Continued Personal and Professional Development

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................1
2 The Importance of CPD and PDP..................................................................................................3

1 INTRODUCTION
A Personal and Professional Development Plan (PDP) is a plan developed for

personal development at both the personal and professional levels. In this mandate, the PDP

was created with the next five years in mind and how it will help me develop and improve my

skills and knowledge. PDP has always played an important role in personal career

development, helping to improve planning and nurture life in a more balanced way. Be

prepared for opportunities and never fail to seize them. Develop and manage career paths

with set goals and objectives to be achieved. You can plan your personal life by going

through a PDP. Analyzing research can help you understand its impact on your learning and

leadership style.

Continuing professional development (CPD) is acquiring knowledge and expertise by

improving job skills. It will perform better and last a lifetime. CPD is described by the CPD

cycle. The CPD Cycle helps identify obstacles encountered in a person's professional and

personal development and helps develop plans to achieve goals and overcome challenges.

During these challenging times, creating and managing personal development plans to ensure

growth and employability becomes increasingly important. A person's career is an integral

part of a person's life. Therefore, it must be adequately planned and managed. This research

explores the importance of learning, how Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is

relevant to my organization, and how I can instil that skill for future endeavours. It helps you

gain insight. The study also covers your journey during the course, the obstacles you

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encountered, and the actions you took to overcome those obstacles. The insights gained from

the research have informed my future associations and led me to re-evaluate my goals for

more likely outcomes in the future. It aims to analyze and evaluate various concepts and

theories that help demonstrate understanding and form the basis of Continuing Personal and

Professional Development (CPPD).

My research aims to analyze the theories and concepts available for subject research

critically and to demonstrate the knowledge gained in this research. I also explained how it

helped me. To deepen my understanding, I also conducted self-evaluation and learning style

questionnaires and obtained comprehensive knowledge. It is also an ongoing process of

developing skills and improving over time for continued employability. I will take some tests,

such as Felder & Solomon LSQ (Appendix 1) and Honey & Mumford LSQ and their

summaries (Appendices 2 & 3). The results obtained from these tests help identify one's

strengths and weaknesses, which are included in the individual's SWOT analysis (Appendix

4). You can also recognize SMART goals for the short, medium, and long term (Appendix 5).

I use several other learning and testing resources available online to understand and validate

my learning style and techniques. As PDP and CPD are ongoing processes that support the

continuous improvement and development of skills that lead to continued employability and

success in professional and social life, they should be considered when implementing future

personal development plans to help you be better prepared.

2 THE IMPORTANCE OF CPD AND PDP

The CPD process is continually extended throughout an individual's life to enhance their

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professional and personal qualities, expand their knowledge and skills, and help them grow in

their professional roles and responsibilities. It is a process that helps individuals track and

document their learning and development through a continuous process of reflection and

action (Collin, Van der Heijden and Lewis, 2012). The whole process allows individuals to

empower and inspire their goals. It helps individuals to update and improve their knowledge

and abilities. It can be described as a combination of approaches, ideas, and techniques that

support personal growth and learning throughout a professional career. CPD processes are

planned, evaluated, and improved, and professional skills are developed (Masoumi, Hatami

and Pourkaremi, 2019).

Personal Development Plan (PDP) is an introspection and self-awareness plan that

helps individuals reflect on their learning style and development. It helps analyze, schedule,

and alter personal and professional development plans. The core learning process helps

identify personal goals, strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement to reach those

goals. It helps identify knowledge gaps and fix them for future efforts (Greenan, 2016). A

PDP is created or developed to achieve the goals and objectives set by the individual. The

PDP includes a variety of methods to help individuals review individual progress. PDP

enables individuals to reach their maximum level of skill and technique by improving their

performance, so they can consistently achieve the top results of their efforts at any point in

their career (Ketels, Beausaert and Segers, 2012).

A model proposed by CMI maps the continuous cycle of PDP. A CMI model is

represented by various steps that must be followed to achieve a set goal. The model works in

seven steps: establish, identify, develop, formulate, implement, record, and evaluate. Also, it

is a continuous process to achieve the desired goal, and once completed, it is pursued again to

reach another set of plans. It is one model that describes PDP and presents personal

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development as a continuous process of nurturing, shaping, and developing an individual's

skills and knowledge to ensure maximum effectiveness and continued employability.

https://www.managers.org.uk/knowledge-and-insights/research/personal-development-planning/

Gibbs (1988) proposed a model known as Gibbs's Reflective Model that represents

learning from experience. The cyclical nature of the framework allows us to explore, evaluate

and review experiences and develop action plans. It can be a single experience or multiple

experiences. Reflection is the act of recalling and reconstructing an event. Also, it is

evaluated, and areas for improvement are analyzed. The cycle offers an examination of felt

experience throughout the process. It's constantly improving, an ongoing process that needs

to be maintained (Wain, 2017). It is recorded and divided into sections (Appendix 15).

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 Diagram: Gibbs G [1988] Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford

Polytechnic: Oxford.

Kolb's (1984) model is known as Kolb's reflection model of learning or experiential

learning because it is based on individual experience, reviewing, perfecting, and

experimenting with knowledge gained from experience. This model has four stages that begin

with an individual's concrete experience and lead to reflection. Knowledge, i.e., observation,

the next step is analysis, i.e., learning gained from experience, and then evaluation, i.e.,

planning or testing what has been learned. Once the cycle is completed, a new understanding

of another process emerges (Morris, 2019).

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 https://dajan.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/readingnotesonmoon/

Study different models, help point out deficiencies and restructure our development

plans to achieve more favourable results for future growth. All models helped identify

weaknesses so that we could work again towards goals. When traversing a PDP, reflection is

its central pillar. Reflection is evaluating one's experience, measured through practice and

approach. Ratings are compared and observed for future reference. It's always difficult to

reflect on your own experiences and use them for self-improvement. Engaging with PDP

early in career also has benefits, such as identifying and unlocking a person's potential,

providing evidence of their strengths, and helping them plan for the future.

I am always looking forward to improving my skills and constantly reflecting on the

achievements and want to accomplish in the future. This will allow me to improve all aspects

of life. Thinking about learning helps you set goals to achieve and measure them within a

specified time frame, making you more realistic. I am focused on gaining knowledge that will

help me gain an exceptional edge when applying for jobs. It is therefore vital to promptly

update my skills and expertise. Gaining experience is significant as it allows you to

understand how to react and act in a crisis. Various literature and theories helped me

understand the importance of PDP and CPD. It enables you to plan and execute accordingly

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and improve your knowledge and skills in multiple subjects. As a result, I can shape my

professional and personal career. Reflections help individuals develop new skills and check

the effectiveness of acquired skills. We review and evaluate the actions performed, take

corrective action on what can be done for improvement, and implement those corrective

actions.

The learning encouraged me to prepare and develop specific, measurable, and realistic

goals and showed me how to achieve them within a time frame. It helped me adapt and stay

flexible, which will help me plan and shape the future more predictably.