Evolving professional demands facing practitioners of complementary and alternative therapies : an educational opportunity

Context: Complementary and alternative therapies (CAT) in Australia has traditionally been taught at privately owned colleges which operate within the vocational education and training (VET) sector, with these colleges usually delivering courses up to advanced diploma level. In response to changing professional and educational requirements for CAT practitioners, a number of higher education institutions have now developed degree conversion courses in CAT. In the last decade the issue of generic skills development has been of increasing concern to both the VET and higher educations sectors. The VET sector has addressed this through the use of key (Mayer) competencies. The higher education sector has introduced a series of broadly defined graduate attributes within the Quality Assurance Framework. In 1994 the University of South Australia developed a set of graduate qualities which were implemented as a whole and are built in components to all courses. This paper discusses the embedding of graduate qualities in the acupuncture and naturopathy conversion course and the development of generic attributes in students above those gained within their previous education.