UK Centre for Materials Education
Working with you to enhance the student experience
Working with you to enhance the student experience
What will I learn tomorrow? Let me put it another way. I hope that tomorrow will be interesting, and will challenge me as a professional. I don't want to have to do the same old tasks that I have spent the last ten years repeating, honing my skills in narrow areas to perfection. I want new experiences, so that I can continue to grow as a professional.
Furthermore, by continuing to learn, I can re-awaken part of myself and reconnect with the world that my students inhabit. I can rediscover the frustrations of not being able to understand fundamental concepts or master essential skills, and I can again experience the joy of success and the fear of failure. I can remind myself of the value of the great teacher and of great teaching. I can experience first hand the hurdles we place in front of those who wish so much to learn.
In any case, learning is good for the soul. It leads to regeneration and growth, without which our intellects will wither. It leads to a questioning approach and to reflection on experiences from which both we, and our students, benefit - and if that questioning and reflection take place in view of the students, then it will also influence their own approach.
Of course, there are many other reasons for signing up to continuing professional development, and we will look at these in more detail below.
This guide has two principal objectives. The first is to highlight the skills required for successful, lifelong professional development. These skills, like many others in life, can only be acquired by coaching and by practise. The second objective, therefore, is to suggest strategies and methodologies that can assist in the acquisition of professional development skills.
For many people in further and higher education, professional development is synonymous with short courses or with post-graduate qualifications. However, professional development is more than training or continuing education - increasingly it is recognised that learning also occurs in the work-place, as an integral part of working. Work-based learning focuses on solving real-world problems. The time and effort invested in the learning are immediately rewarded through completing the task in hand and the usefulness of such learning, together with the short-term nature of the rewards, improves the motivation to learn.
Professional development therefore covers a wide range of learning situations:
To these we might add the learning and development that take place when we are transferred to new situations, or when we take on new responsibilities within our existing job functions. Professional development also includes the full range of intellectual discipline, from conceptual understanding to the practical application of knowledge.
The informal and ad-hoc nature of much professional development poses problems for us as educationalists. How do we evaluate and assess it? How can we recognise and reward it?
Delivering professional development on demand to practising materials technologists using a variety of learning modes will require new approaches to teaching and learning, and should make use of modern information technologies, adapted and adopted for teaching and learning.
However, such matters lie outside the scope of this guide.
We will start by reviewing the importance of both continuing professional development and the skills that enable it to take place. We will then define the terms 'professional development' and 'professional development skills'. Finally, we will consider methods to identify and deliver relevant lifelong learning. These methods also provide the training regime through which we can become skilled at professional development.
Professional development is not a new concept, but it is becoming increasingly important. The continuing pace of change in materials science and engineering means that what we learned in our initial training courses soon becomes dated and irrelevant. It has been estimated that the half-life of technical knowledge is about seven years. Furthermore, the amount of knowledge - and the amount of information - continues to increase. Materials science and engineering has become knowledge intensive: we have entered the knowledge-based economy.
In this new world, it is impossible for us to know all that there is to know, yet access to the knowledge base is increasingly readily available. So what will make us good materials technologists, rather than poor ones, is that our knowledge is more relevant, and more current, and is applied more efficiently and effectively.
The work-place has also changed, with the result that materials scientists and engineers are expected to have a wider range of skills (see table 1). We increasingly work in teams on projects and much of what we do is virtual rather than tangible. As one project ends, another begins, and so we move from project to project, from team to team, and from one work-place to another. Indeed, for many, the increasingly itinerant nature of work leads us into several different careers during our working lives.
These are strong, compelling reasons for professional development skills, but there are many more!
Table 1a
|
Combine general and specialist
engineering knowledge and understanding to optimise the application
of existing and emerging technology.
|
Apply appropriate theoretical
and practical methods to the analysis and solution of engineering
problems.
|
Provide technical, commercial
and managerial leadership.
|
Communicate effectively and
possess good interpersonal skills.
|
Apply appropriate codes of
professional conduct, recognising obligations to society, the profession
and the environment.
|
Source: UK Engineering Council
|
Table 1b
|
Transform existing systems
into conceptual models.
|
Transform conceptual models into determinable models.
|
Use determinable models to
obtain system specifications in terms of parametric values.
|
Select optimum specifications
and create physical models.
|
Apply the results from physical models to create real target systems.
|
Critically review real target
systems and personal performance.
|
Source: UK Engineering Professors
Council
|
Table 1c
|
Apply knowledge of mathematics, science and engineering.
|
Use the technical skills
and engineering tools necessary for modern engineering practice.
|
Design and conduct experiments, and analyse and interpret data.
|
Design a system, component
or process to meet sopecified needs.
|
Function in multidiciplinary
teams.
|
Formulate and solve engineering
problems.
|
Interpret and employ guidelines
on professional and ethical responsibility.
|
Communicate effectively.
|
Apply knowledge of contemporary
and cultural issues.
|
Appreciate the impact of
engineering solutions in the global and social context.
|
Work in teams or in collaboration with others.
|
Information technology and
management skills.
|
US Accreditation Board for
Engineering and Technology
|
Table 1: The skills required by professional engineers
If we do not respond to this challenge, we face the prospect of becoming irrelevant. If, as professionals, we assume that our old time-served competences will last a lifetime, we will find ourselves becoming candidates for redundancy. The organisations we work for equally run the risk of failing to provide the new products and services that the market requires, resulting in decline.
And so we need to learn continually as we work. This requires a skill set all of its own, a skill set we need to learn for ourselves as teachers and mentors, and a skill set we need to instil into our students for their future benefit.
Professional development is the process by which a person maintains the quality and relevance of professional services throughout his/her working life. It has been defined by the Institute for Continuing Professional Development as:
'The systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and the development of personal qualities necessary for the education of professional and technical duties throughout the practitioner's working life.'
It follows that we have an ethical responsibility as professional materials technologists to continue our professional development throughout our careers.
Professional development is not a product, devised by training providers and academic institutions. It is a mindset, a habit to acquire.
Professional development requires self-directed, independent learning. It also demands an active rather than passive approach to learning. It differs from other forms of learning because it requires us to decide that needs to be learned or un-learned, how to learn it, and how to test and assess our learning. These are issues that we will discuss below.
'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cheshire Cat.
'I don't much care where,' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'So long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'
Lewis Carroll (1865), p54
The European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) has issued a discussion document (Padfield et al., 1998) with the intention of stimulating debate on professional education and lifelong learning for engineers. This document defines professional development skills as the ability of the learner, fluently and without external direction, to:
The above is a list of 'performance criteria' by which we might assess our professional development skills. However, what is missing from the list is the route by which we might achieve these objectives. It is suggested that a five step approach is used:
This is the starting point for our individual professional development plan and should contain the ingredients from the table below:
The personal profile - based upon the Macmillan open learning course for Nursing
| Working Life | List strengths and successes Identify expertise that has not been exploited |
| Skills inventory | Rate skills and competences on a scale of 1-5 Identify skills needing further development |
| Values, attitudes and beliefs | Review the opinion of others Evaluate your own views and opinions |
| Learning skills | Identify types of learning preferred |
Developing our personal profile will make use of the reflective practices discussed in step 5.
Our professional development needs to be correctly focused for maximum impact so that it meets both our individual development needs and those of the organisation for which we work (see Table 2 below). If our employer has in place an annual staff review and appraisal process, then our individual aspirations and the organisational goals may have been reviewed, and a training and development plan agreed for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, we should discuss our professional development needs with our manager and our training or human resources department.
Fragmented approach to
CPD
|
Focussed approach to CPD
|
Not linked to organisational goals
|
Linked to both organisational and individual
needs
|
Seen as a cost not an investment
|
Viewed as an investment in human resource management
|
Focussed on training (discontinuous) not development
(continuous)
|
Focussed on on-the-job development and skills
development in addition to knowledge-based training
|
Unsystematic
|
Evaluated with both pre- and post- course assessment
|
Menu driven, like ordering from a mail catalogue
|
About 'learning' as opposed to 'training'
|
About directive training and knowledge acquisition
|
Transferred to action and change in the workplace
|
Viewed as unimportant, with course attendance
frequently cancelled due to pressure of work or lack of commitment
|
Flexible in application including open, distance
and self-development
|
Not transferred, with learning rarely being
implemented at the workplace
|
|
Viewed as a reward for good performance
|
Table 2: The differences between a Fragmented approach to CPD and a Focussed approach - based upon Willie (1991)
Putting the strategy into action can be the biggest challenge. An action plan can help. An effective action plan has four key ingredients:
In order to deliver the action plan, we will have to seek out opportunities for learning and skills development, ideally in partnership with our employer. And since professional development benefits both the employee and the employer, we might find that our employer asks us to make a contribution to our own professional development, by committing some of our own time and perhaps by sharing the costs.
Having established our action plan, we next need to decide how we are to go about the learning process.
Research commissioned by the British Audio Visual Society in 1988 suggests that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear, 80% of what we say and 90% of what we say and do at the same time. For this reason, Fisher (2000) recommends that we integrate learning and working, so that we learn within the context of our work using real-world problems. Then the time and effort we invest in professional development is rewarded by immediately assisting us to complete the task in hand. Fisher believes the immediate usefulness of the learning greatly improves our motivation to learn.
Whilst this may be generally true for groups of people, as individuals, we each have our own preferred learning styles.
There are many ways to categorize learning styles, but the simplest places learners into one or more of three categories:
It is important to analyse the way we learn best before devising the learning strategy/action plan to achieve our goals. Like me, you might find the way that you learn changes as your grow older. I now find myself drawing upon my past professional experience to build new knowledge and understanding, whereas before I could assimilate facts almost effortlessly.
'One day when Pooh Bear had nothing else to do, he thought he would do something, so he went round to Piglet's house to see what Piglet was doing .... (To) his surprise he found that the door was open, and the more he looked inside, the more Piglet wasn't there.'
A A Milne (1928), p163
As we have seen, good professional development relies strongly on self-analysis and appraisal to develop our personal profile and to analyse our preferred learning styles. This is not necessarily easy for a number of reasons. First, it can be hard to understand ourselves and 'see ourselves as others see us.' Second, reflecting on skills and competences is not something that engineers are necessarily trained to do. Third, as the pace of life continues to increase, it is not easy to find time for self-analysis and reflection.
Mentoring is one way of overcoming these problems. A mentor is someone who can advise and guide you in your career. He or she has a number of roles - as an appraiser, a supporter, a communicator and a motivator. The relationship therefore is different from that between a superior and his/her subordinate, and it is unlikely that a manager can carry out these functions. A good mentor has coaching skills, is trustworthy, respected and is free from major distractions either within or outside the workplace. Choose one with care!
Without a mentor, reflection is also not always a productive experience. It can be a bit like looking for Piglet - we can spend time thinking without arriving at a conclusion. It helps, of course, if we have a structure to our thinking. The key questions are:
It is recommended that we carry out this reflective evaluation both during and at the end of any task or learning we might undertake. One way of encouraging reflective practise in our professional life is to keep a reflective diary or log.
Many of us keep diaries that list our business or social appointments. Some of us also keep 'to do' lists. A reflective log is like a personal diary or record in which we note not just what we have done or accomplished, and what we have learned but also reflect on our feelings. What did we find difficult? What should we do to resolve the situation?
Often, a particular incident requires us to take a look at ourselves and our performance. Such critical incident analysis should be reported in the log or diary. As engineers, we make good use of major disasters and failures in our teaching and learning. However, when it comes to personal reflection, we should take care to include successes as well as difficulties so that we keep a balanced record of our achievement.
As well as providing a focus for us to reflect on professional experiences, the reflective diary also has a role in helping us to evaluate our learning. Some useful questions are: 'Was the learning task appropriate to our needs? Was it efficient, achieving the desired outcome with the appropriate effort? Was it economic?'
Reviewing our reflective diary can also provide useful information.
By looking back on our experiences, we can reassess our goals. What have
we accomplished? What should the next steps be? This leads us naturally
back to revisit and update our professional profile and our action plan.
And so the process continues....
Professional institutions are struggling to find ways of evaluating professional development. There is still a tendency to measure the inputs (number of hours) rather than the outputs (increased competence). The establishment of competence statements in the 3rd edition of Standards and Route to Registration as a professional engineer (SARTOR 3) by the UK Engineering Council provides a useful structure. The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining has adapted and developed these competences within the discipline of materials engineering and has specified over 100 areas in which Materials Technologists should demonstrate competence. However, whilst these are useful standards, we should remember that professional development is not a product or an outcome - it is a process.
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology Inc (www.abet.org)
Davis, M (1993), A Student's Guide to Open Learning, Macmillan Magazines
Ltd.
Engineering Council UK (www.engc.org.uk)
Engineering Professors Council (www.engprofc.ac.uk)
European Society for Engineering Education (www.ntb.ch/SEFI)
Fisher, G (2000) 'Lifelong learning - more than training,' Journal of
Interactive Learning Research, Fall 2000, p265
Guest, G (2000) Lifelong Learning for the Global Networked Society, presented
at Technological Education and National Development: Crossroads of the
New Millennium, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 8-10 April 2000
Institute for Continuing Professional development (www.trainingzone.co.uk/icpd)
Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (www.iom3.org)
Kennie, T Continuing Professional Development: The growing importance
of CPD, Institute for Continuing Professional Development (www.icpd.co.uk)
Padfield, C et al. (1998) Lifelong Learning in Engineering Education:
A Call to Action. SEFI Document No. 20. Brussels: European Society for
Engineering Education.
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