New social demands and guidelines for of the brazilian dentistry school programs defy current teaching practices in these educational institutions. Within this context, we investigated the concept of the quality of higher education and the challenges faced in training professors, from the perspective of coordinators of undergraduate studies who work in the field of dentistry. The universe of this study consists of those Schools of dentistry within the State of Sao Paulo that also offer full graduate school programs leading to M.A. and PhD. degrees. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were utilized to describe and discuss the data. Discussion of the material was based on Cunha's analysis of the three dimensions of teaching practice: the political-structural dimension, the curricular dimension and the pedagogical dimension. This paper focuses exclusively on the pedagogical dimension. Results indicate that the postures which emerge on the pedagogical plane (methods of teaching and learning, students' participation, tutoring) are extremely contradictory, with concepts that oscillate between traditional teaching and learning methods and innovative ones. This indicates the lack of a theoretical framework guiding essential aspects of practice at the pedagogical level.
Higher education; dentistry; education dental; health education; faculty dental
