What Does Effective Teaching Look Like? Profession-Centric Perceptions of Effective Teaching in Pharmacy and Nursing Education

INTRODUCTION Much of the published literature surrounding teaching effectiveness is based on student perspectives. Explicit standards for what constitutes effective teaching in health professions education do not currently exist. Best practices for training and evaluation in teaching effectiveness could be better addressed with detail from expertbased sources. OBJECTIVE This study sought to identify elements of effective teaching by gathering perceptions of exemplary educators. In addition, profession-centric differences in perceptions of effective teaching were also evaluated. METHODS An iterative consensus-building method was used to gather the perceptions of nursing and pharmacy educators regarding effective teaching. Individual semi-structured interviews were initially used to gather example items within four pre-defined categories: effective methods, ineffective methods, active learning methods, and effective traits. These example items were then collated into an electronic survey that was then administered to the same participants to be rated on a numerical scale. RESULTS Ten educators from nursing and pharmacy participated in this study. Based on the participants’ rankings of the collated lists, a high level of consensus was observed for many items in each of the four categories. With other items, wide variability in ratings was also seen. Further analysis by discipline subgroups revealed patterns of item ranking that appear to be profession-centric. CONCLUSION Exemplary nursing and pharmacy educators revealed consensus regarding perceptions of certain elements of effective teaching. The results also suggested some elements where profession-centric perceptions exist. These results could be incorporated into best practices for effective teaching training and interprofessional teaching design.