What should I do for Continual Professional Development (CPD)?
In this blog I will set out what Continual Professional Development (CPD) is, if your work role is in Training/Assessing or Quality Assurance. I will also cover how to decide what CPD would be best for you over the next year.
In a nutshell CPD is any activity which develops or enhances your professional role. It is how you maintain a high level of professionalism. It is also an important part of the quality assurance process of any training organisation and you should be able to provide a record of CPD to your employer, for quality assurance purposes and even to your learners if requested.
CPD is a way of keeping up to date with changes within your industry. For example I teach first aid so it is important that my knowledge and understanding of the guidance provided by the UK Resus Council is kept up to date. I know that this is reviewed every 5 years so that helps me to be aware of when changes to training may occur.
Undertaking short courses for CPD can also raise your own awareness and understanding of issues that may be affecting your learners and which may change the way you approach your teaching sessions. These could include safeguarding, promoting equality and valuing diversity, understanding neurodiversity and an awareness of LGBQT+
CPD can also motivate and inspire you in your own journey as a trainer, assessor or quality assurer. Maybe you love to read books and articles by those in your industry and in business in general who demonstrate some of the same values that you have. The way to improve and to rise to the next level is to follow and be mentored by those who are already at that higher level and can teach you how to get there too.
What CPD should I be doing?
There are the 3 key areas that you could consider: Values, Knowledge and Skills. Critically reflect on each area and then make a plan for development. At the end of this blog post you will find a link to a downloadable pdf to help you reflect of these 3 key areas.
Values - who you are.
What are your own beliefs and practices? What underlies your reason for being a trainer and working in education and training?
I have 3 key values: quality, lifelong learning and flexible lifestyle. These have led me to develop a training centre and methods of delivery that have quality at the heart of everything I do. I firmly believe in lifelong learning and sharing learning with others through blog posts, training courses and membership groups. Over the last 8 years I have worked hard to develop a flexible lifestyle so that I can enjoy travelling and physical exercise alongside my work commitments.
Also consider how well you value yourself and do you have a commitment to your own personal and professional development? Who inspires you and motivates you? Do you have a community of support, mentors and cheerleaders who also value you?
Knowledge - what you know
How do you keep your subject knowledge up to date?
For me this is reading updates from my Awarding organisation, attending First Aid courses to renew or refresh my own qualifications and reading relevant information online or in publications. Sometimes what I learn is triggered by a question from a learner on a course or by coming across some information that challenges my current thinking.
How do you know, share and apply, good evidenced based inclusive teaching practice?
Completing my Adult teaching qualification and then my PGCE back in 2009 was just the start of my journey to become a great trainer. With an initial degree in Psychology focussing on how people learn and develop I am fascinated by the process of learning. I love a good article on teaching and learning, classroom layout or instructional design. If I am going to implement a teaching practice in the classroom though I need to know the research evidence behind it and how best to apply the actual teaching. Once I have learned this I am then driven to share it with others!
Skills - what you do?
Reflect on your skills in the training environment and how you support learner behaviour, be inclusive, enable learners to achieve. Also consider how you keep your skills current in an ever changing environment such as the increased use of digital technologies in teaching and learning. Are you skilled in using feedback and other tools to enhance the learning and assessment process?
The COVID pandemic threw lots of us into the online teaching world overnight and for me was a real time of rapid learning but also had huge benefits in terms of how my business could both survive and then thrive. I am now moving towards a 50:50 split of face-to-face and online courses and this has really enabled the flexible lifestyle I was seeking to achieve. I am continuing to enhance my skill in designing online courses and making the learner experience the best it can be.
Many employers or awarding organisations will expect at least 7 hours of CPD to be completed each year, maybe more if you are working in an industry which requires you to be constantly refreshing your skills in specific areas.
I would say that it is easy to achieve 7 hours of CPD per month if you consider all the ways in which this can be achieved. In my next blog I will look at the many ways you can cover your CPD needs.