CAREER SPOTLIGHT


HOW DO I KEEP MY CPD RELEVANT? By Donna Lucas


At different stages of your career you will need different professional development. It is essential that you are able to recognise areas that need your attention and that you keep your continuing professional development (CPD) relevant. CPD is a process of continually maintaining,


Research programme (PRP), both organised through the Education and Training Foundation (ETF). SET also runs Local Network Groups, which are great for keeping up to speed and exchanging ideas. Joyce I-Hui Chen is a lecturer in teacher education and professional development at the College of West Anglia. She holds Advanced Teacher Status (ATS) and is a Fellow of SET.


LINKS


• SET webinars – bit.ly/SETWebinars • SET Webchats – bit.ly/SETWebchats • SET Local Network Groups – bit.ly/LocalNetworkGroups • Twitter: @SocietyET • Professional Exchange Networks – bit.ly/ProfessionalExchangeNetworks


• Practitioner Research Programme – bit.ly/PractitionerResearchProgramme


Creating the space to learn and experiment


improving and broadening your skills and knowledge, as well as developing personal qualities, which help to ensure you remain professionally competent. I’m always delighted to see colleagues progress


their professional learning in ways most relevant to them, especially when it is also developing and improving the experiences of their learners. I believe CPD is best when it enables learning to become a conscious and proactive activity, rather than simply being passive and reactive. So, plan it. Consider how you are going to put your CPD into action. By doing so you can ensure it doesn’t become just something you remember learning about once!


By Beata Babula Many years ago, a very wise teacher educator told me that teachers’ beliefs about how people learn are very important because these views influence the way they teach. If she was right, it might be true that to avoid teachers’ resistance CPD needs to work around those beliefs rather than contradict them. In small-scale research I have been conducting


recently, I have learnt that lecturers want to continuously develop their skills, mainly because they believe that it will help their students. Another common feature was that there was an appreciation of innovative, inspiring and relevant training. In other research, such as that conducted by Daniel Pink, an expert on intrinsic motivation and author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, it was found that when employees are given time to develop something new, and are asked to present the result, they will come up with remarkable outcomes. It might be that taking ownership of our CPD training in that way would be a more effective way forward. Beata Babula is a professional development lecturer at the College of West Anglia. She is a member of SET’s Practitioner Advisory Group (PAG).


A common myth is that CPD only counts if delivered in the form of a training session. But it is available in so many different ways, such as conferences, workshops, learning events, e-learning, shadowing, best practice visits and sharing ideas. Any activity where you spend time learning something and deciding how it can be put into practice in your work can be counted as CPD. It is good practice to record your reflections on


your CPD, drawing out your most valuable learning experiences across a variety of learning activities. In particular, record important changes to your practice as it develops. Consider including: what worked or didn’t; online modules; work-related personal reading and research; professional conversations and observation feedback. At times your CPD will be subject-based and, at others, it will be connected to your pedagogy. As long as you are keeping up to date and, importantly, seeing how this forms part of your normal professional practice, it should remain relevant.


Donna Lucas


is group vice-principal, HR and professional development, at the Shrewsbury Colleges Group and chairs the Association of Colleges’ West Midlands HR Network. She is a Member of SET and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.


InTUITION ISSUE 37 • A SPRING 2019 29 inUITION ISSUE 35 • UTUMN 2019


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