Managerial and Professional Development: CPD and Skills Development

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of managerial and professional development, emphasizing the critical role of Continuous Professional Development (CPD). It delves into the concept of lifelong learning and its importance in adapting to the rapidly changing professional landscape. The paper reflects on personal learning approaches, contrasting fragmented and focused approaches to CPD. It highlights the significance of CPD in fostering confidence, self-esteem, and improved learning skills among students and teachers alike. Furthermore, the essay discusses various activities and training methods for achieving proficiency, including self-reflection and experimental learning. Ultimately, it underscores the value of CPD in creating a competitive advantage through enhanced expertise and skills development, advocating for a strategic and integrated approach to professional growth.

Running head: MANAGERIAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Managerial and Professional Development
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Learning is and has always been one of the major part of the lives of man. Even at the
very young age, people show the signs of understanding and discovering pertaining to the
wide word around them. There are students who find it difficult to learn and hence, they are
considered to be suffering from learning disability. It is the responsibility and duty of the
common man to stand beside them and help them in improving. However, due to this reason
there are several intuitions and universities that have developed different courses and
programs in order to ensure that the needs of these special individuals are met. Moreover,
there are only few surveyors who have remained unaffected by the fast pace of changes that
have affected the profession of surveying over the last few decades. Professionalism depends
significantly on the ability of responding quickly to the changing nature of the market
condition, to the requirements of the clients and to the impacts of the different policies made
by the government. We are all always encouraged to foster innovation and to welcome
change. In order to adopt to these changes, development of new skills is very important. The
concept of “keeping up to date3” is no longer optional, it instead is increasingly key to the
organisational and professional success. This paper shall elaborate on a clear understanding
of the concept of CPD. It shall reflect on my own approach to learning and continuing
professional development as well by taking into consideration of the existing approaches.
CPD, also known as the Continuous Professional Development is widely
acknowledge to be of a great importance, particularly in the school life and is contributing to
the personal and professional development for the staffs as well as in the process of
improvement in the field of learning and teaching. In other words, it can define as a
systematic development and maintenance of the professional and personal competence. It
comprises of all those activities that led to the personal and professional development and the
ones that are not acquired directly in the regular work. The fundamental features of
successful CPD are that it is continuous, organisationally or professionally focused, broad

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based and structured. It is often assumed to be limited or restricted to the formal off the job
training courses or seminars. It is to note that as CPD is about the school improvement and
that it aims towards providing top quality learning and teaching, it is one of the key elements
of school improvement (Keogh and Byrne 2015). It is very important due to many factors. It
increases the level of confidence among the students and the teachers as well as develops a
sense of self-esteem, hence, making the teachers highly motivated and the students then
improve their learning skills. It lays more focus on the assessment for learning, hence,
allowing creative use of the learning styles as well as increasing the partnership with others
outside of the class room. It is all about supplying recognition for the skills, competencies
and knowledge that are gained by the staff by means of formal accreditation. It aims to
provide knowledge and technical capability in order make the school as secure and safe place
for each and every one.
In present days, skills and knowledge play a vital part in professional world. By
means of encouraging CPD as a part of the academic course, they are initiating the creation
of competitive advantage for both the employees and the students as an outcome of their
increased expertise in their chosen filed. There are many activities which could be taken into
consideration for achieving proper proficiency and for being able to successfully educate the
students and the other individuals undergoing learning disabilities (Busch, Barzel and
Leuders 2015). Some of the examples of these activities comprise of the reflections on the
dyslexic learners, teaching beyond the classroom, making use of reflection in order to reflect
on the IFL etc.
The formal training method within my working environment comprises not only the
professional teaching qualification that are required by the government but with the same,
also the ones that are related to the Offender learning. For enrolling for some of the courses
like DTLLS, I needed to sit for the second level numeracy and literacy exams although I have

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already completed my O levels in both these subjects. Experimental learning is one of the
most important part of my approach of daily professional development and it applies to each
and every aspect of my work right from overcoming the problems of production in the
workplace to finding out better solution for encouraging my peers and workers for trying
different approaches to learning.
Being a teacher, I make use of self-reflection in order to critically evaluate and
analyse my actions. It helps in refocusing all my thinking regarding my current knowledge so
as to generate new ideas and knowledge which help me in modifying my behaviours, actions
and the treatments along with my learning needs. When I observe a general lack in the insight
and depth within the answers of my students while going through some of their assignments,
the very first though of mine in that case is that it is the result of my poor approach in the
process of subject delivery (Bailey 2015). However, when I observed that there were some
students who depended only on the very limited materials that they were provided with at the
time of class sessions for answering the questions of their assignments, it revealed to me the
mistake of my assumption that I have done initially. I learned that there was no mistake with
my approach, instead the students were unwilling to carry out both the independent studies as
well as the further research until and unless they are related with the summative assessments
of theirs. For this purpose, I decided to limit the resources that I gave them during the class in
order to force them to study well and research more independently from the class sessions.
However, later I also realised that I am doing this in wrong way. There are several demerits
of this action and I realised this after recalling my student years. Having been a student
myself, I am well aware of the fact that I too used to often depend on the strategic approach
to learning and used to research only when I was forced to do so (Voogt et al. 2015).
Therefore knowing that my students are also workers who might find very little amount of
time for their extra studies beyond the classrooms and just like me, they would also be very

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greatly assisted and helped by the activities from the class sessions. Therefore, I kept on
focusing on my previous approach with a hope that they shall be learning from it and would
improve in the near future.
CPD can be delivered in a wide range of formats which can be either formal or non-
formal in nature and might not result in awarding learning credits. There are many basic
features that could be identified as having the characteristic of a successful CPD strategy
(Tran et al. 2014). Two of the significant approach of learning and CPD is fragmented and
focused approach. In the fragmented approach, the CPD are characterised as mentioned
below:
 CPD is not related to the organisational goals
 It is regarded as a cost, instead of an investment
 It is focused on discontinuous training instead of development
 It is unsystematic
 It is menu driven such as ordering from any mail catalogue
 It is all about knowledge acquisition and directive training
 It is considered as of no importance and the course attendance is often
cancelled because of the lack of commitment and pressure of work.
 It is not transferred and its learning is very rarely implemented at the
office
 It is viewed one of the reward for good performance.
On the other hand, in focused approach, training and CPD are characterised as:
 Related to individual needs and organisational strategy
 An investment in the human resource management

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 Focused on the process of on-the-job and skills development along
with the knowledge based training
 Been evaluated with the post course and pre course assessment
 Transferred to the changes and actions taking place in the workplace
 Learning, instead of training
 Flexible in the applications including that of self-development,
distance and open approaches.
One of the most useful framework is been developed by (Moorley and Chinn 2015).
He have distinguished two different approaches and they are the fragmented approach and the
focused approach. Additionally, there are many problematic in terms of the prevailing
conception of the CPD (Dimmock 2016). The very first is the dilemma that whether or not
CPD is to assume an outcome or input based approach. The input based approach formally
acknowledges that each and every individual has undertaken some or the other kind or
prescribed CPD activity. On the other hand, the outcome based approach urges the fact that
the practitioners analyse their needs of learning, then identify the suitable learning
opportunities as finally, assess whether or not their needs of learning are satisfied by the
activity. It is also very powerfully oriented towards the experimental instead of the classroom
learning. It is also to note that there is a very thorny problem of the issue of measurement and
monitoring of the CPD. The input based approach addresses this issue by recording the
course attendance instead of trying to assess the results of participation (Knox 2015).
However, measuring the outcome bases approach is a good deal and could be sometimes
more time consuming for the professionals who are seeking for recording their CPD. It
requires a very tough approach on the participants’ part.

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Reference:
Bailey, M., 2015. Professional development of HR practitioners–a phenomenographic
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Busch, J., Barzel, B. and Leuders, T., 2015. Promoting secondary teachers’ diagnostic
competence with respect to functions: development of a scalable unit in Continuous
Professional Development. ZDM, 47(1), pp.53-64.
Dimmock, C., 2016. Conceptualising the research–practice–professional development nexus:
mobilising schools as ‘research-engaged’professional learning communities. Professional
Development in Education, 42(1), pp.36-53.
Keogh, P. and Byrne, C., 2015. Creating Opportunities for Inter-Professional Working and
Building Common Approaches to Continuous Professional Development. European Journal
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Knox, S., 2015. A model of continuous professional development for registered pre-hospital
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Moorley, C. and Chinn, T., 2015. Using social media for continuous professional
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Tran, D., Tofade, T., Thakkar, N. and Rouse, M., 2014. US and international health
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pharmaceutical education, 78(6), p.129.
Voogt, J., Laferrière, T., Breuleux, A., Itow, R.C., Hickey, D.T. and McKenney, S., 2015.
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