The benefits of PD

All professions evolve, with technological advancements, regulatory changes, and shifting societal expectations, so on-going PD is essential for maintaining public trust in professions (Fenwick, 2009). Well-written professional standards, when used as a PD framework, can help us to understand our breadth of practice and promote PD consistency (Hay et al., 2022). CDANZ certainly does that well, in my opinion.

Research in Alberta Canada found that PD ensures pharmacy professionals there remained proficient in their practice and were better able to respond effectively to new challenges, and teachers created annual PD plans aiding self-reflection and improved goal-setting (Fenwick, 2009). New Zealand practitioner research in the social work field shows most of us value the chance to upskill, and our confidence is increased by participating in PD (Hay et al., 2022). 

However, we need to be sure that the cost does not exceed the benefits. PD that adds too much workload makes it difficult to reflect meaningfully (Fenwick, 2009). UK research has found longer or expensive PD programmes have been discontinued through a lack of perceived practice improvement (Hay et al., 2022). 

We also need to be careful about the limitations of self-assessment: personal reviews may not accurately reflect our actual knowledge or skills; learning logs and checklists may not capture our complexity of practice (Fenwick, 2009). Being involved with communities of practice may gives us more opportunities for knowledge sharing, helping our identity development, and reducing isolation (Hay et al., 2022). And a community of practice helps to ensure that our self-assessment reflection gets some oversight. This too is where professional supervision can provide a great deal of value. 

Even establishing informal online communities for practitioners, if well-guided, can help prevent practitioners feeling isolated (Taylerson, 2020), enabling practitioners to have PD modelled by others around them in a meaningful way. We can draft others along with us by showing our peers how to participate; that PD is enjoyable and builds community (Taylerson, 2020). PD should not be presented as a chore. 

Socio-material theories, such as complexity science, cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), and actor-network theory (ANT), offer alternative ways to understand professional learning. These frameworks show us that learning doesn't just happen to us, but also happens in talking to others across our professional networks. For example, CHAT highlights how learning arises from resolving contradictions within a system, such as balancing innovation with error-free performance (Fenwick, 2009).

We need to move beyond traditional models and be able to embrace the distributed, emergent nature of professional knowledge (Fenwick, 2009). PD is vital for maintaining our professional competence, adapting to change, and fostering reflective practice (Fenwick, 2009), but only if we make the benefits obvious; the delivery flexible; and it is easy for us to participate.

Sam

References:

Fenwick, T. (2009). Making to measure? Reconsidering assessment in professional continuing education. Studies in Continuing Education, 31(3), 229-244. https://doi.org/10.1080/01580370903271446

Hay, K., Chilvers, D., & Maidment, J. (2022). Chapter 13: Aotearoa New Zealand Field Education Practice. In R. Baikady, S. M. Sajid, V. Nadesan, M. R. Islam (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Field Work Education in Social Work (pp. 203-218). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032164946-17

Taylerson, L. (2020). Growing Concerns: practitioners’ positions on engaging in Continuing Professional Development in a deregulated FE and Skills sector [Doctoral thesis, University of Sunderland]. https://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/13406/1/13406.pdf

 * NotebookLM was used to create the Lego graphic accompanying this post