An evidence basis for assessing excellence in pharmacy teaching

Preparing pharmacists who provide a high standard of patient-centered care and maintain current knowledge and practice skills throughout a long and productive career is a goal of Schools of Pharmacy. An important avenue to achieving this goal is teaching excellence. Quality teaching is greatly enhanced when the institution establishes standards for teaching excellence and develops valid and reliable methods to assess and evaluate it. To assist the academy in defining excellence criteria for teaching, this paper explores the concept of teaching excellence and the commonly accepted elements that comprise it. Appropriate methods to evaluate teaching include a combination of student, peer, and self-assessment. Accepted practices in each of these areas of assessment of teaching are described. Elevating the teaching enterprise in our Schools and Colleges by systematic, rigorous assessment of teaching for the purpose of improvement should ultimately result in better prepared pharmacists.