The theme for the 2021 AFMTE Educational Congress is “The Ideal Future of Massage & Bodywork Education.” I believe it is time for the massage profession as a whole to adopt goals that, if achieved, would truly improve the quality of education of therapeutic massage and bodywork practitioners.
The AFMTE Board representatives to the annual May meeting of Coalition of National Massage Therapy Organizations have advocated for two goals to be implemented over ten years: programmatic accreditation for every massage education program and a certified therapeutic massage and bodywork educator in every classroom for CE courses and massage education programs.
First of all, I want to acknowledge that there is no empirical proof yet that a certification process will definitely lead to improved teaching performance. How can we determine if educator certification will work? We have to do research to establish a baseline for the current quality of education in our profession. Once we know where we start from, we can do research in the future to determine if teacher certification truly makes a difference in the quality of education.
Accreditation faces a similar challenge. We cannot say conclusively that accreditation improves massage education. Once again, all public secondary and post-secondary schools except for a handful of private schools must be accredited. Clearly, the consensus opinion is that accreditation makes a difference. There was a study of the effect of accreditation on massage education that suggests the effectiveness of COMTA accreditation improves the quality of massage programs, but more research would help establish the validity of that premise and that study.
Why should we require therapeutic massage and bodywork educators be certified before we know for sure that it works? We should work on the research challenge while we proceed with the implementation of the common sense application of the universal accreditation of schools and the certification of educators. The research should be done in the next few years.
Every public school in the country requires teachers to be certified by the state. Colleges are looking to improve faculty performance by having their faculty learn more about how to teach. Content expertise is not sufficient to guarantee effective teaching. The Certified Educator of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (CETMB) program developed by AFMTE is based in part on the assumption that these trends in national education are based on the common sense notion that educators will perform better—and therefore graduates will be better prepared—if they know their subject matter well and know how to teach. I believe it is valid to start the ten year process toward asking all massage and bodywork educators to be certified while the research is being done.
Every massage and bodywork professional should be concerned about the quality of massage education.
Stan Dawson, AFMTE President
Every massage and bodywork professional should be concerned about the quality of massage education. If your colleagues were better prepared for clinical practice, they would be performing higher quality work on their client/patients. The public would have a more positive opinion of massage. Other health professionals would have a better impression of our professions. This process needs the support of not only all massage educators but also all massage practitioners. We should all care about every massage that ever happens and how to improve what is happening in that session. Better education is the basis of that. Better teachers are crucial to better education.
Another key to the improvement of better massage education is programmatic accreditation for all massage and bodywork programs. Part of programmatic accreditation is curriculum standards and faculty review standards. Curriculum and faculty review are not part of institutional accreditation, but they are part of programmatic accreditation. They are also crucial to COMTA Endorsed Curriculum. The Coalition of National Massage Organizations has endorsed the use of ELAP level standards in massage programs and COMTA accreditation for all massage programs. Requiring massage programs to have Programmatic accreditation would assure a standardization of curriculum standards for massage programs and institutions. We need to raise the bar on what is required of our schools and our educators. Higher standards should lead to better education.
The next issue to tackle is whether or not to create a second tier of educational requirements for those who practice in hospitals and integrated healthcare environments like wellness centers. When our therapists work in these environments, they need to be ready to meet a higher level of expectations for knowledge and skill sets that they do not develop in entry level training. That is an issue for another day.
Conclusion
As the AFMTE prepares for the May 2020 Coalition meeting, I invite the AFMTE’s membership community to provide feedback on these issues and on ways we can be strong advocates for improving massage education. Thoughts can be forwarded to admin@afmte.org.
