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When attempting to understand and create solutions for today's educational quandary, one simply needs to look to Elliot Eisner. Faced with daunting challenges such as mandated objectives, state standards, and high-stakes testing, educators are left to scramble in order to find some sense of autonomy and control within their own settings. Through humanistic approaches to teaching and learning, Eisner shows us methods that are universal and can be easily incorporated into any educational environment.
The university athletic training curriculum program, like the pre-Kindergarten through high school public education system, is notorious for being heavily laden with behavioral objectives. Students in this exciting and challenging athletic training curriculum program are inundated with approximately 1,250 clinical proficiencies. These proficiencies, listed as behavioral objectives, must be checked off several times over the course of each student's tenure in the program. Once the proficiencies are checked off, the student is then deemed worthy of having mastered them. Obviously a prudent professional in any field must master certain skills. This is especially true in the sciences, namely in medicine. The levels of competence must be demonstrated, both to the student him/herself, and to the public that will be relying upon his/her knowledge and expertise.
I am saddened to admit that the previous statements truly described my view of a quality athletic training program for many years. However, as my world expanded, I recently found myself no longer in complete agreement with this notion. I learned, through numerous life examples, that the mastery of professional skills that will be transferred into the realm of athletic training sometimes has little or nothing to do with the 1,250 clinical proficiencies. I fully understand the historical perspective of the proficiencies and how they came about. However, I am now at a point of no return in my thinking that this is not the only way to present and teach the necessary materials in this program. I came to the crossroad, and I chose to move forward instead of remaining stagnant or ambling on in our current educational quandary.
As I continued to contemplate my newly found vision, I listened to my colleagues in various Pre-K-12 public school settings. I began to wonder how my situation in educating athletic trainers is any different...