Zahra Naimie

Soft skills and dental education

Soft skills and hard skills are essential in the practice of dentistry. While hard skills deal with technical proficiency, soft skills relate to a personal values and interpersonal skills that determine a persons ability to fit in a particular situation. These skills contribute to the success of organisations that deal face-to-face with clients. Effective soft skills benefit the dental practice. However, the teaching of soft skills remains a challenge to dental schools. This paper discusses the different soft skills, how they are taught and assessed and the issues that need to be addressed in their teaching and assessment. The use of the module by the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya for development of soft skills for institutions of higher learning introduced by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia.

Perceptions of Dental Undergraduates and Their Lecturers on Graduates’ Attributes

The study aims to explore the perceptions of students and lecturers on graduate attributes, to identify the possibility of existing link between the students’ and lecturers’ perceptions and also to summarise a list of desirable graduate attributes for dentistry course based on the findings. The subject were the third (n = 62), fourth (n = 67) and fifth (n = 63) year University of Malaya (UM) dental undergraduates and their lecturers (n = 31) from all departments. A purposive sampling was utilised to conduct this research. Data was gathered using a questionnaire which consist of five components namely skills, attitudes, life-long learning, teamwork and clinical competency. Findings indicated that there was no significant difference of perceptions between the students across the different clinical years but a significant difference was observed between lecturers’ and students’ perceptions in terms of skills, attitudes, lifelong learning and clinical competency (p 0.05). A list of desirable graduate attributes has been compiled and suggested based on the findings of the current study.

Perception of Students on the Role of Culture Familiarity in the TOEFL Test and Challenges in Teaching

The purpose of this paper is to delve into the perception of students and teachers of the role that culture familiarity plays in the TOEFL test. According to past studies, the TOEFL test poses some problems. One of these problems that this paper intends to highlight is the cultural content and its role in the test. This paper will focus on the two main poles; the TOEFL test as a high-stake test and the culture challenges faced by students and teachers in the test. Some past studies try to prove that TOEFL is not culture-biased, while some others point to the fact that it might be and that may pose a potential threat to the validity and reliability of the test scores. Accordingly, the paper will review most of the past studies that involve the culture content in TOEFL as well as the students’ perception about the culture. In addition to this, the paper will highlight some of the pedagogy difficulties caused by the nature of the test.