Self-Help for the Pharmacy Educator

Good news! Research supports the idea that effective teaching improves learning in post-secondary students. One study analyzed the effectiveness of more than 2,000 instructors of college algebra over a 10-year period by measuring how well students who passed their classes performed in subsequent courses in the math sequence. The main finding was that a one standard deviation (SD) increase in instructor effectiveness corresponded to a 0.2 SD increase in grades and a 0.4 SD increase in final exam scores in the follow-on course. The authors put this result in perspective by noting a similar performance difference exists between students with a 3.0 and 2.0 incoming GPA. To some pharmacy educators, results like these only validate the obvious. Others, who may be questioning the impact of their teaching in an era where students seem to have a vast choice of alternative learning streams, might find these results encouraging. Now for the bad news: researchers are still unclear on exactly what qualities make a teacher “effective.” Some criteria have been suggested, but identifying all the key elements and measuring them with confidence is a challenging proposition. So waiting for science to unambiguously identify an all-purpose recipe for teaching effectiveness may take more time than the average pharmacy educator has left in their teaching career. Nevertheless, one essential aspect of being an effective teacher almost certainly has to be the degree to which one uses effective teaching methods. And educators familiarize themselves with effective teaching methods by engaging in professional development. Indeed, a study with middle and high school teachers found teacher efficacy correlated positively with teacher professional development, but not with the teachers’ own undergraduate qualifications or scholastic aptitude. To meet accreditation standards, pharmacy colleges are required to provide opportunities for professional development to their faculty, but college-wide faculty development programs can suffer from a number of drawbacks, such as a lack of the consistency and follow-up necessary to effectmeaningful change, a lack of programming to address the specific needs of subsets of faculty, and a lack of program accessibility for all faculty members.Many innovative suggestions have been put forward in the literature to address these and other deficiencies in program-wide faculty development. And, no doubt, colleges that invest the resources to make their faculty development programs more practical, targeted, and relevant are going to reapmore benefits than those that don’t. Yet there is a liberating truth that circumvents all the limitations of a college-driven faculty development program: a faculty member’s development is ultimately their own, personal responsibility. Each of us can ensure our development as teachers (or in any other role) is targeted, relevant, accessible, and consistent, if we make development a regular, personal habit. Following are three things to consider for faculty members who want to become more autonomous in their growth as pharmacy educators.