A Practical Review of Mastery Learning

Abstract

Objective. To review mastery learning and provide recommendations for implementation in a competency-based curriculum.Findings. Mastery learning, introduced in the 1960s, was developed to ensure all students reach a desired level of mastery or competency. In this model, students acquire knowledge, skills, or attitudes and then complete formative assessments on that learning. If they achieve the desired level, they can proceed to enrichment activities. Students who do not meet the desired level of mastery proceed through corrective activities and retesting. Evidence suggests students within a mastery learning model perform better academically than those in nonmastery learning models with moderate effect sizes. Mastery learning may result in better performance due to several theoretical reasons, including aspects of motivation, testing, and feedback.Conclusion. We make several recommendations on how to modernize mastery learning for apply it to the pharmacy education, including the recommendation to use more cumulative testing and assessment of baseline knowledge and skills. In addition, models of successive relearning may be applied to this model.

Keywords: competency-based education; mastery learning; outcomes-based education; remediation; successive relearning.