On 1600 hours as a standard

STAT, for reasons I will explain in a future posting, does not possess a single agreed view of what training standards should be. There are many different opinions. A recent Doctoral Dissertation by Terry Fitzgerald an Australian (ooh! he must be good!) member of STAT has as its title 'The future of Alexander Technique teacher education - Principles, practices and professionalism'.

He terms the 1600 hours 'standard/specification' a 'numerical protocol' of which he states
'... the mandatory time-specific, practices of AT teacher education ... are not only anachronistic, they are also flawed to the extent they ... are devoid of qualitative assessment standards.' (Abstract, p. x)

(I told you he was good!)

Interesting also is the history of deciding on 1600 hours as the specification. It is not (as I had thought) because Alexander's three year course totalled 1600 (Dr Fitzgerald suggests it was closer to 1200).

It was rather that

'STAT specified the minimum weekly attendance time for the three-year course AT training course to be 15 contact hours per week in order to satisfy the British Home Office’s condition for student visas being granted to overseas trainees.' p. 44

His source for this information came from Adam Nott, who he further uses as a source for the suggestion that the 1600 hours requirement 'was partially in response to the London County Council’s consideration of financial grants to students.'

Jeepers.