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My past two columns have focused on the issue of marketing Family Life Education (FLE) and the Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) credential. In my winter 2019 column I discussed challenges to increase the awareness and value of both the FLE practice and the credential, including the lack of academic identity and the diversity of settings in which FLE takes place. My spring 2020 column included several implemented and proposed marketing strategies. I requested the involvement of CFLEs and NCFR members in assisting NCFR staff in the carrying out of a focused effort to increase the value and recognition of FLE and CFLE.

I was pleased to be contacted by NCFR member Greg Brooks, Ph.D., an assistant professor of marriage and family studies at Abilene Christian University. He has conducted research about the job market for CFLEs and asked whether NCFR would be interested in collaborating to extend his research.

To date, Dr. Brooks’s research has confirmed that the little exposure the CFLE credential does receive through job advertisements is limited to positions in postsecondary education. His next efforts involving job advertisements and outreach to potential CFLE employers will provide NCFR with valuable information to guide our future marketing strategies. I asked Dr. Brooks to summarize his previous research efforts and outcomes, as well as his plans for extending that research. Bailey Gomez also contributed to this article. I join Dr. Brooks and Ms. Gomez in encouraging CFLEs and NCFR members to share your questions and suggestions.

The Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) credential exists to “provide assurance to employers and consumers that the designee is qualified to be providing Family Life Education” (NCFR, 2013, p. 4). Family Life Education is carried out in a myriad of settings that provide direct and indirect services to families (Wilkins, Taner, Cassidy, & Cenizal, 2014) and yet, many of the individuals and families that benefit from FLE services, as well as staff at the organizations and agencies providing these services, are unaware that the credential exists.

As you’ll read in this article, we briefly discuss research we have been conducting on the status of the CFLE in the job market and propose directions for research to understand the decision-making processes of managers who are hiring for Family Life Education positions.

In 2018–2019 we conducted a content analysis project regarding the CFLE credential. This involved a weekly search of five national job advertisement sites (Monster, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, the NCFR Jobs Center, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Job Connection) using the search terms CFLE and Certified Family Life Educator. Our sampling frame included search results in September–December 2018 and August–October 2019. Our searches revealed 41 unique job advertisements that included our search terms anywhere in the advertisement’s text or title.

The most common category in which we found the CFLE credential mentioned was college or university faculty, in 28 of the total 41 advertisements. Of those, 19 were for tenure-track positions, three for adjunct positions, and six for non-tenure-track faculty roles (e.g., instructor, clinical faculty). Another job advertisement was for an academic coordinator position in a university department that offers a CFLE-approved degree program. Eleven job advertisements were for family and adoption specialist positions, all of which were with one statewide private agency in Texas, and one was for a child abuse prevention educator for a countywide child advocacy agency in Texas.

From these 41 job advertisements, only three listed the CFLE as a required credential for candidates. Thirty advertisements stated that the CFLE credential was a preferred qualification. Eight advertisements mentioned the CFLE credential because the candidate would have an administrative or faculty role in a CFLE-approved university program, but it was not a required or preferred credential.

All three advertisements that listed the CFLE credential as required were faculty positions: one adjunct, one instructor, and one tenure-track position. Each of the 11 family and adoption specialist positions, as well as the child abuse prevention educator position, also listed the CFLE as a preferred credential for candidates.

These findings suggest that faculty positions make up most job advertisements that mention either CFLE or Certified Family Life Educator. In fact, if it were not for two private agencies in Texas, there would have been no advertisements for nonfaculty jobs seeking candidates with the CFLE credential in our sampling frame. This aligns with previous research about the work settings of CFLEs: In a 2009 survey of 412 fully credentialed CFLEs and 110 provisional CFLEs, the largest proportion of participants reported that their primary work setting was postsecondary education (34%; Darling, Fleming, & Cassidy). Community-based services, which includes adoption and foster care as well as child abuse prevention, was the second most common primary work setting, selected by 20% of respondents.

We wondered how many nationally advertised positions that CFLEs are qualified for do not list our search terms of CFLE and Certified Family Life Educator. So we performed a separate search on a single day in November 2019, using the search term parent educator, on a single national job advertisement site (Indeed). The search returned 174 unique job advertisements. Although many of these advertisements were for jobs in the medical field, such as public health professionals and nurses, this large return of results suggests that more research and analysis is needed before we can draw further conclusions.

Of the 41 nationally posted job advertisements that included the terms of either Certified Family Life Educator or CFLE, the majority of positions were relevant only to CFLEs interested in careers in higher education. In the next phase of our research we plan to investigate why this is the case.

We are continuing to collect nationally posted job advertisements, and in 2020 we have expanded our search terms to include words and phrases relevant to the jobs performed by CFLEs. Including the top five most common practice settings among CFLEs, after postsecondary education, as identified by the survey conducted by Darling, Fleming, and Cassidy (2009): parenting education, marriage/relationship education, early childhood education, cooperative extension/community education, and K–12 education. To attempt to limit our results to job ads that are relevant to CFLEs, we plan to narrow the category of K–12 education through the additional search terms family and consumer sciences, home economics, child development, family studies, and family science.

Using these search terms, we will perform content analysis to identify characteristics such as job category, required and preferred candidate qualifications, and location. Our purpose in this analysis will be to identify nationally advertised jobs for which a CFLE would be by default a qualified candidate but that do not include Certified Family Life Educator or CFLE in the advertisement title or text.

In the summer of 2020, we plan to begin contacting hiring managers, identified by the job advertisements collected that did not specifically identify the CFLE credential, and interviewing them about their decision-making process regarding the job in question. Specifically, we will inquire about those individuals’ awareness of the CFLE credential, and whether they consciously chose not to include it in the job advertisement. Our plan is to use a first round of interviews to develop a survey instrument that may be distributed widely to a larger sample of hiring managers.

This research is the first of its kind regarding the CFLE credential. Despite the qualifications of CFLEs themselves, the credential appears to receive very little attention in the job market. As we continue, we anticipate learning a great deal about why this is the case. We welcome the suggestions and questions of CFLEs and other NCFR members about our research plan.

Greg Brooks, Ph.D., LMFT, is an assistant professor of marriage and family studies at Abilene Christian University.

Bailey Gomez is a graduate assistant at Abilene Christian University pursuing a master’s degree focused in marriage and family therapy and counseling.

References

Cassidy, D. (2017, Fall). CFLE directions: Meeting the needs of practitioner CFLEs. CFLE Network. Retrieved from https://www.ncfr.org/cfle-network/fall-2017-tech/directions-meeting-the…

Darling, C. A., Fleming, W. M., & Cassidy, D. (2009). Professionalization of family life education: Defining the field. Family Relations, 58, 330–345.

National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). (2013). Standards and criteria: Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) designation. Minneapolis, MN: Author. Retrieved from https://www.ncfr.org/sites/default/files/standards_2013.pdf

Wilkins, J. K., Taner, E., Cassidy, D., & Cenizal, R. (2014). Family life education: A profession with a proven return on investment (ROI) [White paper]. Retrieved from https://www.ncfr.org/sites/default/files/ncfr_white_paper_family_life_e…