Individual Reflective Journal on Continuing Professional Development

Individual Reflective
Journal

Continuing Professional Development
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a continuous process that is planned to track,
develop and maintain the knowledge, skills and experience that are gained in formal as well as
informal ways while working and also documenting these gains(Allen and et.al., 2019). Formal
ways are through various courses or training and development programs and Informal ways
can be learning from others by watching them work. CPD is a combination of various
techniques, ideas and approaches that are used to manage one’s growth and learning. It helps to
keep a continuous record that helps in analysis and refection on one’s learning and
skills(Srinivasacharlu, 2019).
There are various approaches and models that can be used for making a reflective journal,
which are –
Kolb’s Reflective Cycle, also referred to as experimential learning as one’s experience is
considered the basis for this model(Morris, 2020). The learning experience has four stages or
steps : Concrete Experience- feeling , Reflective Observation – watching , Abstract
Conceptualization – thinking , Active Experimentation – doing.
Gibb’s Reflective Cycle, etc. is a self management and reflection tool used by people to
analyse their various experiences during specific situation or activity and derive conclusions.
This cycle was published by Graham Gibbs in 1988 and has six steps which are Description,
Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion and Action Plan(Adeani, Febriani and Syafryadin,
2020).
In this personal reflective journal, I will be following Gibb’s Reflective Cycle and include the 6
stages of this model as-
 The experiences and situations will be described in this Description stage.
 I will express my feelings and thought and the affects they had on my experience in the
Feelings stage.
 I shall also evaluate the positive or negative aspects of the experiences and good or bad
aspects of the situation in Evaluation stage.

 A complete sense and thorough understanding of the situation will be made in Analysis
stage.
 In Conclusion stage, I will reflect upon my learning and identify the things, areas or
decisions that could have been made and done in a different way to obtain better results.
 The final stage is preparing an Action Plan to demonstrate the actions that I would take
towards similar situations in the future and describe the skills that I need to improve.
With the use of Gibb’s reflective cycle, I will reflect upon the contribution in my
achievement of the study skills and employability related to the following aspects in
this journal –
 Verbal and written Communication skills
 Research skills
 The use of ICTs
 Teamwork and networking
 Time and self management
 Problem solving skills
Communication is an integral part of everybody’s life and without proper communication, no
task can be performed. People with good communication skills tend to be better at expressing
and getting the job done. Listening is one of the most important skills during communication,
and the lectures, debates and presentations in the college made me an active and attentive
listener. Trying to reduce surrounding distractions to understand what the speaker says is also a
very crucial aspect which was also improved during these lectures and seminars that helped me
in understanding everything better(Schartel Dunn and Lane, 2019). The various emails,
assignments and other documents that were to be written both formally and informally during
university days helped in improving my written communication skills by attaining clarity and
being specific and focused on the specific topic. I also understood the role and importance of
tone while communicating to different individuals. The daily interactions with all types of
student, lecturers and other people from different status, improved my friendliness and verbal
communication skills by reducing shyness. The presentations and debates also helped me in
attaining confidence as it required talking in front of so many people. Non verbal
communication is equally important and is done without the use of words, with the help of