Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if
authorship is acknowledged]
At
one point my nephew said “you won’t believe the regulations! There are hundreds
of pages of them. Go check it out.” So, I did.
My
nephew was exaggerating a bit by saying there are “hundreds of pages.” There
are more than 500 pages of regulations governing vets in California, but the document
containing the regulations incorporates legislation and regulations such as the
regulation of drugs. Nonetheless, the licensure regulations governing
veterinary medicine run to 118 pages.
I examined the British Columbia Teachers Act
on the internet. For the sake of comparison, I saved it as a PDF. It runs 46
pages. The cynic in me whispered about the symbolic meaning of the difference
in pagination, but I tried not to listen.
What
did strike me is the matter that prompted the family conversation, namely the
requirement for professional learning to maintain licensure. The California
regulation defines: “continuing education;” “statutory,” “recognized,” or “approved”
providers of continuing education; “quality continuing education” or “qualifying
course;” “self-study course,” and more. Licensees must renew their licenses every
two years. During the intervening period, they must have completed 36 hours of
continuing education.
Veterinary
medicine is not unique among the regulated professions in the US or Canada. Almost
all regard continuing education as necessary to “maintain competence and skills
consistent with the current standards and practices that is beyond the initial
academic studies needed to be licensed” (California Veterinary Medicine Practice Act) Teaching is among the few
exceptions among regulated professions in not requiring continuing education as
a condition of licensure either in legislation or regulation.
No
Canadian province or territory requires continuing education as a condition to
maintain one’s teaching license. That does not mean that teachers do not engage
in some form of continuing education, usually what California would call “self-study.”
Professional development is often a contractual matter between teachers and their
employers (but not a condition of their continuing employment).
Professions
are regulated by government to ensure the public’s interest is served. The
professional regulation of veterinary practitioners certainly recognizes that maintaining
the currency of one’s knowledge is an obligation of all veterinarians. Those
who wrote the regulations recognized the limitations of simply stating the
obligation and made maintenance of one’s knowledgebase a requirement for
licensure. They even went a bit further in putting the onus on veterinarians to
renew their licenses and provide proof they had completed the 36 hours of
mandatory continuing education since their prior license was issued.
Is
it not about time that we had a similar requirement for the teaching
profession?