Certification of Family Life Educators: A Status Report for Indiana

Abstract

Several persons most directly interested at the college level in preparing family life educators for the secondary school systems of Indiana met in the late 1960's to compare experiences, assess the situation, and map out a future strategy. Among other things, the followirg common suspicions were generally confirmed: 1. Courses in family living (as opposed to a unit on some aspect of the family in a course by some other title with a different major focus) had been available to limited numbers of secondary school students in the state for several decades. 2. A variety of surveys conducted at periodic intervals indicated some increase in such opportunities for students over the years. 3. Such surveys, however, had failed to discover what might be considered anything similar to an appreciable gain in such course offerings in relation to the potential for them. In other words, Indiana's secondary schools had not experienced a landslide movement in the direction of increased family living courses as is reported to have occurred in some other states. 4. Inquiries among selected groups of the state's high school principals indicated a decided enthusiasm toward including such courses in their respective curricula. 5. Many administrators, however, ap-