A comparative study of teaching methodology in two Boston elementary schools

PLEASE NOTE: This work is protected by copyright. Downloading is restricted to the BU community: please click Download and log in with a valid BU account to access. If you are the author of this work and would like to make it publicly available, please contact open-help@bu.edu.Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University, Henry M. Goldman School of Graduate Dentistry, 1976 (Dental Public Health)Bibliography : leaves 38-40.A comparative study of dental health education techniques was designed for two elementary schools located in the South End of Boston. One approach used was teaching dental health and oral hygiene techniques to a classroom of students in the traditional lecture format. The alternative teaching method was one of small group interaction with behavior modification used to encourage proper oral hygiene habits. The hypothesis of this study was that the children participating in the alternative method of dental health education would lower their plaque levels to a greater degree, as measured by the Oral Hygiene Index--Simplified score, than those students participating in the traditional approach to dental health education. The t test for the difference in means showed a significant reduction in plaque levels at the .01 level in the small group/behavior modification school; whereas, in the traditional school there was a 0.5 level of significance in the reduction of plaque. It appears from this study that dental health education provided in an elementary school setting will be beneficial to the improvement of the oral hygiene of the child. Individualized oral hygiene instruction utilizing a reward mechanism promotes a greater degree of plaque reduction than the traditional approach to dental health education