Abstract

NACASATO, Rayssa Pereira; BOMFIM, Rafael Aiello  and  DE-CARLI, Alessandro Diogo. Ethical and moral development: aspects relating to professional training in Dentistry. RGO, Rev. gaúch. odontol. (Online) [online]. 2016, vol.64, n.1, pp. 43-49. ISSN 1981-8637.

Objective To assess the progression of a public university's dental students through stages of moral development during the course. Methods A cross-sectional study with 115 students (from the 1st to the 7th semester), to whom the "Opiniões sobre problemas sociais" test, adapted and translated to the Portuguese language, was applied. Results The collected answers were charted according to the test manual's guidelines and data were analyzed by the GraphPad Prism software 6.0 and STATA v.13. Principal morality score values, expressed as a P value (%), were 40.26%; 39.32%; 36.45% and 36.27% for the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th semesters, respectively, with no statistically significant difference between the groups (ANOVA, p = 0.52). Conclusion Students' degrees of morality did not vary significantly among the semesters compared, indicating the need for a reorientation of teachinglearning practices that takes the potential of transformative learning into account.

Keywords : Ethics.; Curriculum.; Higher education.; Morals.; Schools..