Analysis of liberal arts education based on NCS and K-CESA in dental hygiene

Objectives: This literature review seeks to identify the current status of the liberal arts education of dental hygiene majors offered by universities in Korea and the U.S. and provide a comparative analysis of the data on liberal arts education in both countries. Methods: From April 3, 2017 to May 1, 2017, research data on curriculum topics were collected from 60 selected universities. The data were collected from university websites, which also provided the universities’ emails and dental hygiene major descriptions. We calculated the descriptive statistics of the variables and performed independent t-tests on the data. Results: In all the domains of the NCS and K-CESA, the dental hygiene major currently offers courses on language and communication and general education, focusing on self-management and development. Few universities offer subjects from other disciplines. Conclusions: Pro-actively exploring strategies is a prerequisite to the systematic operation of standardized dental hygiene education. It is imperative to conduct research consistently on relevant topics, such as teaching methods, general education standards, and connectivity between major subjects and the goals and effects of exposure to a general education. KCI Citation Count: 0