Dental discoveries: How is dental research improving oral health?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology and health.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This resource introduces the work of the Iowa Institute for Oral Health Research, a team of dentists and dental scientists at The University of Iowa. The team is improving oral health and healthcare by investigating factors that cause dental disease.
• This resource also contains an interview with team members and offers an insight into careers in dentistry and dental science. If your students have questions for the team, they can send them to them online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). The researchers will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research and challenges them to design an oral hygiene lesson for children to teach them the importance of looking after their teeth.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!