Over the past month, my work has been focused on the evaluation of education and training provided for tutors in pharmacy, specifically at the University of Bradford. Working in collaboration with experienced lecturers in the field of pharmacy, I monitored a group of tutors, each of which were experienced in their field and had taken on the role of tutors for a one-year pre-registration stage for students in pharmacy.
My objective is to open further consideration on the challenges involved. I was immediately struck by how much of the literature from the ‘apparatus of education’ finds application in the apparatus of pharmacy. There is a real danger that education-speak borrowed from the ‘apparatus of education’, where words such as learning, training, and education for example, may all be conveniently represented as objects within economies of practice. That is, unless pharmacists themselves give expression to their own concerns, in ways that challenge these dominant economies of practice.
Fortunately, following their education and training programme over the summer, the tutors did express their concerns. Many of which centred upon the number and variety of places in which pharmacists work. Particularly striking from a philosophical perspective was that their feedback and commentary about their education and training over the summer concerned each of their own and others’ particular place if work, along with expressions of concern arising from each of their various and unique worlds of practice.
This ebook delves further into my work and the outcomes discovered whilst monitoring the tutors and through feedback.