The teaching of pharmacology in the Singapore medical school started in 1957.Traditionally, pharmacology teaching has been discipline-based using the lecture as themain instructional mode.The main emphasis was on the pharmacological(scientific)basis of therapeutics,so as to facilitate and enhance student learning in the acquisitionof knowledge,skills and attitudes relevant to the drug prescribing process.In Y2K,ourpharmacology course will be implemented as three main modules:general pharmacology, systems pharmacology and clinical pharmacology.Instructional strategies to promote active learning(small group teaching using problem-centred case studies,Problem-based learning,PBL)will be used increasingly.PBL has already been implementedin our Year I curriculum and provides a more innovative educational approach to teachingand learning in medical education.The rapidly changing trends in the teaching ofpharmacology in the Singapore medical school clearly reflect the shift from the teachingto the learning paradigm,so as to engage students to actively participate in and takegreater responsibility for their own learning and to contribute to their development as independentself-directed life-long learners.