Teaching style beliefs among U.S. and Israeli faculty

The purpose of this study was to determine if self-reported teaching style beliefs were different among faculty at a U.S. and an Israeli dental school. Teacher-centered practices refer to beliefs that the teacher holds the subject matter expertise and students are generally passive learners who must be told what to think. Student-centered practices refer to beliefs that students must learn how to construct their own understanding. Student-centered teaching is directed towards enabling students to think about complex issues. Twenty-seven of fifty-eight (47.37 percent) faculty at a dental school in the United States and thirty of thirty-four (88 percent) Israeli dental faculty teaching in basic science courses completed the Teaching Behavior Preferences Survey (TBPS). The TBPS is a thirty-item instrument that measures two domains of teaching styles--teacher-centered (TC) and student-centered (SC)--and four subdomains: methods of instruction (MI), classroom milieu (CM), use of questions (UQ), and use of assessment (UA). Findings revealed that there were no significant differences in student-centered and teacher-centered teaching practices and methods of instruction, classroom milieu, and use of questions. There was a significant difference between the U.S. and Israeli groups in their reported use of assessment. The U.S. faculty reported a greater preference for student-centered assessment practices than did the Israeli faculty.