Personal development planning: into a brave new world?

Abstract

This article explores the background to, and issues associated with, the implementation of Personal Development Planning (PDP) within Higher Education (HE). Consideration of issues for social work educators follows as the authors seek to ground policy change in practice and debate issues so that reflection is not ‘little more than a mantra’ but rather a ‘model for practice’ (Kuit et al., 2001, Active Learning in Higher Education, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 128–142, at p. 129). Although educators have arguably always used a variety of strategies to encourage student reflection and evaluation of their learning experiences, implementation of PDPs codifies and institutionalises individual student reflection and the production of associated outputs. This is evidenced by the production of guidelines to promote what is billed as a core educational process by Universities UK, the Standing Conference on Principals, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and the Learning and Teaching Subject Network (LTSN) Generic Centre. As social work academics consider and respond to the challenges associated with the re‐specification of programmes to meet new award requirements they might usefully reflect on the challenges PDP brings, and integrate responses into programme specifications. Avoiding fragmentation and duplication, for example around the personal tutor system and role of staff in PDP, is important for both social work students and staff within complex and, at times, contradictory organisational contexts such as Institutes of Higher Education (IHE).

Notes

Correspondence to: Annie Huntington, Principal Lecturer in Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE, UK. Email: [email protected]; Bernard Moss, Learning and Teaching Fellow and Principal Lecturer, Staffordshire University, Institute of Social Work and Applied Social Studies, Leek Road, Stoke‐on‐Trent ST4 2DF, UK.

Recent political changes, for example the establishment of the Welsh Assembly, lead to renaming of nation states. Hence the use of the term ‘four nations’ to describe what has, until recently, been known as the United Kingdom.

For example, the Certificate and Diploma courses in Learning and Teaching offered by the Education Development Unit at the University of Salford.

Munro (1998, p. 51) describes fluent use of theory as one where students ‘were able to integrate the different sources of knowledge and use both commonsense wisdom and theories in direct work with clients’. Critical use of theories and a critical attitude to their ‘empathic skills’ characterised students who had developed a fluent use of theories for practice. Crucially, for our purposes, those who approached the social work task on the basis of their fluent use of theories valued empathy but ‘did not take it for granted that their affective responses were an accurate reflection of the feelings and needs of the people with whom they worked’ (Secker, 1993, p. 81 in Munro, 1998, p. 51). Alternatively stated they didn't assume that how they felt about things was necessarily how their clients felt, thus avoiding the potential for over‐identification and/or the superimposing of their own experiences on those they work with (even if they might share some characteristics with clients).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annie Huntington

Correspondence to: Annie Huntington, Principal Lecturer in Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE, UK. Email: [email protected]; Bernard Moss, Learning and Teaching Fellow and Principal Lecturer, Staffordshire University, Institute of Social Work and Applied Social Studies, Leek Road, Stoke‐on‐Trent ST4 2DF, UK.