Core concepts and concept inventories in disciplines other than
pharmacology – how have core concepts and concept inventories proven
useful?
Progress and successes when adopting a concept-based curriculum approach
have been most transformative in nursing education [15-17]. The
broad notion of concept-based teaching is not new; in fact,
concept-based curricula have existed for more than 60 years and
originally focused on the development of complex thinking[18].
Instead of overwhelming students with an exhaustive list of topics
leading to content saturation, a CBC concentrates on a limited number of
essential concepts. This serves as the foundation upon which the
subsequent learning is built, thus following the original 1960s theories
of Ausubel [19], namely making learning more meaningful. Selecting
the foundational ‘stable’ core concepts is a critical step when
transitioning to CBC approaches in teaching.
A concept-based curriculum requires four major elements: identification
and unpacking of the core concepts of the discipline; development of
instruments to assess student attainment of core concepts (called
concept inventories); validation of those inventories; and finally
development of educator and student resources to enable attainment of
the concepts.
Many other disciplines have identified and described underpinning core
concepts. Over recent decades, fields such as physics [20],
statistics [21], information technology [22], psychology [23,
24], physiology [25, 26], and microbiology [27, 28] have
developed lists of core concepts and related assessments of concept
attainment.
To assess student understanding of core concepts, concept inventories
(CIs) are often used. While CIs are typically multiple-choice tests, and
thus resemble traditional achievement tests, there are some crucial
differences. Most importantly, the content and language CIs are
developed on the basis of student thinking and incorporate student
language and thinking”, unlike the language of experts used in
traditional achievement tests [29]. The beauty of the CI approach is
that plausible distractors are based on student misconceptions or
alternative conceptions and selecting any answer to the multiple-choice
question (MCQ), be it correct or incorrect, provides the instructor with
insight into the students’ thinking [29]. Similar information could
be obtained from interviews or essay questions; however, such methods
are not always feasible in large classes and are less quantitative.
The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was the first to be developed
([20]. This CI tests attainment of physics concepts, and continues
to be used in physics education [30], and is now starting to
incorporate learning from generative artificial intelligence [31].
CIs have been designed for many disciplines related to pharmacology
including chemistry [32], biochemistry [33], and biology
[34]. They can be used for a number of purposes such as pre-and
post-testing student understanding before a teaching and learning
activity, or to identify misconceptions so that teaching can be adjusted
accordingly [35, 36]. Thus, CIs have led to improvements in
education in physics and other STEM fields [37]. Given the benefits
from core concept identification and assessment seen in other
disciplines, a group of pharmacology educators are now working to
deliver these outcomes. The remainder of this review focuses on this
global initiative.