Continuing Professional Development

Lifelong Learning of Millions

Andrew L. Friedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415677912
• eBook ISBN: 9781136653377
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the means by which the professions across the world ensure that their knowledge and skills remain up to date and relevant to changing needs and environments. CPD significantly contributes to the quality and reputation of the professions and therefore to the quality of national and international social life and economic well being.

Starting with a discussion on what CPD is, the author analyzes how professional bodies govern CPD, what support they provide to individual professionals and how they measure or evaluate what individuals do under the provenance of CPD. Continuing Professional Development explains why, up to now, CPD has been a relatively neglected subject in spite of it being carried out by millions. It argues whether a variety of perspectives or visions of CPD has held back wider public appreciation of it and if greater co-ordination by professional bodies, or the introduction of new players to the field, will change this in the future.

Providing the first comprehensive study of the subject, this innovative book will be required reading for CPD professionals and researchers and is a fascinating read for all professionals, especially those involved with human resource development and management / leadership development.

Part I

In Part I we attempt to answer questions posed at the end of the Introduction.We focus on what is CPD and provide a general framework for understandingthe complexity of this question.

We first examine the ‘what’ of CPD in common sense or surface terms. How is it formally defined, what is the process of doing CPD, what counts as CPD and what activities are undertaken as CPD?

Second, we introduce the concept of the CPD field and examine its key players or stakeholders. We believe this will help us to explore and understand the deeper meaning of CPD, or rather the different meanings underlying CPD according to different types of players and stakeholders.

Third, we examine the prehistory of CPD and its emergence. This is done through a series of different visions that encourage the explanation of the emergence of CPD to focus on different things. We argue that all these visions are helpful for understanding not only what CPD is, but also its significance for professionals, professionalism and ultimately for society as a whole. Or rather what its potential significance is, because we argue that this significance is not widely recognized. For that potential to be realized, it must be more widely recognized and understood.

1

What is Cpd? Complex and Varied!

Define complexity! Differing definitions? Many parts? Many ways of identifying the phenomenon?

1.1 Introduction

Understanding what CPD is, is itself complex. We begin by examining definitions; there are many. Different definitions produce different views of what CPD is meant to achieve. This is one reason for the CPD mystery: why it is not well understood or appreciated by the general public, in spite of how widespread and potentially important it is. To deal with this variety we introduce the concept of Professional Development Value (PDV).

There are other ways of understanding what CPD is, beyond formal definitions; by exploring the types of learning activities involved, as well as the processes of carrying out and administering CPD. Definitions, activities and processes can be linked by considering what counts as CPD; what are regarded as valid CPD activities.¹

1.2 How CPD is formally defined

The definitions in Exhibit 1.1 are recognizable as describing a common phenomenon; but only just. Is CPD a commitment, a requirement, a process? Is it educational, learning or training activities, or a combination of approaches, ideas and techniques? What is it for? To understand the aims of CPD, consider a particular definition.

The most commonly used definition by professional bodies in the UK was put forward by the Construction Industry Council (CIC) in 1986:

The systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and skills, and the development of personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional and technical duties throughout the individual’s working life.

Out of 102 professional bodies surveyed, 55 published a definition of CPD and 22 of these used the CIC definition (Friedman, Davis et al. 2000: 41). The majority were from construction and building and from the engineering sector (15 of them). However, other professional bodies using this definition were spread widely; three from health, two from finance, one education and one ecological.

Exhibit 1.1 Definitions of CPD

The systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge & skills, and the development of personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional and technical duties throughout the member’s working life.

(Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons; RCVS 2006)

CPD (Continuing Personal/Professional Development) is defined as the holistic commitment to structured skills enhancement and personal or professional competence.

(Strategic Forum for Construction 2002)

CPD (Continuing Professional Development) is the requirement that the members of a profession or organization undertake training to maintain their competence, knowledge, skills and integrity on a regular, structured basis after they qualify.

(Royal Institute of British Architects; RIBA 2008)

CPD is the process by which pharmacists and pharmacy technicians keep up-to-date through learning. It includes everything you learn that enables you to do a better job. We all learn from experience at work as well as from formal education activities. CPD includes both learning from work and learning from continuing education.

(Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain; RPSGB 2008)

CPD is an abbreviation for Continuing Professional Development. It refers to the postgraduate educational activities physicians are expected to undertake in order to ensure that they remain up-to-date in their field and continue to develop and enhance the knowledge and skills required to be successful in their working lives.

(Royal College of Physicians; RCP 2008)

CPD is a combination of approaches, ideas and techniques that will help you manage your own learning and growth. The focus of CPD is firmly on results – the benefits that professional development can bring you in the real world. Perhaps the most important message is that one size doesn’t fit all. Wherever you are in your career now, and whatever you want to achieve, your CPD should be exactly that: yours.

(Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; CIPD 2008)

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) helps you create a structured career path, as well as safeguard your professional status. CPD is about your skills, knowledge and expertise, and reflecting on what you’ve gained or achieved.

(Institution of Occupational Safety and Health; IOSH 2010)

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a process by which individuals take control of their own learning and development by engaging in an on-going process of reflection and action. This process is empowering and exciting and can stimulate people to achieve their aspirations and move towards their dreams.

(Megginson and Whitaker 2007: 3)

The Health Professions Council (HPC) has defined Continuing Professional Development as: ‘A range of learning activities through which health professionals maintain and develop throughout their career to ensure that they retain their capacity to practise safely, effectively and legally within their evolving scope of practice.

(Health Professions Council; HPC 2009)

The University of Kent defines ‘Training and Professional Development’ as: ‘A range of short and long training programs, some of which have an option for accreditation, which foster the development of employment related knowledge, skills and understanding.

(University of Kent 2009)

1.2.1 CPD is systematic and formal

Perhaps the most significant word in the most common definition is systematic. There are parallels with some of the definitions in Exhibit 1.1 (holistic – Strategic Forum for Construction; structured – RIBA), though others use weaker terms (combination of approaches – CIPD; range of learning activities – HPC). We interpret systematic or structured as having two aspects:

• organized in a way that is capable of being made public in a comparable manner or in relation to a standard,² and
• strategic or capable of being understood in a purposive and comprehensive manner.

One way of interpreting CPD is as systemizing or formalizing what most (or at least those we would consider to be ‘good’) professionals would recognize as things that they ‘just do’. They would regard learning and developing as part and parcel of what they understand to be ordinary professional practice and participation in ordinary professional community life. However, CPD is different. It is the formal wrapping of some, often most, of those things good professionals just do. Or at least CPD is something standardized enough to be identified by a policy and programme. Beyond what a good professional ‘just does’ post-qualification, CPD is what that professional is seen to do. The wrapping only includes those things that are ‘counted’ as CPD, though in some professions some, or even all, CPD activities are self-certified and self-assessed.³

Arguably this wrapping changes the nature of what it is that professionals just do. At least it is likely to change how professionals regard what they do, their consciousness of it. CPD leads certain facets of professional practice and community life to shift from informal activities, tacitly generating knowledge, into conscious generation of knowledge. Learning and development that occurs only unconsciously or dimly consciously during actual professional practice comes to be reflected upon as actual learning and development.⁴

Conversations around a dinner table at a social function organized by a professional body; reading about a leader in the professional news magazine; attending a branch meeting of the association: these are informal activities that can be transformed into formally counted CPD activities. They can be measured against other activities (including formal training), in terms of their contribution to professional development through a CPD programme. Thinking with some amusement of the curious tip about how to operate a new bit of software mentioned over cheese and biscuits, or musing on how that professional leader went about mentoring a recent graduate with a physical disability, may not in the past have been regarded as professional development. CPD allows formalization or structuring of casual, informal and off-work thoughts and actions.

Even more connected to what professionals ‘just do’ is the learning and practice development that occurs during work or practice itself. Learning-by-doing can be thought of as several different learning and practice development activities: learning by reflecting on what is about to be done, on what is being done and on what has recently been done are all part of professional practice; or should be. For many, a distinguishing feature of professionals is reflective practice. The terms reflecting on practice and reflecting in practice are well known in many professional communities based on the influential work of Schön (1983, 1984).

Sometimes professionals are very aware of reflecting, learning and developing their expertise and professionalism during the hurly burly of practice. Sometimes professional practice is anything but a hurly burly. Much of professional practice involves reading notes and instructions or filling out forms. However, there are times when one’s senses are operating more intensely. This occurs during interactions with clients, employers and individuals in agencies with which professionals must negotiate to deliver services (such as the need for architects to deal with planning authorities or for doctors who are general practitioners to deal with hospital authorities).⁵ These situations, which may be regarded as the situated activities of professional practice, generate learning and practice changes that are arguably the most important aspects of professional development. Individual professionals will be more aware of the learning and practice development aspects of these situations, more alive to lessons to be learned, in early years, or when dealing with something new to them; a new technique or delivering a new service or advice on a new situation.

Under a formal CPD programme these situations, which may stimulate some to learning and practice development unconsciously, can be made more conscious and possibly more likely to influence practice if they are incorporated into CPD, and legitimated as such through formal reflection on practice implications and incorporation into a planning framework. Informal chat, interesting reading and exciting client interactions can have implications for knowledge, behaviour and practice even if they are not part of a CPD scheme, but they are more likely to have such implications if a context is provided for them to be reflected upon. CPD therefore does not merely formalize what professionals would do anyway in the sense of adding a layer of bureaucracy to these things. It not only allows informal activity to be standardized and thereby legitimated and made more transparent and accountable. Formalization itself can have positive outcomes for professional development. It can draw the attention of practitioners into a system of planning and reflection on their development as members of a profession.⁶ It can also bring the learning professionals do to the attention of the public.

1.2.2 CPD as including development of personal qualities

Including development of personal qualities as well as professional development particularly distinguishes the aims of CPD from merely keeping up-to-date. To some, personal development is part of professional development, even if it involves learning things that do not seem to be directly relevant to current practice. Members of the public may find this odd, an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of exhibits
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Author index
• Organization index
• Word and concept index