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New Generation of personal development records |
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As part of a review on personal development records, Rob Ward, Centre for Recording Achievement, proposes that if fire and rescue service workforces are to be developed in order to respond to the particular demands of the 21st century then perhaps 21st century thinking and technology should be considered as part of an integrated solution
THE CURRENT PHASE OF CENTRAL support for IPDS has been to review the guidance issued to fire and rescue services on Personal Development Records (PDRs). Part of this review was to take a wider view on recording matters to be able to inform future guidance on how and why PDRs are to be used and their relationship to other initiatives, especially Quality Assurance and the Qualifications Framework.
An external view on these matters has been provided by Rob Ward from the Centre for Recording Achievement. Rob has been working with the group and is well placed to provide a future vision. The Centre is a national network organisation that works across education and employment to promote effective personal and professional development through the application of recording, reviewing and planning processes. In this article Rob, with contributions from others, gives an introduction to the topic from an informed viewpoint external to the FRS.
Clarifying Our Terms
Readers will be familiar with the concept of the PDR as that part of the IPDS that records achievement and competence and thereby aids and supports the planning to meet further development needs.
The term ‘e-portfolio’ might need a little more explanation as initially they may be seen as self-contained recording systems – in some ways not unlike PDRs. E-portfolios are now coming to be seen more as ways of pulling different services or functions together via a set of software tools which draw together and integrate material from different sources.
For the user, such functions may include:
• Providing a self-monitoring tool;
• Storing information that can then be used in particular e-portfolios for particular purposes (see the next points);
• Helping to choose and put together information and evidence, as is needed for example in assessment – whether formative (eg to support further improvement through feedback) or summative (in assessing competence or level of achievement) – or for progression in the workplace;
• Making presentations to allow the e-portfolios to be seen by appropriate people with the user’s permission;
• Helping to manage learning experiences that lead to learners improving their knowledge or skills;
• Helping users reflect on experiences and achievements;
• Helping people set goals and plan actions to achieve these, thereby personalising the learning and development experience.
More generally, an e-portfolio approach recognises the personal nature of learning and provides a learner centric and learner controlled perspective while connecting to other, more organisationally-centred learning services. E-PDRs, in fitting within an eportfolio framework, will not only provide a recording and planning function for the individual, but also link to a range of other services which will support individual and organisational development.
How Did We Get Here?
With the introduction of the IPDS and a need for improved performance management, the Personal Development Record (and, equally importantly, Development Review) has been an increasing part of practice in the Fire and Rescue Service in recent years. The Service has not been alone in developing such practice; in business, public and voluntary-sector organisations, a common pattern of change can be identified that has characterised their approach to employee development. Processes have begun to focus on reviewing performance to identify development needs. Rather than employees being regarded as passive recipients of decisions taken by others they are encouraged actively to participate in a dialogue about their performance, plans and future aspirations, in other words, become more active learners.
The trend has been to move from a strict training model to one emphasising a selfdevelopment continuum. Previously it was widely assumed to be the task of management, and in particular its training function, to identify the skills needed amongst its workforce in order to achieve its objectives. The organisation would then design training courses for current employees or seek to recruit appropriate people from outside.
At the same time most employees either believed that the skills they possessed would be adequate for a long working life or assumed that employers would offer them training opportunities from time to time. Increasingly the limitations of this model became obvious. In the new social and economic environment caused by the growth of fast changing equipment, technologies and working environments, the focus has shifted towards individuals and their responsibility to think about and plan their own lives and employability in which working and learning clearly need to be strongly aligned. In a survey of 5,000 training managers in a range of industries about ‘the most important thing an organisation can do to promote learning’ the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (Sloman, 2004) found that four statements commanded almost universal agreement:
• People learn in all manner of ways, including training.
• Individuals need advice and support if they are to take more responsibility for their own learning.
• Line managers should play a significant role in helping their teams learn and develop.
• Employees need to take more responsibility for their own learning and development.
He suggested that these four statements could be regarded as the ‘new learning orthodoxy’, further noting that: ‘For effective learning to take place, employees need confidence and appropriate learning skills, opportunities to turn their commitment into productive action and a positive learning climate created by the presence of supportive systems and colleagues’. http://www.cipd.co.uk/NR/ rdonlyres/70F1D82F-1C4D-4127-A432 12F9F8817A86/0/reflctdsurvrept0404.pdf Where next? The ‘new generation’ is electronic Personal Development Records (e- PDR). We live in an increasingly digital age. We can submit our income tax forms, book hospital appointments, apply for a university place and purchase pretty much anything online. Lots of learning is now delivered electronically. So managing our career development is the next logical step and ‘electronic portfolios’ are emerging as one way of doing this that go beyond just the storing and sharing of electronic records.
What Are The Benefits?
The agenda of continuing development is highly relevant to the Fire and Rescue Service, where procedures and hazards are often subject to change, and maintaining competence means keeping up with a moving target. Given wider developments, it is important that the next phase of development for the FRSs in England is the provision of Personal Development Records that are provided and stored electronically, ie, as one service within an e-portfolio.
These will build upon the recognition of key features of existing provision eg:
• That current standards require active involvement in personal development, and support target-setting processes;
• The opportunity to chart and take greater responsibility for your own career development;
• Seeing the role of occupational standards as a means of helping people provide evidence to demonstrate competence rather than as the only means of demonstrating competence. In addition, PDRs will offer the individual and the organisation alike new – and key – benefits. The value of such an approach lies in learners being more motivated to pursue and successfuly complete learning and development goals or simply put ‘accelerate active learning’. For some this will be seen as a vital selfdirected learning tool where they have control over their achievements. For others it will allow them to see their status and co-ordinate activity through one single access point to all their learning; performance data may then become the motivation for increased selfdirected learning. Others may find this provides a greater opportunity to self-promote their capabilities.
All should benefit from a timely, relevant, easy-to-use service. For the FRS enterprise itself the e-portfolio provides the opportunity to match performance management to learner’s needs to manage their own employability. FRSs will need to ensure that systems, structures and cultures are in place to sustain changes to the way we develop staff. Evidence suggests that such approaches benefit learning and development most effectively when considered as part of a system, rather than as a discrete entity. It is planned that the ‘eportfolio’ will allow users permanent access to all key learning and performance data.
It will provide:
Up-to-date information on career and professional development opportunities – such as National Occupational Standards and any role maps derived from them, plus development programmes.
Records of:
• Skills for life;
• Life long learning;
• Experience, training and education;
• Formal achievements/awards and workplace assessments;
• Strengths and professional competence.
Tool(s) to:
• Support effective participation in development reviews;
• Support readiness for self-directed learning;
• Identify individual goals (in the context of service requirements, goals/objectives, trends and risks);
• Plan development and manage continuing development in ways that are tailored to the individual;
• Identify transferable skills and reflect their significance within the Service and outside for future employment;
• Support staff in making the most of opportunities for progression as these arise.
It is important we get this right of course; we only have to look at the recent experience of junior doctors applying for their first hospital posts to see some of the challenges that may lurk in new technology. In addition, we need to ensure that all are clear about the rights and ownership of information held in any e-portfolio system. The consensus, articulated by Charlesworth and Home 2006 (visit: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/ documents/programmes/buildmle_hefe/2006 _06_good_practice_guidelines.pdf ) is that the learner owns their portfolio (although this is not the case in a legal sense) and controls the access rights. This means that physically storing a portfolio does not give rights to publish, rather that the relationship of an organisation such as the FRS to the individuals information should be that of 'stewardship' – the assumption of responsibility for the proper management of learner data. Getting it right means learning from the users in order that we can support users with active learning and relevant self-directed learning and performance monitoring tools. Work is already underway in many FRSs, and the next step is to develop a draft national eportfolio specification that will aid decisionmaking concerning the type and format of e- Personal Development Records, assist further specification and procurement activity of eportfolio applications and provide a benchmark for existing e-enabled PDR systems. In turn this will harmonise integration with existing systems; aid transferability of data between PDR systems; promote existing eportfolio standards, common vocabulary and interoperability.
More on these developments will become available in the near future. So watch this space!
Acknowledgements: This paper has benefited from discussion with and contributions from, Debbie Carlton (Dynamic Knowledge), David Pierce (Associate Director, the Centre for Recording Achievement), and Chris Millard and Martin Taylor of the IPDS Team. Their contributions are gratefully acknowledged.
About the Author:
Rob Ward is the director of CRA. He is a member of the Higher Education Progress File Implementation Group, was a member of the Scoping Group on Measuring and Recording Student Achievement (the Burgess Group), and a Fellow of the National Institute for Careers, Education and Counselling. He has led work on e-portfolio scoping reports and contributed to the development of a methodology for reviewing e-portfolio products. This led to the development of tools to support manager/practitioner choice of e-portfolio products. Currently he is co-ordinating an international group researching into e-portfolio practice.
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