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Garry Platt

EEF

Senior Consultant

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CPD = Pants

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What a complete load of pants Continuous Professional Development or CPD as it gets called is! Many professional bodies require or demand that their members provide evidence of CPD by listing or presenting evidence of learning. This ‘evidence’ can often consist of an attendance certificate for a programme or details of a book they read or conference they attended. It’s nonsense! None of this provides any evidence of anything that might be construed as either continuous, professional or indeed development of any kind.

People attend training  courses, participate in chronic e based development, read books and magazines and endlessly go to conferences without anything improving, developing or getting better in their working practises. And what kind of a medieval educational mind set continuous to believe that a statutory number of ‘CPD days’ is they way to ensure the continued progress of its members?

The whole concept sucks and blows simultaneously it’s so bad. Gee I’m glad I’ve got this of my chest. I’ll return to my lunch now and eat my sandwiches, which I am going to record as part of my CPD.

3 Responses

  1. CPD

    The whole CPD edifice is premised on protection of the public. If they were serious they would start from a core of skills supposedly taken for granted by the public – health professionals knowing how to rescusitate, fire knowledge etc and updates on things that genuinely change like laws, drugs. In practise we see nothing of the sort. There is no genuine rationale for the CPD industry.

  2. evidence = reflection

    Perhaps it is not the idea of CPD that is the issue – more what you would accept as "evidence".

    In no way should an attendance certficate be accepted as "evidence" of learning.  Unless you have engaged in some form of reflective practice after you have attended which clearly outlines

    • what you wanted to learn / develop as a result of the activity
    • what you actually learnt
    • what you will do with the knowledge after – how it will be implemented to benefit your work/career progression

    and then of course you return to your reflective piece now and agian to refresh yourself, then I agree there is little point to doing it.

    I wouldn’t dismiss CPD as "pants" – I would suggest that it is up to the individual whether they make the most of the professional development opportunities afforded to them by being a member of a professional body.

     

     

  3. CPD = Worse Than Pants

    Is reflective practice evidence of learning? I suspect in many cases it is merely evidence of someone who has learnt to jump through this particular hoop. Formalised reflective practise is in my opinion merely another system that can provide recorded ‘evidence’ for review by a third party, another academic remnant of assessment. I have yet to experience any personal benefit from this process or see it proven as beneficial in the rigid way it is employed by those bodies that require it.

    And I would disagree ‘that it is up to the individual whether they make the most of the professional development opportunities afforded to them by being a member of a professional body.’ I cannot see how being a member of a professional body affords any more opportunities to learn than not being a member, learning is as far as I know driven by the individual not enforced.

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Garry Platt

Senior Consultant

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