Continuing Professional Development

Abstract

This paper examines the role 'reflection' plays in continuing professional development (CPD), and draws implications for online professional development. While doing so, online CPD is related to individual cognitive structure, community of professional practice, online collaboration, and the cultural contexts of practitioners. Continuing Professional DevelopmentProfessional development in any profession has traditionally been considered as a one-time affair in one's career (i.e. pre-service education); though changing professional needs necessitate in-service/on-the-job professional development the activities of which include either a full-time certificate or diploma or accumulation of credit hours of professional development training or even professional socialisation and dialogue in seminars, roundtables and conferences. In many cases these include a series of unrelated events to meet certain professional requirements of the time, and may not have a life-time professional development/learning schema. Professional development, on the other hand, needs to be seen as related to professional practice and culture of continuous learning within a learning organization. The conceptual clarification on professional development given by Guskey (1999) sounds appropriate: "those processes and activities designed to enhance the professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes of educators so that they might, in turn, improve the learning of students … it also involves learning how to redesign educational structures and cultures" (p.16). He also argues that the deficiency approach (i.e. professional development activities to contribute to make up one's deficiencies of knowledge and skills) is itself deficient, and should cover a wider canvas of continuing professional development (CPD) so as to keep pace with the emerging knowledge base of the profession and its conceptual and craft skills.Guskey (1999) further notes that continuing professional development, as a process, should be: i) intentional: i.e. professional development activities are based on purposes which are linked to broader vision of the profession;