Enhancing Personal and Professional Development through Self-Managed Learning

Personal and professional development

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
ways in which life-long development can be enhanced by self-managed learning.........................4
Approaches to self-managed learning.........................................................................................4
Encouraging lifelong learning in personal and professional contexts.........................................5
Evaluation of the benefits of self-managed learning to individuals............................................5
Identification of the opportunities to take responsIbility for individual and professional
development.....................................................................................................................................7
Portfolio to identify professional standards for UK police department.......................................7
Learning style questionnaire and SWOT analysis.......................................................................7
Undertaking activities to address key weakness and future needs..............................................8
Personal and professional development plan.................................................................................10
Identification of process and activities needed to implement the personal development plan..10
Outlining the planned development activities...........................................................................11
Section 1........................................................................................................................................12
Assessment of own learning against actual aims and objectives stated in the personal
development plan.......................................................................................................................13
Reviewing interpersonal and transferrable skills...........................................................................14
Defining the acquired and applied interpersonal and transferrable skills..................................14
Identification of effective communication across various scenarios.........................................15

Analysis of the acquired skills and qualities in pursuing the career path in the UK police
department.................................................................................................................................16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................16
References......................................................................................................................................18
Appendix 1.....................................................................................................................................20
Reflective- Log..............................................................................................................................21

INTRODUCTION
The present study is based on the critical evaluation and analysis of how self-managed learning
can help in improvising personal and professional career paths and lifelong development. In
addition, the study will also cover approaches to self-managed learning and reviewing
interpersonal and transferrable skills. The study will conduct a personal development, by
considering own SWOT and SMART principles.
WAYS IN WHICH LIFE-LONG DEVELOPMENT CAN BE ENHANCED
BY SELF-MANAGED LEARNING
Approaches to self-managed learning
There are various approaches to self-managed learning, and the same are described as below:
Seminars and conferences: Individuals can learn through seminars and conferences wherein they
have experienced things and make changes to future accordingly(Cunningham, 2017). This
provides individuals with the opportunity to showcase their knowledge regarding aspects to other
people, while this also assists in becoming a confident public speaker and developing
presentation skills.
Social network: There are various social networking sites by which individuals can get involved
with people and interact with them, thereby ending up by gaining learning new things and
information. By this, individuals can share ideas and opinions with people and developing new
skills, communication ways and personality(Cunningham and Bennett, 2017).

Internet: Individuals can derive knowledge by surfing on the internet and distinct websites for
which are related to communication etc. Internet is one of the most significant methods for
individuals to acquire self-managed learning; immense knowledge could be gained as it is rich
and productive in providing useful content and information (Vleuten and et al., 2015). Thus, I
can state that these approaches can be very beneficial for me to develop my inherent capabilities
while improving my lifelong development simultaneously.
Encouraging lifelong learning in personal and professional contexts
I am proposing ways by which lifelong learning could be encouraged, such as self-directed
learning; it is a notion that possesses a range of application and interpretation in the training
arena. It can be said that such interpretation provides learners with some sort of choices in their
learning that provides them feasibility, on-the-job training and can enable them to choose
whatever they want to. Personal strategies can also help in encouraging life learning, as in this
individual's set specific targets to improve their skills. It is essential to interpret the current needs
of learning, to promote it further (Nguyenand Walker, 2016). In addition, along with this,
understanding the future needs is also vital to position future values and ultimate objectives.
Lifelong learning can be encouraged in personal and professional development through SWOT
analysis, i.e. self-evaluation, by analyzing my own strengths, weakness, opportunities and
threats, I would be better able to evaluate myself and find the gaps where I am lacking and fill
them up with my personal strengths.
Evaluation of the benefits of self-managed learning to individuals
There are several benefits and positive impact of self-managed learning for an individual learner,
it assists them in acquiring interpersonal, problem-solving, communication and decision-making

skills, and more learning can be learnt from personal experience which could be advantageous to
the individual and the chosen field as a whole(Boeren, 2017).
Self-managed learning helps in developing communication skills which are very beneficial for an
individual to help to work as independent as a consequence it comes up with new concepts that
will be shared with other people to learn new aspects which they are unaware about.
The main benefit for individuals is that they can accomplish their specified and set examples at a
certain phase of life. Additionally, the competitiveness can also be increased when an individual
possesses an attitude of self-managed learning (Cunningham and Dawes, 2016). Thus, they can
claim for the best position in their chosen field. Moreover, there could be an increase in
intellectual skills, and most significantly, there would be an increase in confidence and also
making the individuals full of opportunities and capabilities.
Individual benefits from the SML are the skills derived wherein one I can improvise and
progress, such as meeting new aims and challenges, addressing ambiguity, self-awareness, and
learning new approaches to life-long development, creating new ideas and sharing the same
while putting them in practice(Bennett, 2017). Self-managed learning is more flexible, and
individuals tend to be comfortable in this learning process. In addition to this, it assists
individuals in learning various significant skills in short-term, resulting in effective and
permanent.