Opening the door on student learning: using artefacts to explore pharmacy students’ learning practices

Abstract

Pharmacy as a profession is on a path of significant change with many external and internal influences on the nature and conceptions of professional practice and the diverse and changing nature of this knowledge in turn creates a challenge for pharmacy educators. Conceptual changes to pharmacy knowledge and practice have profound pedagogical implications for how pharmacy education will change over the next few years. This study makes an original contribution to knowledge in pharmacy education, both in terms of the methodology used (the use of artefacts to explore learning with pharmacy students and the use of theory from anthropology, fine art and literature from English medieval poetry to view the data) and also in terms of the findings. The key findings of the study are that artefacts afford access to insight into pharmacy students’ learning, and use of these identified a number of learning and assessment practices, particularly some normally un-noticed practices. Using fine art to view participants’ assessment practices has allowed insight into their conceptions of assessment (as the summative written examination) and hence their views on feedback. In particular there was a strong affective dimension expressed in participants’ accounts of their learning, which is often ignored in teaching, learning and assessment practices. Participants’ learning is constructed through a ‘meshwork’ of interconnected and interwoven practices. The difficulties experienced by participants were explored and were found to be primarily modal (relating to a particular way of thinking or practising) or ontological (relating to ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ as a pharmacy student or to their professional identity). Recommendations for MPharm curriculum development at Robert Gordon University are discussed along with the implications for the wider professional community. (Please note this is a redacted version of the thesis. Some images have been removed for copyright reasons.)