Exploring mindfulness and artworks/drawings to predict dental students' performance

To explore and assess self-reported trait mindfulness and artwork/drawings as tools to predict students' performance.

This longitudinal study explored whether year 2 dental students' artwork/drawings produced during the first week of a preclinical endodontics course and Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) scores could be used as a predictor of performance (grades/rank) at the end of the course. A convergent design of mixed methods approaches was used to integrate the quantitative and qualitative datasets. Qualitative analysis consisted of a multilayered process of thematic analysis of artwork/drawings that was used to generate codes, categories, and themes-according to lower and higher students' grades. Quantitative analysis consisted of statistical correlation between mindfulness scores and final grades. Findings were independently analyzed and further merged to answer our research question.

The bivariate analysis found nonsignificant relationship between students' grades/rank and mindfulness scores: Pearson's correlation r = -0.097 (p = 0.578) and Spearman's correlation rho = 0.120 (p = 0.494). Codes, categories, and themes resulting from graphical data collected from the artwork/drawings strongly suggested that the higher students' grades group depicted solutions to deal with negative feelings/emotions and presented traits of confidence to reach goals. Artworks produced from students with lower grades left questions, such as in relation to competency in dentistry, unanswered, but at the same time, they seemed to perceive everything as emotion related. Upon merging the findings, we recognized more image components suggestive of positive feelings exuding from the artworks/drawings of higher grades group; but an increase in mindfulness was not associated with increase (or decrease) in final grade.

Feelings/emotions represented in the artwork/drawings produced in the beginning of the course predicted students' performance at the end of the course; however, self-reported trait mindfulness was not correlated with performance.