Considerations in choosing a Yoga Teacher Training - A Reflection by the Autistic Yogi

  Are you thinking of becoming a yoga teacher? or maybe you're already a yoga teacher but feel like learning more or want to know how your training stacks up to other teacher trainings?
  Here are some considerations in looking at a teacher training and its quality:

1. How many hours in total do you have in classroom contact time? Meaning how often are you actually with the instructors and is it actually pertinent towards becoming a qualified instructor of yoga. How much time is spent on instructional tasks? 
2. How many days do these classroom contact hours span? This will mean your either meeting for a few hours or for over 12 hours daily. Lengthening time on teaching teachers in a training on any given day does not automatically translate to more time spent learning. There is a growing body of research that shows the longer you take instruction in a given day the more likely you are to make an error in learning or to have a degradation in quality of instruction
3. How many students will you be practicing with? The more students the less personal attention each trainee will acquire. It's easy to disappear in a larger group. Being in an appropriate class size forces us to add in more input and to be seen by our certifying instructors more. Some people may not desire to be seen but this is yoga teacher training, you are being trained to stand in front of people and instruct them through movement so getting this ability is mandatory.
4. What is the experience of the teacher? How many classes have they taught? Can they teach more than one style of yoga? Do they know how to adjust different body types? Do they have much anatomy and physiology knowledge and have they bridged that knowledge to yoga? How many years of practice have they had? Do they cookie cut yoga (make the bodies fit the pose rather than adjusting the pose to fit the body)? How efficient is the instruction?
5. What is the major emphasis in the training? and does this emphasis align with what you are seeking to learn more about? Is the training inclined more towards the spiritual aspects of yoga? or more towards the anatomy and physiology? how in-depth do they break down the different portions? If they give you a syllabus that is basic and you want to know more about any section how well do they answer your questions?
6. How many previous graduates are there? is there positive and negative feedback? Is the feedback personal perspective or something that is encompassing? Are you able to talk to more than one or two of these individuals and ask some of the questions listed in this post?
7. Is the training known for creating better practitioners than teachers or better teachers than practitioners? one of the considerations one must make in teacher trainings is are they going to deepen their personal understanding and practice of yoga, or are they there to become a legitimate teacher of yoga that is insurable in the industry? There are many people going into teacher training who never teach public classes after, and some of them even claim they joined the training only to understand yoga better. Some trainings are going to be better geared towards making a good practitioner but do not necessarily equip people with a good teaching ability. 
8. Do you personally require them to have some form of recognition from a regulating body like Yoga Alliance or the International Federation of Yoga or one of the many other regulating bodies of yoga? Do you even know what it means to have recognition from one of these regulating bodies? What does the training state about these regulating bodies? Do you know how insurance works?

Currently, I am unaware of any study that has been done specific to learning how to teach things like yoga or movement and how much content in the training over a specific amount of time effects teacher retention of knowledge.
How could a randomized control trial of yoga teacher trainings be done to assess the effects on time in training per meeting day?
How can a teachers' effectiveness be assessed? What types of effectiveness are there?
How is a teachers' effectiveness affected by the time spent on teaching?


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What search terms can be used to examine the effect of time segments on learning?
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Time Factors

academic achievement
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