CPD: Research by Kingston University
Foreword
The Institute of Continuing Professional Development is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Continuing Professional Development Foundation, a not-for-profit provider of CPD since 1981 with a charitable remit to further the continuing education of the public.
The Institute's aims and objectives include:
-
Reinforcing standards relating to CPD.
-
Seeking to encourage all professions to examine their minimum CPD requirements and the effectiveness of their monitoring processes.
-
Encouraging individual professionals to take seriously their responsibility in keeping up to date.
The research division serves the aims and objectives
of the Institute by commissioning and publishing research into all areas of
national and international professional practices and trends. The principal aim
of this research project was to examine and critique how CPD is being
implemented across the professions today, and how far these practices meet the
changing expectations of both the professionals and the public alike. By
understanding the environment in which all professional bodies and their
members work, and assessing the most common and best practices, the Institute
seeks to support the professions in areas of CPD.
Whilst a CPD requirement remains fundamental to most
professions, the level of that requirement and the processes of measuring
activity and ensuring compliance vary enormously amongst the different bodies.
Also, a key finding of the research is that the activities of many professional
bodies are constrained by resource issues and an inherent requirement to
nurture members rather than alienate them through threatening punishment for
CPD non-compliance. This research serves to further our understanding of the
challenges today's professions face in reconciling these issues with the
implementation of a transparent and accountable CPD programme appropriate to the
current expectations of the business community and public alike. These
challenges differ across the professions and many are implementing substantial
changes in their CPD requirements and monitoring systems in an attempt to
address them.
The Institute believes that the professions need to
consider adapting their current strategies and the way they motivate their
members. Only then will the professions persuade their members to voluntarily
embrace structured post-qualification learning as a core responsibility of
being a professional and for the ultimate protection of the public.
Executive Summary
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a requirement within all professional bodies and is a fundamental part of the system that underpins and ensures the reliability of the services that professionals offer to the public. As Carsberg points out in the 2005 review of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the professions have a public service duty, normally set out explicitly in the constitution of the organisation. An effective CPD strategy supports this duty by ensuring anyone claiming membership can be relied upon to have kept their knowledge and skills up-to-date. The great number and variety of professions operating today has led to a proliferation in CPD policies, practices, activities and strategies for implementation. This research was commissioned by The Institute of Continuing Professional Development to review CPD
policies and implementation processes across a range of
different types of profession with the aim of better understanding how CPD is
being implemented within the modern profession and the challenges it is
presenting.
The major themes to emerge from the research are that:
-
Professions continually need to be seen to be responding appropriately to the public perception that they oversee the competencies of their members, particularly as a result of greater business transparency and an increasingly litigious environment.
-
The professions' response has been to place greater emphasis on post-qualification learning and CPD. They continually review and seek to modernise their CPD policies and systems and are imposing greater requirements and obligations to comply on their members in the belief that this will increase competency.
-
To effectively monitor and ensure compliance presents a major challenge for the professions. Modernisation of CPD requirements has emphasised the enormous variety in professionals' educational needs, and professions are therefore increasingly requiring their members to set their own curriculum. Considerable resources are needed to monitor continually and properly.
-
Substantially increasing the monitoring and compliance obligations presents major problems in terms of the professions' relations with members.
Because of the real problems of resources and the reliance ultimately on the co-operation, goodwill and responsibility of individual professionals, this research supports a requirement for a system of incentive that enables both effective monitoring of CPD activity and engages, rather than alienates, members of professional bodies. Encouraging and rewarding voluntary CPD activity, over and above any necessary and existing level of compulsion, is the most effective means of propagating good practice.
In all of the professions interviewed for this
research some review of CPD policy, practice and monitoring had taken
place
within recent years, often leading to a major policy change which
institutions
are in the process of implementing. This has led to the development of
CPD
frameworks designed to enable the member to decide what CPD they
require and how best to achieve this. Whereas previously CPD was
measured in terms of numbers of hours of input, the professions now
encourage
members to identify their own CPD needs and requirements and reflect on
and
evaluate their achievements in light of these.
The changes to monitoring systems range from the possibility
of requiring periodic recertification by the profession for a member to
continue practicing, to a transfer to the member of responsibility for identifying,
completing and recording their CPD activity. The common consensus drawn from
existing monitoring processes is that the majority of members are carrying out
not just sufficient CPD but more than would have been required to comply with
rules of membership.
The professions have undoubtedly become increasingly sophisticated
in their approach to CPD. The reinterpretation of CPD activity as output rather
than input driven and not relying solely on the number of hours completed has
enabled the development of CPD programmes tailored to the requirements of the individual.
This in turn has extended the member's ownership of and engagement with the
process and is generally expected to deliver an improved system for ensuring professionals keep their knowledge and skills
up-to-date.
What has yet to be achieved is the modernisation of the monitoring and compliance system to keep pace with these changes. Processes currently in place are expensive to resource, monitor only a relatively small proportion of each profession and do not capitalize on the good practice demonstrated by members who carry out more than the minimum CPD requirement.
Monitoring is seen by members as something to avoid rather than actively take part in. The professions' many efforts to simplify reporting procedures and support individuals through the monitoring process do little to change this view.
To be effective a CPD monitoring system needs to have
the active co-operation of the membership and significant resources. Achieving
this requires the professions to completely rethink their approach to monitoring and the big challenge is
to find a method that incentivises the individual member and allows them to
reveal their good practice to the public.
The research team are very grateful to everyone that contributed
to this research.
