525 Using Reflective Practice to Inform Personal and Professional Development

Unit Overview

525 Using Reflective Practice to Inform Personal and Professional Development is a unit within the CMI level 5 module that focuses on personal and professional development. Personal and professional development is essential in creating sustained continuous improvement among the individual within the workplace. This involves being able to effectively conduct self-assessment which indicates the critical learning areas that the individuals need to develop on from the professional and personal perspectives.

Reflective practice is another critical approach that supports personal and professional development. This reflective practice supports the self-assessment techniques that are used to identify the strengths and weaknesses that an individual exhibits in handling different duties and responsibilities assigned to them within the workplace. By focusing on the reflective practice, the individuals are able to identify the shortcomings and put up effective activities and approaches that are designed to address the weaknesses and turn them into strengths that contribute towards improving leadership performance and practice. Leaders must also be able to monitor the performance of development activities and reflective practice can also contribute towards these elements of personal and professional development.

525 Using Reflective Practice to Inform Personal and Professional Development is a unit that helps learners to develop effective reflective practice. This unit helps the individuals pursuing it to understand the principles of reflective practice and its contribution to the overall improvement of development pursuits and activities they are guided to generate self-assessment from reflective practice to identify the areas that should be addressed through both personal and professional development activities. The unit is taught in 16 hours of guided learning and contributes 5 credit values towards the completion of the CMI Level 5 module

Suitability of the Unit

The unit is important in reinforcing the process of continuous improvement through continuous professional development using reflective practice. All individuals within the workplace must be able to pursue activities that facilitate continuous development to ensure that they acquire relevant skills and knowledge that they need to use at specific times within their practice in the organisation. This involves being able to identify their weaknesses and string against the organisational needs and expectations and implementing effective measures that are aimed at addressing the weaknesses and focusing on the strengths. 525 Using Reflective Practice to Inform Personal and Professional Development is a unit that is, therefore, suitable for all stakeholders within the organisation as it helps them to understand principles of managing continuous professional development through self-assessment and self-development.

The unit is designed to meet the learning needs of middle managers who are at the operational level within the organisation. Middle managers can improve their performance by reinforcing the practices associated with self-assessment and activities that can be used for self-development. This involves their influence over the activities within their areas of responsibility. This unit is also applicable to other leaders, including executive management, junior managers, and team leaders. Employees can also use principles taught within this unit to ensure they can effectively identify and handle learning needs that they experience in their daily professional practices and personal engagements. The unit can also be used by external human resource consultants who contribute to setting up workplace environments and practices aimed at achieving preset goals and objectives.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Analyse the significance of continuous professional and personal development in boosting both personal and organisational performance

• Identify the use of reflective practice in personal and professional development within the workplace

• Develop effective reflective practices that contribute towards self-assessment

• Evaluate personal performance within the workplace using the principles of reflection

• Focus on self-assessment of working style and how it impacts others within the workplace

• Create development needs for current and future roles that can be addressed with effective personal and professional development

• Identify development opportunities within the workplace that are aimed at meeting short, medium and long-term objectives

• Create a development plan with measurable objectives that is based on learning needs identified from the assessment that is based on good reflective practices.

Key Learning Areas

525 Using Reflective Practice to Inform Personal and Professional Development is a unit that builds an understanding of self-assessment and self-development. The main learning areas covered to achieve these goals include:

Self-Assessment

In this area of learning, the learner is guided to effectively evaluate their strengths and weaknesses based on past experiences and development activities. The area of learning helps to build knowledge on the techniques that can be used for personal self-assessment and the specific rationales to identify. It also helps to identify learning styles and models and the learning cycle to achieve the desired development. The learners are also guided to understand different goals setting approaches through the use of SMART Goals.

Evaluating Planned Development Activities

This area of learning focuses on guiding the learners on different approaches that they can use to implement and pursue planned development activities. The learners are guided to understand the range of learning and development activities that they can implement. They are also guided to identify and appreciate skills that are required for self-management in the process of undertaking learning and development. Lastly, they are taught approaches that they can use to evaluate the planned learning activities based on set priorities, objectives, and aims.

Review and Reflection of the Learning Process

This area of learning helps to create an effective appraisal of the learning and development activities based on work performance. The learner is guided to identify different approaches to performance appraisal, such as self-appraisal, feedback, 360 degrees, and performance appraisal. They are also guided to identify approaches to revising goals to ensure that the development plans are aligned with the set goals and objectives.

Evaluation

The evaluation process involves a written assessment that tests the accomplishment of learning goals through the acquisition of theoretical information and knowledge. other approaches that are used include supervised practice, simulated exercises, and case studies which can be implemented in the learning process to determine the ability to implement the learned concepts and principles within the workplace.