Continuing Professional Development: A step-by-step guide

This booklet will:

Ø  explain what Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is and why you should do it

Ø  take you through the practical steps of how to do CPD

Ø  give you the tools to carry out CPD on your own initiative

Ø  give details of the professional CPD schemes administered by the Museums Association (MA).

Introduction

CPD is a process that enables you to take responsibility for enhancing your knowledge, skills and competence throughout your career.

CPD

Ø  is about job satisfaction as well as career enhancement

Ø  benefits the individual, employer and sector as a whole

Ø  helps you achieve your goals through carefully planned and personally tailored activities and reflection

Ø  is controlled and driven by you, while you work.

Why do CPD?

CPD enables you to plan your learning and development proactively, and equips you to meet personal and professional challenges. It helps you to update your knowledge and skills, prepare for changing roles in your organisation, and take on new responsibilities. CPD is a bridge between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.

What are the benefits?

To the individual, CPD:

Ø  improves your personal and professional abilities

Ø  increases your ability to spot opportunities and cope with change and challenges

Ø  helps you plan your development to fit the way you learn best

Ø  helps you make the best use of resources

Ø  encourages you to proactively plan a career path

Ø  gives you professional recognition

Ø  helps you develop networks and professional contacts

Ø  helps you to keep up to date with developments within the profession

Ø  shows your commitment to continuing improvement

Ø  enhances your current position and improves job satisfaction.

To the employing organisation, CPD:

Ø  develops staff in a cost-effective way

Ø  improves the personal and professional competence of staff to achieve organisational objectives and cope with challenges and changes

Ø  improves internal and external networks and communication

Ø  encourages a dynamic approach to learning and development

Ø  improves motivation, job satisfaction and retention of staff

Ø  enables succession planning through development of staff to fill future roles

Ø  demonstrates organisational commitment to standards of excellence, and lifelong learning.

To the museum profession, CPD:

Ø  enables people from different museums to continually share and update skills and knowledge in a focused way

Ø  helps maintain and raise standards of excellence within the profession

Ø  helps maintain high levels of competence and capacity to respond positively to change.

Why enrol in a professional scheme?

If you enrole in a scheme such as the AMA, you will receive formal acknowledgement for the CPD you are doing and benefit from the support of a mentor. You will also have access to further advice, formal feedback on your paperwork and additional support through, workshops, reviewers and assessors.

The MA administers several CPD schemes depending on what stage you are at in your career. The schemes are centred on the CPD tools detailed in this booklet. For more information please see the section Professional schemes on pXX.

Getting started

CPD has three essential elements – planning, action and reflection. These apply if CPD is carried out through a professional scheme, such as the Associateship of the Museums Association (AMA) or Fellowship of the Museums Association (FMA), or is self-driven.

There are tools to help you fulfil these three elements; a CPD plan, a log and a summary. This section explains how to use these tools and how to get started with CPD.

Before reading through this section it would be helpful to print off a blank CPD plan, log and summary to refer to. These can be downloaded from the MA website, www.museumsassociation/cpd

Planning: How to write a CPD plan

A CPD plan is a framework for you to:

• list the current main areas of your work

• articulate your longer-term aspirations

• identify your goals for the next two years

• define what you need to learn and develop in order to achieve your goals

• determine which specific activities will meet your needs.

Each CPD plan will be different because no two individuals will do exactly the same job or have the same aspirations, abilities, opportunities, learning styles or needs. A CPD plan will map out what you are going achieve over the next two years to take your career forward.

Step 1:

Self-assessment: Where are you currently?

List what you currently do under a few broad headings. You could begin by looking at your job description.. Consider whether it corresponds to your actual responsibilities, duties and activities. You need to know and understand what you do before you can plan your development.

Think about the skills and knowledge that you have to perform those tasks or activities effectively and write them down. At what level are your skills? Think specifically rather than generally. Do you need to develop your skills in these areas, how much of a priority is this?

Step 2:

Write a SWOT analysis

List your current abilities and situation under the following headings:

Strengths – what are the things that I do well?

Weaknesses – where do I need to improve?

Opportunities – what new opportunities are there for me?

Threats – what challenges are there for me?

The SWOT framework helps you identify your strengths, the areas you would like to develop and where the greatest opportunities lie. It also shows where you are weaker or face a potential threat so that you can take action to address these areas. You may find it useful to involve others such as your line manager, colleagues and ‘critical friends’ when carrying out this analysis.

Step 3:

Current roles

From your self assessment, pick out the areas of your current work that you would like to concentrate on and develop. Think about what you have learned about yourself through your SWOT analysis. Write down specific areas of your current work that you would like to develop in the first column of your CPD plan.

Step 4:

Future aspirations

Consider your immediate career prospects and think beyond them to the limits of your appetite and ability to make your mark as a professional. What are your long-term aspirations? Most CPD plans list two or three of these. You will not be held to them, but unless you think about what you truly want to do in the future you cannot plan for it. Write down two or three future aspirations in the first column of your CPD plan, beneath your current roles.

Step 5:

Goals

Your goals are the building blocks to help you achieve your longer-term aspirations. They need to be compatible with your immediate personal circumstances and opportunities.

To help you establish your goals consider the following questions:

Ø  what areas of your current role would you like to develop further?

Ø  to achieve the promotion or change in career that you aspire to, what improvements in work performance will you have to make?

Ø  what further knowledge and qualifications do you need?

Ø  in what areas do you need to develop greater self-confidence or upgrade your skills?

Ø  what is realistically achievable in the next two years?

How CPD fits in with your organisational goals and personal ambitions

It is helpful to recognise where CPD fits in with other demands on your time. The diagram below shows that there is some overlap between organisational goals and personal ambitions, but there is also some distinction between all three areas:


Organisational goals: These are often identified during your appraisal. Some goals will directly relate to your organisation, but will not fit with your professional goals (do not write these on your plan). For example, you may have an appraisal target of documenting 500 objects, but although documentation is a major part of your current role it is not an area you want to pursue in the future.

There will also be some organisational goals that overlap with your professional goals. For example, you may identify the need to develop your PowerPoint and presentation skills to help you in your current job, and to equip you with a skill to take forward in the future. These goals should feature on your CPD plan.

Professional or CPD goals: These form the basis of your CPD plan. An example of a distinct CPD goal may be to gain some experience of fundraising, something that you do not have the opportunity to do in your current role but you recognise as a vital skill that you are lacking.

Personal ambitions: Learning a language might be an example of both a personal ambition and a CPD goal – a skill you have always wanted and something that may help you in your future career.

Try to distinguish between all three areas and identify any overlaps.

Most CPD plans identify goals to be achieved over the next 18-24 months. Be realistic about what you can achieve in that time frame. Write down four or five realistic goals in the second column of your plan.

Example:

Goal
To improve my project management skills to be able to take the lead on small projects.

Step 6:

Learning and development needs

You have identified your goals. Now break them down into what you need to learn or how you need to develop in order to achieve them. Think of needs in terms of your skills, knowledge and understanding and not in terms of resources. Your needs are the link between your goals and the specific activities you will identify. You may have the same or similar goal as someone else but your needs will be different as they are defined by what you know or can do already, and the method in which you learn best.

Look systematically at each of your goals. To make them manageable you will need to consider what is achievable considering the resources and time available to you. Revisit your SWOT analysis and identify any related strengths and weaknesses. You may find it useful to think about the following questions when breaking down your goals into needs:

Ø  what do I do well?

Ø  what could I do better?

Ø  what new knowledge and skills might I, or my organisation need from me?

Identify and write down a set of specific learning and development needs for each of your goals in the third column of your CPD plan.

Example:

Goal /

Needs

To improve my project management skills to be able to take the lead in small projects. / Understand basic project management techniques and tools.
Understand how techniques and tools are put into practice.
Utilise new skills on a practical project.

Step 7:

Specific development activities

Once you have identified your goals and defined your needs your next step is to determine which specific activities will meet those needs. Consider work-based and professional activities and formal and informal learning. Some of the options you could consider include:

Work-based

Ø  secondments (inside and outside the organisation)

Ø  special projects

Ø  shadowing others

Ø  contributing to planning, such as strategic or forward planning

Ø  liaising with other organisations.

Professional

Ø  joining a CPD support group

Ø  involvement with a regional agency or federation, a specialist group or MA or ICOM committee.

Formal learning

Ø  professional or vocational courses

Ø  attending short courses, conferences, seminars and workshops

Ø  lecturing

Ø  writing or reviewing conference papers

Ø  running or contributing to seminars, workshops or conferences.

Informal learning

Ø  reading and reviewing journals, books, newspapers

Ø  using other learning materials eg videos, CD-ROMS, audio tapes

Ø  using the internet.

When defining your activities ensure they are clear, detailed and explicit. State the actual course/conference/training session you would like to attend and be specific about who will be involved and when the activity is likely to happen. It is important to put a time frame on each activity to help you prioritise and make your plan realistic.

In the fourth column, write down a set of specific and time-planned activities for each of your needs.

Example:

Goal / Needs / Activities
To improve my project management skills to be able to take the lead in small projects. / Understand basic project management techniques and tools. / Read The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun O’Reilly by October 2007
Understand how techniques and tools are put into practice. / Attend MLA Yorkshire Project Management for Beginners course

25 November 2007

Utilise new skills on a practical project. /

Meet with two managers (one within organisation and one external) to discuss good project management techniques

Jan – Feb 2008

Take leading role in redesigning summer education programme.

Apr – Jun 2008

Step 8:

Networking

Networking is an important aspect of professional development, and a thread that should run explicitly throughout your plan. Planned activities should improve the quality of your working relationships and your ability to network across the museum sector and beyond. They should enable you to make a difference to your own and others’ understanding, attitudes and professional work. You can network at events, conferences, meetings and social occasions, but the important thing is that you talk to people, share opinions and ideas and follow up on new contacts.

Check that networking is evident within your plan.

You have now completed your CPD plan, it should look similar to this:

Example of CPD plan

Remember: You should make the most of help available to you, but planning and implementing CPD is your responsibility. Effective learners know best what they need to learn.

How do I know my plan will work?

There are various techniques you can use to check that your plan will work :

Check that it is SMART:

Specific – have you given enough detail in your plan?

Measurable – how will you know when you have achieved a goal?

Achievable – have you been realistic when setting your activities, needs and goals?

Relevant – does your plan link up? Will achieving your goals help you on your way to your future aspirations?