Professionalizing Gerontology: Why It is Essential to Credential the Education of Gerontologists
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The National Association for Professional Gerontologists (NAPG) has credentialed the education and professional expertise of practicing gerontologists since 2007, in the absence of licensing in any U.S. state or Canadian province. To date, nearly 400 professionals have received a credential. Today it is more important than ever to credential gerontologists and professionalize gerontology. While many disciplines produce practitioners who support older adults and their families, it is graduates of gerontology degree programs who have the interdisciplinary breadth of knowledge, informed by a set of key gerontology competencies, to respond holistically to the multifaceted challenges experienced by older adults. First developed more than 30 years ago, the key gerontology competencies are periodically updated by GSA’s Academy of Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE) and widely used by gerontology programs. Given the projected increase in the older population, the need for more trained gerontologists is apparent. However, the field has not kept pace with the need for qualified, trained gerontology practitioners by producing more graduates. As data presented in this poster indicate, there are no more gerontology degree programs today than there were 20 years ago. The poster also presents data derived from a survey of almost 100 credentialed NAPG members. Survey responses identify barriers to employability and career mobility, including an inadequate understanding on the part of employers about a trained gerontologist’s skills and competencies. The poster concludes with suggestions for enhancing the professional stature of credentialed gerontologists.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.028 | 0.069 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.015 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".