Building the Plane As We Fly: What Yoga Alliance’s Credentialing Changes Actually Mean with Beth Pruski
Rebecca has been asking subject-matter experts what they make of the changes happening at Yoga Alliance — and this conversation with Beth Pruski is one you don’t want to miss. Beth knows credentialing inside and out, and she also teaches yoga, which makes her exactly the right person to bring to this table. Together, they walk through what a legitimate credentialing process actually looks like — third-party assessment, job analysis, transparency about who wrote the competency tests, how the exam is built and administered, and whether we’re checking a box or genuinely measuring something meaningful. They talk about the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (ICE — the credentialing standards body, not the other one) as the gold standard for evaluating whether an organization is ready to operate as a credentialing body, and what it means that Yoga Alliance is moving in this direction without full transparency about the process. They also get into who “the public” actually is in this context — just students, or also employers? — and why the communications plan matters as much as the credential itself. And they discuss what options exist outside the yoga organizations altogether, including what a credential from something like ACE signals and why the perception of rigor matters. This is one piece of a much bigger conversation our industry needs to be having. The more informed voices at the table, the better.
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