In our learning journey, we need to be aware of our learning methods. Most of us have preference and process information differently.
It is important to be able to audit ourselves and take the advantage of the information of different learning plans, which can help us in the learning process.
Becoming a good learner will set us up for a success in any life situation. You can take the control and responsibility for your own learning. This will bust up your confidence and allow to progress in life improving your behaviour and performance.
Autonomous learners
We need to become the autonomous learners and take control of our own learning. We need to become self-motivated, instead of waiting for someone else to tell us anything.
One of the way of doing it at work would be to understanding how the processes work, for example. We must understand the requirements and procedures of our programme. Then, the next step would be to ask questions. We than begin to possess the critical thinking skills. Research also comes with it.
As we learn more about our discipline, subject or profession and understand how we learn, we become more and more autonomous. Our confidence and independence will improve enormously.
It is very useful to have a Learning Program in place with your employer. In the program we can identify our learning needs, career goals and the goals of our organisation. This planning empowers to develop continuously.
Personal Development Plan (PDP)
Personal Development Planning has become very popular these days.
The process involves determining on how would you like your life to develop and identifying what you want to do. It also involves establishing requirements on where we should improve.
Completing these exercises will help us to establish our strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify what is important to us. In a professional PDP (Personal Development Plan) you should be able to plan some specific outcomes, for your educational, personal and career development. You should be able to determine:
* what do you want to learn,
* how you will learn it,
* what resources you need to learn,
* how you will measure the progress,
* what are the timeframes.
The main objective of PDP is to improve our capacity to understand what and how we learn. As well as to review and take responsibility for our own learning. This helps us to become more effective, improve our skills and strengthen our employability. A very important point that cannot be underestimated, is that we become more analytical and more strategic about our learning, thus fulfilling personal ambitions.
The start of the learning journey should be made by producing a personal statement. It describes where you have come from and what you want to achieve through your learning. Use it for self-analysis and self-reflection.
The next step, would be to develop a learning CV. This should provide the overall picture of your past learning achievements. It is not a job CV, but only considering your learning information.
Than, we look at our job description. Here, we are looking at describing our current roles and responsibilities. We need to ensure that the description gives full and accurate picture of your work role. It should include what you know, as well as what you do.
Preparing these, allow us to see our main strengths as well as the main development ideas. Additionally, we can use many types of analysis methods, including PEST (political, economic, social and technological) or SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). These well established techniques help to identify critical issues and allow us to come up with a development plan. These techniques will not give us specific answers, but help to identify and organise the information. However, we need to be honest and objective when identifying our abilities.
Having completed analysis, we can than combine it with the personal statement, learning CV and job description.
This can be a very powerful piece of information identifying what we want and need to know, learn and develop. Any identified gaps will prevent our progression and it is worth spending some time thinking about them.
Continual Professional Development (CPD)
Continual Professional Development is a lifelong learning and our commitment to skills improvement and personal competence in a structured way.
This is a commitment of being professional, keeping up to date and learning continuously. CPD is commonly known is widely used across employment roles and sectors. It enhances our career opportunities. This is putting an obligation on us to improve, expand and sustain our learning.
Professions, such as management, teaching, engineering widely accepts the principles within a large multinational cooperations. Employers value employees who take responsibility for their own development. This allows organisations to built up on talent and skills employees already have, as well as recognise and achieve your potential.
Often, in a busy working life, however, we make the excuse that we do not have time to reflect on our learning and development. But, this cannot be underestimated. It encourages curiosity and reflection as well as asking questions what need to change. It is important to be able to find time and think about your skills, plan and record your progress.
The CPD curriculum is based on few main steps:
1. Plan
2. Do
3. Self-assess, and
4. Review.
Becoming skilled in developing one will help you becoming one accomplished learner. You can become an expert in recognising your learning needs as well as opportunities for the future.
This allows to cope with change easier, be confident in taking risks and become more creative.
We need to understand also, that nothing is static. Even when we have made a perfect plan this may well change. Change may need to occur because of the environment and external changes behind your control. Some people resist change, and some embrace and adjust.
You will find yourself dealing with increasing change. As much as change can be frustrating we need to see it as an opportunity. With the ever changing world new jobs and opportunities emerge.
We must, therefore learn continuously to keep ahead of that change. Personal Development Plans and Continuous Professional Development allow to cope and handle the change in confident manner.
We are being asked to be multi-skilled individuals these days and need to become adaptable to ever changing requirements. Therefore planning, evaluating and negotiating our learning should help with it.
Resources
CIPD, "Development Plan and CPD Templates", www.cipd.co.uk
Hattie J. and Yates G., 2014, "Visible learning and the science of how we learn"
Heyler R., 2015, The workplace learning,pp.120-142
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