting an orientation toward seek-ing success scored higher (in the facultys opinion) on both projects. Those oriented toward avoiding mistakes were those who gave themselves low scores on the denture set-up (r=-0.360, p

  • May 2014 Journal of Dental Education 675

    Both equations were significant, with R-values of 0.631 in the first case and 0.629 in the second. Each factor on the right-hand side of the equation entered the equation at the p

  • 676 Journal of Dental Education Volume 78, Number 5

    the technical aspects of the dental curriculum. The small but significant correlation between scores on the Promotion Orientation of the Higgins instrument and lab/clinic GPA is direct confirmation of this fact. There was no consistent evidence for an everyone above the average effect or for a handicapping ef-fect. Student self-assessments were not lower than faculty member assessments, and students rated their colleagues work slightly more favorably than their own. Students did not appear to be manipulating self-assessments as a means of gaming the system. The small contribution from the Prevention Orientation scale on the Higgins instrument suggests a cautionary strategy on the part of some students, but personality explanations of student technique work are tenuous at best. Ross and Nisbetts book summarizes the social psychological literature in this field and con-cludes that correlations between personality traits and specific performance typically range between 0.100 < r < 0.300 across an extremely wide range of cases.61,62 Further compounding the low value of personality explanations is the availability of an almost endless assortment of mostly overlapping personality constructs.

    Before looking explicitly at the association between faculty member and student assessments, it should be recalled that a moderate consistency among faculty members themselves places a restriction on any conclusions that can be drawn from such a study. By three methods, consistency among faculty mem-bers was measured at about r=0.570. This means that associations between faculty member and student self-assessments were constrained. Mathematically, none could be greater than r=0.75. Faculty marks were hardly a gold standard.

    The more interesting question is the one raised in Hypothesis 2 concerning the role of self-assessment in learning. A significant association was found between student self-assessment and improve-ment from the first to the second project. This was only observed, however, once the masking effect of regression toward the mean had been removed statistically. In the straightforward test of predicting faculty member evaluations of performance on the second project from both faculty assessment and student assessment of the first project, both groups got it wrong. The correlations were small and in the opposite direction, and the faculty members predic-tions were considerably worse. Correcting for regres-sion by first removing the effects of student GPA or General Capacity uncovered positive predictions. The faculty members corrected predictive associa-

    entering at p

  • May 2014 Journal of Dental Education 677

    about both the product and the process, thus about likely future performance. The best question, how-ever, is not how good do you think the product is? but tell me how you achieved this result and what you might do differently in the future.

    Social psychology researchers have made a case that we should expect self-assessment to exceed assessments made by those who see from a distance. Self-assessments are normally made based on private information that might be relevant; are based on longer consideration and of choices that were made in sequential activities; conform to categories that are useful to the self-assessor; and take into account motivation, attention, and other factors.64,65

    The scattergram picture in Figure 3 showing overestimations by students generally, greater over-estimation by students when faculty members think they are relatively poor performers, and the wider spread of self-assessment at the low performance end is typical of the literature on student self-assessment. If the interpretation above is sound, this pattern is not grounds for cynicism, but rather reflects the potential of students to both learn from reflection and more accurately predict learning than do faculty members.

    Reflection in Practice The classic exploration of learning to become a

    professional is the work of Donald Schn at MIT.66,67 Schn studied architects, musicians, city planners, and counseling psychologists and proposed that professionals combine art and science in practice, dealing with situations of uncertainty, instability, and uniqueness where commonly accepted standards of practice are prevalent among colleagues. Schn was a sometimes biting critic of the pedantry and dysfunc-tional objectivity of formal professional education and believed instead in the practicumlearning by doing in a varied but controlled environment under the care of a coach.

    Schn is best known for his distinction between reflection in practice and reflection on practice. The former takes place during practice and is the application of heuristics, techniques, and standards to guide performance and to signal when a task has been completed or should be modified. Reflection on practice occurs once performance stops. It is retrospective and may include review of the process, the assumptions that were in play, and the context. It helps consolidate the learning from reflection in practice. There are many practice occasions where one or the other or neither type of reflection occurs.

    tion was r=0.145. Predicting faculty evaluation of the second project from students self-assessments was significantly better (r=0.372, p=0.05 for difference in correlations). It is apparent that students knew something useful about their performance on labora-tory projects that the faculty members did not know.

    The published research most similar to this study was reported by Donald Curtis et al. in 2008 in this journal.63 That study also involved student and faculty assessments of denture set-up labora-tory project on two occasions. Curtis et al.s findings were almost identical with ours (realizing that they measured agreement and we measured disagreement so signs for correlations are reversed), but the conclu-sions differed. Curtis et al. showed that many of their correlations were significantly different from zero, but not that they were different from each other. They also made no correction for regression. The most comparable comparison between the two studies is Curtis et al.s report that greater agreement between students and faculty members on the first project cor-related r=-0.250 with improvement in performance. In other words, Curtis et al. and we both showed that students who appear to be poor judges of their first efforts improved the most when asked to reflect on what they had done and to try again.

    What Do Students Know About Their Performance?

    In the basic sense, students have some feeling for whether the project they completed reflects their true capability, and faculty members do not know this if they only evaluate the product without knowing how it was produced. In the extreme case, a student may turn in a perfect take-home laboratory project and receive a mistakenly high mark because the work was done by an upper classmate or by the students parents who are dentists. In the more benign case, a student might make a mistake on an early step in the procedure, recognize it, and recover as much as possible, but still have a flawed project because of an early wrong turn. Such a student might actually know more after this experience than a clueless classmate who accidentally did the right thing at the beginning. If we had full information, we would bet on the future performance of the first not the second student. Faculty members who evaluate only the product have less usable information about students abilities than the students do. Asking students to self-evaluate their products may provide them with an opportunity to better inform the faculty members

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    4. Eva KW, Regehr G. Knowing when to look it up: a new conception of self-assessment ability. Acad Med 2007;82(10):S81-4.

    5. Flannelly LT. Using feedback to reduce students judgment bias on test questions. J Nurs Educ 2001;40(1):10-6.

    6. Itching J, Cassidy S, Eachus P, Hogg P. Creating and validating self-efficacy scales for students. Radio Technol 2011;83(1):10-9.

    7. Miller TM, Geraci L. Unskilled but aware: reinterpreting overconfidence in low-performing students. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 2011;37(2):502-6.

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    11. Jahan F, Sadaf S, Bhanji S, et al. Clinical skills assess-ment: comparison of student and examiner assessment in an objective structured clinical examination. Educ Health (Abingdon) 2011;24(2):421.

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    Experts are least likely to reflect. There are two journals that publish articles based on this approach to understanding professional learning: Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Per-spectives (first published in 1999) and Journal of Natural Inquiry and Reflective Practice (first pub-lished nine years earlier).

    In a former study of Class II cavity prepara-tions, students who had just finished their preclinical laboratory course in operative density, those who were a few weeks shy of graduation, and faculty members were videotaped.68 The type of motions, the length of each episode, and their sequence were categorized. Among other findings, it was noticed that beginners inserted a distinct evaluation activity in the transitions between each step, while experts used fewer steps (they did not use the same process) and performed their evaluations at the same time they were producing the product. That study would be consistent with the interpretation that, with ex-perience or higher skill level, reflection on practice becomes folded into reflection in practice.

    In the study reported here, students very likely engaged in reflection in practice and were required by the research design also to reflect on their practice. Presumably, effects of reflection in practice were incorporated by students into their project by the end of the testing period and prior to the self-assessment activity. Faculty members had no access to either type of student reflection. Our research question is whether there is a stable reflective self-assessment activity that promotes future performance. Alterna-tively expressed, can students benefit from critiquing their own performance in ways that lead to improved future performance? Our study suggests that this may be the case. A promising means for improving learn-ing in preclinical laboratory performance would be for faculty members to work collaboratively at the bench with students as they reflect on their practice.

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