Implications of the ACOTE Draft III Revisions of Standards for Doctoral Level OT Programs
- bcoppard1
- Feb 1, 2018
- 5 min read
AOTA members are offered the opportunity to give input about the 3rd draft of the ACOTE standards until April 23, 2018. There are sessions to provide input at the AOTA conference in Salt Lake City on:
April 18 at 9:00 AM at the Academic Leadership Council Annual meeting, and
April 19 at 11:00 AM at the Open Hearing.
You can respond to the survey at:
The link to the Draft III of Revised ACOTE Standards is:
Before you complete the online survey, I urge you to have a conversation with your respective Dean and Faculty to flesh out your opinions and rationale. (Also, note that quantity counts in the survey results, so each person should complete his/her own survey. Do NOT fill out the survey collectively as one group, because it will only count as ONE response.)
For those of you currently offering an OTD or DrOT degree AND for those of you who will be transitioning from the Master’s to Doctoral level must analyze the impacts of the draft standards on your current curriculum and program practices.
There are 4 standards that I believe have significant impacts on the doctoral level OT education: (1) no baccalaureate degree requirement, (2) Standard A.2.5. Capstone Coordinator, (3) Standard A.2.2. Faculty Degree requirements, and (4) Standard A.2.9. Faculty teaching research.
1 – No required baccalaureate degree for entry into a doctoral program. This is substantial! Not requiring a bachelor’s degree is a positive for students in that it should reduce the amount of money spent on tuition and living expenses. No longer requiring a bachelor’s degree for admission to existing programs may provide the catalyst for such programs to revise admissions criteria AND curriculum. Marketing earlier to admission pipeline schools and clarifying why a degree is no longer needed will be necessary (unsure of the rationale and why the standard changed…).
Two issues emerge from no longer requiring students to enter the doctoral OT program without a bachelor’s degree.
First, the students enter the doctoral OT program without having studied any subject in depth. This can be addressed by carefully planning the admission criteria (i.e., per-requisite courses to prepare students for doctoral level work).
Second, some of Creighton’s first entry level OTD graduates who applied to master’s degree programs in other fields and PhD programs WITHOUT a bachelor’s degree encountered issues in getting accepted into graduate school. Some OTD grads were not admitted due to not holding a bachelor’s degree. Others were admitted after lengthy explanations and support letters from OT faculty/administrators. Graduate admission personnel questioned why the OTD grads held a clinical doctoral degree and not a bachelor’s degree. Creighton addressed this by having the entry level students fulfill the requirements to earn a Bachelor’s in Health Sciences degree that was conferred upon graduating from the OTD program. This strategy was employed by some students, but not all. Not every student is able to successfully take additional online courses while matriculating through the rigorous OTD program!
2 – Standard A.2.5: The program must identify an individual for the role of capstone coordinator who is specifically responsible for the program’s compliance with the capstone requirements of Standards Section D.1.0 and is assigned to the occupational therapy educational program as a full-time core faculty member as defined by ACOTE. The capstone coordinator may be assigned other institutional duties that do not interfere with the management and administration of the capstone program. The institution must document that the capstone coordinator has sufficient release time and support to ensure that the needs of the capstone program are being met. This individual must be a licensed or otherwise regulated occupational therapist. Coordinators must hold a doctoral degree awarded by an institution that is accredited by a USDE-recognized regional accrediting body. For degrees from institutions in countries other than the United States, ACOTE will determine an alternative and equivalent external review process.
Programs must have a clear plan for what the capstone constitutes in their program. The capstone must be integrated into the curriculum. The program must design a developmental process in which students are being prepared for the capstone.
Standard A.2.5. mandates that the Capstone Coordinator must be a full-time core faculty member with a doctoral degree. It sounds as though one faculty member is the Capstone Coordinator – like the Academic Fieldwork Coordinator (AFWC). From my experience, coordinating the capstone requires considerable time, attention, planning, tracking and coordinating. I’m not sure if faculty can rotate the responsibility and still fulfill this standard. The capstone is a significant component of the curriculum that differs from what is or was typically done in tradition bachelor’s and master’s OT programs.
3 – Standard A.2.7.: All full-time faculty who are occupational therapy practitioners teaching in the program must hold a doctoral degree awarded by an institution that is accredited by a USDE-recognized regional accrediting body. The doctoral degree is not limited to a doctorate in occupational therapy. At least 50% of full-time faculty must have a post-professional doctorate.
This standard is really concerning to me. Don’t get me wrong; I highly believe faculty must have a doctoral degree. The aspect that is short-sighted to me is the requirement about “post profession”. Why do I believe this? First, entry level doctoral programs are accredited and that is an essential element to ensuring quality! Post professional doctoral programs are NOT accredited. The range of credits, quality and work required for the degree are highly variant in the US. Some post professional programs lack components of a quality clinical doctorate (see the Pierce & Pierce AJOT article) such as sophisticated, mentored experiential learning (DECs), significant research competencies and coursework focused on faculty preparation (e.g., learning theories, assessment and evaluation theories, teaching strategies, and information about the American professoriate).
Let’s follow the logic here: as a profession, we decide to require the entry level DOCTORAL degree. However, we don’t believe it’s a doctoral degree because, for example, someone with an entry level OTD/DrOT with 15 years of clinical experience is not qualified to teach! What other profession does this? In a fairly short period of time, the vast majority of OTs will have the entry level doctoral degree. Medicine, dentistry and pharmacy faculties – in general- have no such standards. Shouldn’t a doctoral degree be a doctoral degree? Why is one considered a watered-down doctoral degree and the other is perceived as a supernova doctoral degree? To me, this is extremely short-sighted and unfounded. Let institutions decide who to hire based on their hiring criteria and practices. Such documented practices are required by regional or institutional accrediting bodies.
What message are we sending to our entry level OTD/DrOT students? I know some programs conferred a master’s degree in OT and the next month, those students were admitted to a post professional degree program. What’s the difference here?
In summary, the post professional metric is poor. What is it that we truly want our OT faculty to possess? We need to advocate for a more accurate metric for those who are considered qualified to be a candidate for an OT faculty position. Okay, I’ll stop my rant – I’m passionate about this!
4 – A.2.9.: (This portion of the standard...) Faculty responsible for content related to research methodology and mentoring students on scholarly projects must demonstrate ongoing scholarly achievement and research expertise.
I completely agree with this standard. If faculty do not have any history of publication and or grant writing during a specified period, how can we expect them to teach research and mentor students? I strongly believe every faculty member should have scholarship productivity. Considering institutional mission variance, some faculty may focus more on scholarship productivity than others, but I think it is reasonable to require all doctoral credentialed faculty to be responsible for producing scholarship. After all, we are moving to doctoral-level education.
I am interested in your thoughts…post a comment!
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