Keeping a learning log for professional development: The first 38 years are the hardest!

?Andrew Gibbons?

In February of 1987 I wrote my first learning log entry. I had never heard of Continuous Professional Development (CPD), it wasn’t yet a significant issue, I simply wanted a truly self-driven and managed process for reflecting upon, and recording my learning. For nearly two years after I had passed my IPM exams my wisest and most learned friend had been gently nagging me to do this very apparently simple thing.?

So there it was, an A4 sheet with around 200 words under headings of ‘significant experience’, ‘what happened?’, ‘conclusions’, ‘actions’, and crucially, to put plans into action, ‘when?’. Three months went by before number two was completed, within which I debated with myself the merits and likelihood of finding the motivation for, and reward from this worthy, yet apparently surprisingly difficult simple task.?

Thirty eight years into my learning journey, I have this week completed still in handwritten format, number 2272. My log of over one and a half million words now sits in seven rather full lever arch files, and is but one means by which I seek to find and note the experiences that incrementally build into more than four decades of learning and professional development.?

Oh the loneliness of the long distance learning logger. It has been a long and, to be honest rather odd journey. It’s not been easy either, as I am by personality and preferences, a disorganised, non diary writing person, with an activist, extroverted learning and work style totally unsuited to the painful business of sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper and filling it with my take on what I am learning from real life events.?

This has now become a habit I feel I can’t break, I see it as an at least 40 year apprenticeship. Frankly, I have plenty of other calls on my time that more obviously pay the bills. As a self-employed person I create my own priorities, and I have made my own development an intentional, important task amongst so many others. As a Learning and Development professional I feel it is important to have tangible evidence of my own commitment to learning when encouraging that in others.?

I write entries less often than I did, typically filing at least 10 full A4 sheets averaging now around 650 words each month. My hand written log is but one of many elements of my professional development: Video downloads, podcasts, recorded learning conversations, noted reading and very specifically focused networking are all very deliberate and managed parts of a self-directed, planned process.?

How do I find the time for this? Well my answer is that no entry takes me longer than twenty minutes, and how many of us are so busy doing whatever it is we busy ourselves with not to be able to find twenty minutes five or six times a month??

I feel that evidential, professional development and lifelong learning is talked about and claimed more often than practiced. Why is it after so much attention given to the aspirational and I feel largely mythical 70.20.10 model, that I see ‘send them on a training course’ as the default position to ‘satisfying’ most individual, unique, contextual and specific development needs??

It disappoints me that keeping a learning record is felt to be unusual, and to many not even a good use of my time. I feel too few professional bodies don’t prod, incentivise, threaten or reward sufficiently to even comply with their own published codes of CPD practice that rightly expect evidence of vocational development for the post-qualification decades.?

It’s not all down to professional bodies either, after all, there are limits to the pressure they can put on their membership without risking a stampede of soon-to-be ex-members saving their subs and taking exception to being required to do some part of what I do and have done for all those years. I firmly believe that certification is the start, not the end of a professional development journey.?

I feel deeply that it is critical to encourage the habit of reflecting on professional practice pre-qualification, and to create an environment in which yet-to-become professionals gain developmental momentum before they pass exams that is the springboard to continue genuinely self-managed learning certification. That said, I am no missionary, I will just keep on with this process because I know that has helped me to plan, track, and reward my unique and personal professional learning journey.?

Until employers create a real connection between genuinely individually focused development leading to rewarded application of learning it’s no surprise putting time and effort into managing our own development will be a low priority for over-worked people.?

Yes we do learn many things each day, so, could you credibly explain what you learned on September 17th 2014? I can, because I reflected upon, and crucially noted that learning, and I did that because had I not made that small effort the value of that developmental experience would have evaporated.?

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