Reforming pedagogy in biotechnology pharmaceutics education: a narrative review of emerging teaching strategies.

Authors

Xiao-Huan Liu, Fei Liu, Na Xu, Tao Wang

Published in

Frontiers in psychology. Volume 17. Pages 1915540. Epub Sep 22, 2026.

Abstract

The rapid expansion of the biopharmaceutical industry, driven by monoclonal antibodies, cell and gene therapies, and mRNA vaccines, demands a workforce equipped with interdisciplinary knowledge, practical competence, and critical thinking. Traditional lecture-based instruction in Biotechnology Pharmaceutics usually falls short in cultivating these attributes. This narrative review, drawing on a structured synthesis of recent literature (2015-2026) and the authors' 10 years of front-line teaching experience, addresses the following research question: What pedagogical innovations hold the greatest promise for transforming biopharmaceutics education, and what are their respective evidence bases, implementation challenges, and pathways to scalability? It examines problem-based and case-based learning, flipped classrooms, virtual simulation, industry-academia integration, and curriculum ideological and ethical education. The review evaluates the strengths, implementation challenges, and evidence of effectiveness for each innovation, identifying three key dimensions of analysis: pedagogical effectiveness, implementation feasibility, and scalability. The findings indicate that while short-term cognitive and motivational gains are well-documented across all five strategies, longitudinal evidence and systemic adoption frameworks remain critically underdeveloped. The review is limited by the predominantly short-term, single-institution nature of the available evidence base and the scarcity of studies examining implementation fidelity across diverse institutional contexts. Accordingly, the paper highlights areas requiring further faculty development, institutional support, and proposes a concrete five-component framework for future longitudinal research to address these evidence gaps. It concludes that an integrated and student-centered ecosystem combining multiple active pedagogies, authentic experiential learning, and robust digital tools represents the most promising path forward, contingent on sustained institutional commitment and systematic scaling strategies.

PMID:
42840827
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Oct 2026.

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