Name:
Location: Indiana, United States

I became a Professor Emeritus after serving 29 years as a recreational therapy faculty member at Indiana University. I'm a long-time Hoosier, having grown up in Hanover, Indiana. My RT practitioner work was in psych/mental health. After completing my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, my first faculty position was at the University of North Texas. RT has been a wonderful profession for me as I have had the opportunity to serve as an author and national leader.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Will RT Ever Make Curriculum Changes?

I mentioned yesterday that I was cleaning up my office. In doing so I found an article titled “Perceptions of Therapeutic Recreation in Higher Education” that had appeared in the 1994/95 issue of the Annual in Therapeutic Recreation. Dave Compton and I had authored it.

One of the findings of our research was: “The current curriculum structure appears to be a clear concern of the respondents. The needs range from adding more core TR classes to complete revision of the curriculum. The probability of fulfilling this need is deemed ‘moderate’ by the respondents.”

This was 15 years ago folks! And little has been accomplished to improve curriculum standards for our profession over this time.

It is clear to me that the respondents in our study were overly optimistic when they anticipated the probability of meeting the need for curriculum change was “moderate.”

We should have acted long ago to improve a situation that has existed for far, far too long. Shame on us.

1 Comments:

Blogger Mike Sutherland said...

Sad but true :(

3:18 PM  

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