Accreditation is a critical process in maintaining standards of consistency and excellence in the academic preparation of students for their chosen profession. While academic programs, professional associations, and credentialing organizations all recognize the importance of programmatic accreditation in recreational therapy professional preparation, there is no current analysis of the impact of accreditation on student professional outcomes. This study examined passing rates on the National Council for Therapeutic Recreation Certification (NCTRC) exam by comparing programs accredited by CAAHEP/CARTE to the national average. Results revealed that CAAHEP/CARTE accredited programs had higher passing rates in all years of the five-year examination period and accreditation had a significant impact (p<.001) in pass rate differences. Professional issues related to accreditation and both current and future preparation of recreational therapy students are further examined.
This paper aims to relate how university educators act with leisure and analyze the relationship between the context of education and manifestations of leisure in the studied Programme. The research investigated university students who actuate in schools through the Programme Escola da Família on the weekends. They carry out workshops, practices of body culture, courses, among other actions, with peripheral communities in a city in the countryside of the State of São Paulo/Brazil. We identify that the Programme has two curriculums: one is formal, following the directions and guidelines of the Education Department, and one is the curriculum of resistance, which is spontaneous, casual, powerful, translated by the practical choices of the educators and the community. As a result, we understand that college students are students who feel and stand as educators. They are individuals who bring experience from the sports, artistic, religious fields; they learn about organization, playfulness when acting the PEF; they defend the importance that leisure occupies in people’s lives, also standing in the way that having more spaces and equipment for leisure in the cities is needed, as the educational processes for leisure manifestations is essential regarding personal formation, social and affective conviviality of the individuals.
Diversity courses are integral to higher leisure education curricula and united by the following assumptions: (a) recreation programs involve encounters with “different” groups of people and (b) future professionals require a specialized set of knowledge and skills in order to manage those interactions. Although several scholars have critiqued these assumptions, those insights have not been applied to rethinking how the diversity course is taught. This article addresses that gap through an examination of how race is conceptualized and taught within the diversity course. Race is the focal point of this article because diversity initiatives most often focus on racial identity. Academics have often framed race as a relatively homogenous individual identity in the leisure studies diversity course. The purpose of acquiring knowledge about racial identity is to facilitate the students’ diversification of staff and users. However, this framing of race obscures the ways that diversification can expose the racialized other to new forms of violence and exploitation. I offer racial capitalism as a different framework through which race can be conceptualized and taught within the leisure studies diversity course. Racial capitalism encourages viewing race through intersecting relations of power, as a status created to maintain power and profit, and as deeply rooted in the past.
