Dental Teachers’ Perceptions about Their Roles as Teacher

Teaching is considered as one of the most important aspects of the student learning process. Harden and Crosby identified 12 roles of medical teachers under the headings information provider, role model, facilitator, examiner, planner and resource developer. The present study identifies the dental teachers’ perspective, current personal commitment and preferred future commitment to 12 roles of medical teacher. Methods: ‘Twelve Roles of Medical Teacher’ questionnaire was administered to the dental teachers of a private dental institution at Nagpur, India (N= 68), and their self-reported responses were collected.

Dental teachers strongly perceived the importance of their roles as information provider in clinical setting, on the job role model and classroom teaching. They perceived that they were strongly committed to these roles and prefer the same in future.

The teachers perceived that these 12 roles have considerable importance to teaching programme. They preferred to have considerable future commitment to these roles. However, their present commitment was comparatively less. With changing trends in health science education, identifying teachers’ perception about their roles could be considered in allocation of teaching responsibilities and planning staff development programmes. It would facilitate change in adopting new approaches in education process to provide high quality teaching and promote student learning.