Review of competency-based education in dentistry.

Dental education was previously structured in such a way that students largely learned what teachers chose to teach them. The aim was to produce a dentist with prescribed packages of knowledge upon graduation. This traditional approach was mainly disciplined-based. Increasingly, the current trend is towards competency-based education, which provides a sequence of defined learning experiences to students so that on graduation they may be considered as qualified beginners in dental practice. The adoption of competency-based learning requires the re-assessment and revision of old curricula, but there remains some common ground between traditional and competency-based education.