Comparison to other international resources
Many disciplines have identified core concepts and developed concept inventories over the past 30 years, with physics and biology notable for the scope and depth of work. Hestenes and colleagues’ seminal work to develop the force concept inventory (Halloun & Hestenes, 1985; Hestenes et al., 1992) heralded a transformation of learning across the discipline, with the rigour and reproducibility of the inventory enabling the identification of effective, evidence-based teaching practices (Deslauriers & Wieman, 2011; Hake, 1998). In the United States, in biology, ‘Vision and Change’ was a National Science Association funded endeavour to develop core concepts and related tools for educators (Brewer & Smith, 2011; Brownell et al., 2014). The current project aimed to follow in the footsteps of these seminal initiatives, with the goal of providing educators with truly global pharmacology core concepts, concept inventories, and related resources.
Of note, there are already a number of valuable resources for educators. The Pharmacology Education Project (Faccenda, Maxwell, & Szarek, 2019), an initiative of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, is a web-based resource with a wide range of information, teaching, learning, and assessment tools. The ”Knowledge Objectives in Medical Pharmacology” initiative sponsored by the Association of Medical School Pharmacology Chairs (AMSPC) has provided medical educators with extensive guidance on their pharmacology curricula since 1985. The British Pharmacological Society has several very extensive and pedagogically advancedcore curricula, and has published work on clinical pharmacology for medical students (Ross & Maxwell, 2012) and undergraduate pharmacology (Wallace et al., 2021) . These invaluable resources complement our work in that they provide a breadth of material, allowing educators to ensure adequate coverage in their programs and courses, whereas our core concepts work aims to provide focus for educators and program directors/chairs to assure both students and stakeholders that graduates have acquired the fundamental knowledge necessary to be successful in their careers.