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. 2021 Aug;9(4):e00836.
doi: 10.1002/prp2.836.

Identifying the core concepts of pharmacology education

Paul J White  1 , Elizabeth A Davis  2 , Marina Santiago  3 , Tom Angelo  4 , Alison Shield  5 , Anna-Marie Babey  6 , Barbara Kemp-Harper  2 , Gregg Maynard  7 , Hesham S Al-Sallami  8 , Ian F Musgrave  9 , Lynette B Fernandes  10 , Suong N T Ngo  11 , Tina Hinton  12
Affiliations

Identifying the core concepts of pharmacology education

Paul J White et al. Pharmacol Res Perspect. 2021 Aug.

Abstract

Pharmacology education currently lacks an agreed knowledge curriculum. Evidence from physics and biology education indicates that core concepts are useful and effective structures around which such a curriculum can be designed to facilitate student learning. Building on previous work, we developed a novel, criterion-based method to identify the core concepts of pharmacology education. Five novel criteria were developed, based on a literature search, to separate core concepts in pharmacology from topics and facts. Core concepts were agreed to be big ideas, enduring, difficult, applicable across contexts, and useful to solve problems. An exploratory survey of 33 pharmacology educators from Australia and New Zealand produced 109 terms, which were reduced to a working list of 26 concepts during an online workshop. Next, an expert group of 12 educators refined the working list to 19 concepts, by applying the five criteria and consolidating synonyms, and added three additional concepts that emerged during discussions. A confirmatory survey of a larger group resulted in 17 core concepts of pharmacology education. This list may be useful for educators to evaluate existing curricula, design new curricula, and to inform the development of a concept inventory to test attainment of the core concepts in pharmacology.

Keywords: concept inventory; core concept; pharmacology education; postgraduate education; undergraduate education.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest with respect to this study

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Study design and description of the five stages used
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Ratings of core concepts by basic science and clinical educators using five criteria. Data are percent agreement for each group of educators for all 19 proposed concepts combined. * indicate a significant difference from the basic science educator agreement (ANOVA, p < .05)
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
A diagrammatic representation of the final list of concepts produced by the CC‐PEG
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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