Embedding Core Concepts within the Curriculum
Using the core concepts as the basis or cornerstone of a formal curriculum provides a theoretical framework for understanding how drugs work so that the learners will form connections with critical aspects of therapeutics. This could be particularly relevant within an integrated curriculum in which pharmacology does not appear as a separate discipline, creating the added risk that key concepts may be lost [49]. In this case, educators can thread core concepts throughout a structure based on organ systems and reinforced with many examples.
More broadly, though, any formal curriculum can be considered to include both explicit and hidden or implicit curriculum, with the latter also recognised as important [50]. Raising the core concepts of pharmacology from the hidden curriculum into the explicit curriculum may be one of the most important steps in helping ensure that students graduate with the required cognitive toolkit.
The move towards assessments focusing on understanding and applying knowledge rather than simple recall demonstrates the increasing value placed on higher-order thinking. In a health and life sciences course in The Netherlands, Wilhelmus and Drukarch [51] have shown that students tend to score better on ‘knows’ rather than ‘knows how’ questions and on pharmacodynamic rather than pharmacokinetics topics. It is tempting to speculate that a core concepts approach may help learners focus on application and understanding rather than rote memorisation of lists of drugs and their mechanisms, an idea articulated in the Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education report [52].
Yet another way of thinking about curriculum is the Intended-Enacted-Experienced curriculum [53]. In this way of thinking, a core-concepts approach could be incorporated into the enacted part of the curriculum without any need to reform the formal or intended curriculum. In this case, the way the instructor enacts the curriculum, namely the way they explain the concepts and link them together, reflects the core concepts definitions. For example, using the core concept of drug target and then linking that to drug-target interactions and mechanism of action shows how these concepts are distinct but related, and this format could be illustrated with multiple examples (Table 2) of relevance to the cohort.
Table 2. Illustration of the relationship between certain core concepts shown with examples.