An innovative pharmacology curriculum for medical students: promoting higher order cognition, learner-centered coaching, and constructive feedback through a social pedagogy framework.

Background: Ongoing developments in medical education recognize the move to curricula that support self-regulated learning processes, skills of thinking, and the ability to adapt and navigate uncertain situations as much as the knowledge base of learners. Difficulties encountered in pursuing this reform, especially for pharmacology, include the tendency of beginner learners not to ask higher-order questions and the potential incongruency between creating authentic spaces for self-directed learning and providing external expert guidance. We tested the feasibility of developing, implementing, and sustaining an innovative model of social pedagogy as a strategy to address these challenges.

Nutrition as Medicine, Food Sensitivities, and Chronic Disease: a Mini Curriculum Shaped by Transformative Learning Theory.

Nutrition-related diseases are preventable twenty-first-century health problems. Students report being underprepared for nutritional therapeutics. We developed a mini, spiral curriculum shaped by transformative learning theory and centered on nutrition as medicine, food sensitivities, and chronic disease to kick-start a shift in cognition, attitudes, and skills.