Changing the curriculum and the role of the teacher and the students in the classroom--an analysis of the process of reforming a course in oral microbiology.

In 2005, a new curriculum was introduced at the School of Dentistry at the University of Copenhagen. Amongst many changes, the pedagogical concept behind theoretical teaching was changed. The main emphasis was previously on lectures and teacher controlled teaching, but the emphasis has now shifted to a more dialogue-based teaching style for smaller groups where the students became much more active. Thus, the learning principle was now given the pride of place. The present article focuses on the pedagogical reorganisation of the course in oral microbiology where, based on interviews with students and teachers, an evaluation is made regarding how the changes were implemented and developed. Despite the fact that the students themselves wanted to abandon the lecture-based teaching style, there was great dissatisfaction with the new dialogue-based teaching style as the students did not think that it was possible for them to take responsibility for their learning. They would much rather listen to teachers who know the material. Initially, the teachers were very surprised by the negative attitude of the students and had to change the teaching style to more traditional teaching in groups whilst still maintaining the dialogue principle to a certain degree. In this article, the need to enter into a teaching contract between students and teachers prior to introducing new pedagogical principles is discussed.