Generic Skills for Education in Forensic Dentistry: Critical Thinking and Social Responsibility

Jorge Ortiz; Gabriel M. Fonseca; Mario Cantín; Enrique Huitzil & Joaquín Lucena

Summary

The competence-based training nowadays represents a strategy of teaching-learning, which supports the student to prepare him/her for better performance in the increasingly complex social environments through the development of their own skills. This model requires that educational institutions must offer curricular opportunities to develop explicit and transparent generic skills (GSs). The contextual challenges of forensic sciences in general, and of the legal and forensic dentistry in particular, have to determine a necessary adaptation of their conceptual, procedural and attitudinal contents to define their specific fields, holistic development of their areas of knowledge, the acquisition of skills and experience, orientation toward professional ethical values, and integration of all these contents. We present Critical Thinking and Social Responsibility as the more suitable GSs for a training focused on the legal and forensic dentistry. To take up the challenge to improve the quality, consistency and adequacy of not only of new future experts but also of the professional healthcare practitioner, and the significance of formalizing these aspects with the realities and prevailing paradigms today in some Spanish-speaking countries is discussed.

KEY WORDS: forensic dentistry, generic skills, teaching-learning process.

How to cite this article

ORTIZ, J.; FONSECA, G. M.; CANTÍN, M.; HUITZIL, E. & LUCENA, J. Generic skills for education in forensic dentistry: Critical thinking and social responsibility. Int. J. Odontostomat., 9(2):263-272, 2015.