The Challenge Ahead for Massage Educators

By Whitney Lowe

One of the most important factors shaping a profession is the educators that provide the foundation training for practitioners in the field. The massage profession is strongly shaped by two different groups of educators—those who teach in entry-level programs and those who teach continuing education programs. There are similarities as well as differences in the challenges each of these groups must face. In this article, we look at educators’ issues for both entry-level and continuing education.

Hiring and Retaining Qualified Faculty
The massage therapy profession has grown at a staggering rate in the last ten to fifteen years. Growing pains from that rapid expansion are felt in many different areas, including education. Consequently, the entire profession is being shaped by how the educators respond to these challenges.

One of the most significant challenges facing our profession is the sheer number of massage schools. It is difficult to find definitive information on exactly how many massage schools and training programs there are in the United States, but estimates are somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve hundred to fourteen hundred. If the schools were spread out evenly between the states, that would be somewhere close to thirty schools per state. Yet, due to differences in the size of states, their population densities, and other geopolitical factors, the schools are not spread out evenly. For example, there are close to sixty massage training programs in Florida alone.

With such a large number of massage training programs, there is a crucial problem of attracting and keeping qualified faculty. According to the most recent ABMP School Survey, average pay for a massage school instructor was approximately $22–$29 per hour in massage therapy classes. One factor that keeps many potentially qualified individuals from considering a teaching position is that practitioners can obviously make much more than that in professional practice. In addition, teaching requires hours of preparation time and because most of these instructors are part-time adjunct faculty, they are not compensated for this time.

The unfortunate result is that many schools choose to fill teaching positions with recent graduates because those individuals have spare time and are eager to stay involved with the school. They are usually looking to find other ways to supplement income and teaching seems like a good choice. If the individual is qualified to teach, the combination can work well. However, too often teaching positions are offered to inexperienced instructors because the school is not able to find a candidate who is genuinely qualified for the position and willing to accept the compensation package.

Another trend having an effect on entry-level massage instruction is the increasing number of community college and career college schools developing massage therapy programs. Bylaws of these schools often dictate that faculty members must have an academic degree to teach in these programs. There are few, if any, bachelor’s- or graduate-level programs devoted to massage therapy, so that means the individual’s degree will be in some other field that may or may not have anything to do with massage therapy education. These rules have led to the unfortunate displacement of some very good massage therapy instructors because they did not possess a traditional academic degree. In many cases they have been replaced by others who were not as qualified as a massage therapy instructor, but did have some more advanced academic credential. Possession of advanced academic credentials is certainly helpful for improving one’s knowledge and/or skills, but those credentials should be relevant to massage therapy education if they are going to be used as a criterion for evaluating one’s qualification for teaching in a massage school.

The reliance on academic credentials to validate one’s ability to teach appears to be a carryover from our higher education system in colleges and universities. For example, university professors can get appointments in teaching positions simply because they have a doctorate in a particular field. However, they may never have had a course on teaching or education in their entire curriculum. If academic credentials aren’t the marker of what qualifies someone to teach in massage school, then what is? I think more important attributes are the individual’s actual knowledge, skills, and abilities related to teaching massage. Let’s look at some of the key factors that make a good massage educator.

Key Skills for Instructors
When most people think of what makes a good instructor, the first thing that comes to mind is someone who has a thorough mastery of the subject matter. While knowledge of the subject matter is certainly relevant, it is not necessarily an indicator of someone’s ability to be a good instructor. There are many individuals who know their subject exceptionally well, but when it comes to teaching it they are ineffective for various reasons. Subject matter mastery is valuable, but it is not enough by itself. Subject matter knowledge must be combined with many of the other qualities listed below in order to shape an excellent instructor.

The interest, focus, and attention of a room full of students can easily get scattered if the instructor is not able to manage the group. Classroom management skills are important for an instructor. They include how to keep the group together and focused on the task at hand, motivation, conflict resolution, and communication skills. Classroom management is a very different process when dealing with adult learners as opposed to young students in their early years of schooling. In elementary and high school classrooms, the teacher is an acknowledged authority who can dish out disciplinary actions to the students. In an adult education environment like massage school, discipline in the classroom is usually a minor concern, but psychosocial dynamics are much more complex. Students and teachers are peers so there are issues of interpersonal behavior dynamics, transference, projection, and attraction that have to be appropriately managed. It takes a great deal of maturity and responsibility for the instructor to handle these complex psychological issues.

Many students enter massage school after having been out of school for a number of years. The entrance back into a classroom environment can be a difficult challenge for these students, and self-esteem issues often enter the educational environment. A good instructor is able to delicately address these issues with students and make sure they are given positive support to work through the challenges of school reentry.

One of the characteristics of instructor behavior that shapes the student-teacher interaction is the way in which the instructor gives feedback and correction to the students. Making mistakes or errors is an essential part of the learning process. However, when an individual is blamed or made to feel stupid for making mistakes, that individual becomes far less likely to venture out into uncertainty in the future. When there is an open and receptive environment that encourages experimentation, individuality, and provides a safe space for making mistakes, it is a far more effective learning environment.

Many years ago classroom learning approaches were relatively simple. The teacher lectured while students took notes and attempted to memorize the information being presented. In recent decades, teaching strategies have changed significantly because research into human learning theory has transformed many of our notions about how people learn most effectively. A good instructor will be familiar with some of the concepts of multiple learning styles and be able to appropriately adjust classroom activities or student interactions to take advantage of different learning strategies.

In addition to learning theory, a good instructor will have a fundamental understanding of instructional design principles. Instructional design is the process of translating principles of learning into specific classroom materials and activities. A very simple (and often ineffective) instructional design process is the standard lecture format. A more effective design might also incorporate case studies that stimulate discussion, individual learning projects, self-evaluation tools, or work portfolios.

Many instructional design methods are aided by the use of audiovisual aids to enhance concepts being presented. Proficient use of audiovisual aids is an important skill for an instructor. Gone are the days of just photocopying a page from a textbook onto overhead transparencies to be an audiovisual aid. Students are accustomed to seeing all kinds of multimedia presentations, so developing audiovisual aids to enhance the presentation may involve live demonstrations, videos, DVDs, computer presentations with Powerpoint, or some other presentation software. An enhanced audiovisual presentation doesn’t have to be some fancy high-tech process, but it should be something that aids the learning process and is not so involved that it actually becomes a distraction.

The demographics of students entering massage school are changing. As a result, instructors need to be able to adapt learning methods and curriculum changes to address the new diversity of students. When massage therapy began rapidly expanding in the United States in the eighties and early nineties, the majority of students in massage school were older (past twenty-five years of age) and many had significant life experience prior to entering massage school. The many years of life experience brought intangible skills of interpersonal communication, business sense, maturity, and a greater degree of ease in being with another person in a therapeutic relationship.

Today, there are many students entering massage school shortly after having completed high school. While it is exciting to see such young students expressing an interest in massage therapy, it is also a serious challenge for the teacher. Some of the very difficult, but crucially important, interpersonal relationship skills are challenging to teach students who are just out of high school, especially if the training program is only a few months long. Consequently, the very young students may leave massage school without a thorough grounding in the psychological development necessary to be a direct access healthcare provider.

Understanding Andragogy
The art and science of teaching is called pedagogy. However, the term pedagogy is actually specific to teaching children. The specialty field of teaching adults is referred to as andragogy. Understanding some of the fundamental concepts of andragogy is crucial for a massage therapy instructor.

The learning processes and teaching methods most effective for adults are different than those for a young student in primary or secondary education. Adult students have learned to navigate the world and find the information they need to accomplish many different tasks. They don’t have the same amount of free time early education students do. They must balance the responsibilities of life with those of school. With less time to devote to school, learning activities should be constructed so they directly connect what is happening in the classroom with what goes on in real-life experiences. This is a much more efficient way of learning for adult students.

Learning activities should move away from the memorization of content and more toward application of learning concepts and principles to unique situations. It is easier to accomplish this task when teaching in the continuing education environment than in entry-level massage training programs. In the entry-level programs, there is still a significant focus on preparing to pass exit exams as well as licensure or certification tests. Consequently, memorization of material for the test still is a primary focus of most students. Unfortunately, rote memorization is a shallow type of learning and what is learned primarily for the purpose of passing a test is easily and readily forgotten once the test is over.

Some of the biggest challenges for instructors teaching adults are self-esteem and ego issues for the instructor. When teaching young students in primary or secondary education, there is no question that the teacher is the authority and knows more than the students. In adult education, that situation is very different. It is not at all uncommon that the teacher will be younger than some of the students, and in many cases students will come from other professions and have a wealth of knowledge, some of which may be related to the subjects the teacher is teaching. As a result, the instructor may feel intimidated about having to know everything and always being right. This is a serious mistake. If you feel you always have to know the answer to a question, it is tempting to make up an answer when someone asks a question you don’t know. The instructor must learn to feel okay about saying, “I don’t know,” and then discuss ways that she, or the group, could go about finding an answer.

While principles of andragogy are similar between teaching entry-level massage and teaching continuing education, there are some distinct differences as well. Practitioners often decide to teach continuing education training programs because they have developed some new or innovative approaches in their practice after a number of years. As mentioned earlier, mastery of content information or development of new material is only one aspect of the teaching process. The expectations are often higher for the quality of instruction in continuing education courses, so instructors should be paying a great deal of attention to some of the learning principles stated earlier when designing their courses.

Entry-level massage teachers have more stringent guidelines placed on them because they are usually reviewed on a regular basis by the administration and have stricter curriculum guidelines their courses must follow. Continuing education instructors don’t have those same restrictions. Because the curriculum guidelines are less severe (or nonexistent) in continuing education, some instructors bypass the important aspects of course development such as developing good course objectives, assessment strategies, and instructional design. Some of them may come to the class with a sense of just winging it and relying on their reputation or personality to carry the course. With practitioners paying so much money to be in a continuing education course, this is an unfortunate approach.

The focus and interest of students in entry-level training is likely to be different from that of the continuing education student. Consequently, the activities and focus of the instructor are different as well. While entry-level students are focused on learning skills to be good practicing professionals, most of them are highly preoccupied with preparation for testing in the many different subjects they are taking. The preoccupation with testing may distract from attention that could be more appropriately aimed at getting more out of instructional activities.

Because continuing education students are already out of school and not having to sit for a licensure examination, they are more apt to be thinking about what they can get out of the course that is going to enhance or change their practice. Consequently, the instructor’s task is to make sure information, skills, or learning activities in the course can be directly tied to skills and abilities the person is likely to use in daily practice.

How Do You Learn to Be a Teacher?
Unfortunately, there are very few places to go to enhance or develop the necessary skills to be a good teacher. Some schools run their own teacher training programs, but the content of these training programs may not go into great detail about the principles of learning theory or andragogy. Courses are often taken up with training the individual to effectively address specific issues of the designed curriculum at the school in order to maintain consistency among different instructors in the same program. There are a few teacher training programs that occur at national conferences or as regional workshop programs. Unfortunately, due to geographic limitations, many instructors are not able to get to these training programs.

Mentoring is frequently used as a method of teacher training. It is highly valuable to watch a skilled instructor and learn the fine nuances of presentation, delivery, and communication dynamics from that individual. If you have the opportunity to have a teaching mentor, spend as much time working with that individual as possible. It is also valuable to videotape yourself teaching and then watch it later to critique your performance. There is nothing like watching yourself from the student’s perspective to get a sense of things you did well and things you didn’t do well. Because the principles of adult learning are so important, I also strongly encourage you to do some independent reading and study on adult learning theory and consider how to apply these concepts to classes you might teach.

We have some serious challenges facing us in massage education right now. With the large number of schools, there are many opportunities for those who would like to teach. However, it is important not to put yourself in the classroom until you are truly qualified and ready. If we don’t invest some energy and attention into improving the pool of educators we have in massage, we are doing serious long-term damage to our profession, and I would hate to see that happen.

Whitney Lowe has been dedicated to excellence in massage education for more than fifteen years. He’s an author, researcher, curriculum developer, and instructor. Lowe has a strong academic background including graduate work in psychology, sports medicine, and biomechanics. He’s the director of the Orthopedic Massage Education & Research Institute in Sisters, Oregon. He can be contacted at omeri@omeri.com.

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