Continuing Professional Development

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is essential to ensure that practitioners maintain currency in their career development field, provide a professional quality service to clients and contribute to professional learning as an active and informed Member of CDANZ.

Our members are responsible for identifying their own CPD goals and requirements. They do this through an annual self-reflective review on each core competency. This then enables them to construct their personal learning plan.

Just as we encourage our clients to be “life-long learners” for agility in today’s world, as practitioners we also need to practice this, and become agile in our ways of working, with the ability to adapt to the change and disruption occurring in the world of work today. The commitment to ongoing learning means that, at minimum, each career development practitioner should do as much learning as needed (a minimum of 30 hours annually for affiliate and professional members) to maintain these required core competencies.

To achieve the CPD requirements the CDANZ member, National Executive and Branches share responsibility for promoting, planning, implementing and evaluating professional learning activities. Our commitment to our members is that we will develop and provide meaningful and relevant CPD opportunities which will be in line with the core competencies.

Instructions

At a minimum all Full, Professional and Fellow members are required to log 30 hours of Professional Development each year for renewal. Please do this using our online CPD tool on your Dashboard.

How to select your Professional Development?

Best practice for personal and professional development is to take a planned approach based on identified learning needs. To establish these areas, we encourage you to undertake a reflective self-assessment of your current level of competency against the CDANZ Competency Framework using the self-reflective review form.

Self-reflection involves careful thought of one’s own knowledge, assumptions and past experiences, and the ability to look at self in relation to others, the systems in which practice is embedded, and to standards such as the CDANZ competencies. It embraces the ability to “stand back from the self” and examine critically.

Testing the accuracy of one’s self-evaluation by considering feedback of a colleague is an important component of the self-reflection process. You may wish to engage the assistance of a professional or peer supervisor, mentor, employer or senior colleague to help overcome the natural tendency towards blind spots and “not knowing what you don’t know” and gain feedback on any perceived strengths and areas of development in your practice.

This Continuing Professional Development (CPD) procedure is made up of four stages:

1. Complete the CDANZ Competency Self-Reflective Review form.

• Read through each competency and assess your current level of competency against the evidence requirements, and assign a rating between 5 and 1. When considering one’s professional development it can be helpful to think of the development stages as ranging from novice (1) to expert (5). A useful model developed by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) (see bottom of page)[1], for understanding the level of development of a person in their work context, describes this journey. None of us will be an expert or novice on every competency, but the aim is to work towards being ‘competent’ in each area.
• Remember this is your own assessment and confidential to you. However, you may wish to discuss some or all of the competencies with a professional or peer supervisor, mentor, employer or senior colleague.
• Under each competency, you may wish to note your reflections on what gap you need to fill and what you intend to learn.

2. Complete your Personal Learning Plan

• Based on your ratings and reflections of your learning gaps, summarise how you intend to meet these needs.
• Your plan may include a range of such activities, for example, researching a topic, engaging in supervision, reading professional literature, writing and/or presenting, enrolling in education, attending a webinar, a workshop, or a conference, etc.
• You are not required to address every competency at once - you may decide to initially focus on only one or two. Conversely, you may have more than one learning need arising from a single competency.
• Learning may extend over a period of longer than 1 year, i.e. you may decide to develop a 1-3-year plan.
• You may also identify additional learning needs during the year as opportunities or professional challenges arise. The key here is that your learning is meaningful for you and the context of your practice.
• Please note that this is your personal learning plan and does not need to be submitted.

3. Carry out and reflect upon your learning throughout the year.

• It is also acknowledged that new learning opportunities and unforeseen challenges may lead you to evolve in a new direction. However, if you identify that a particular competency needs significant development, this should be seen as a priority.
• Record this in your dashboard CPD tool.

4. At the time of your Annual Renewal, complete and submit your ‘Professional Development Annual Record’.

• CDANZ members now need to use our new online CPD tool in your Dashboard.
• Professional development DOES NOT include activities which are about day-to-day work processes, systems and reporting practices also those that build your business e.g. developing a business plan, promoting your business. Although these are important for you to do your job, they are not considered ‘Professional Development’ for career practitioners. These also include the delivery of workshops, staff meetings, performance appraisals and networking meetings that don’t have a PD component to them etc.
• Professional Supervision: Please note that should Supervision be listed as an activity, supervision must be provided by a professionally competent career supervisor, who is not in a direct management or authority relationship with the applicant. Supervision can be provided in several ways although it is important to be clear that supervision is not work-process or sales effectiveness training. Supervision is only deemed 'supervision' if its purpose is to support and enhance the work of the practitioner and the safety and care of their clients.
• CDANZ would like to acknowledge the contributions of members to the Association by allowing PD hours to be claimed for organising career specific or aligned conferences / symposiums / events, contributing to a CDANZ committee, or contributing to career related published material / articles / journals, as follows:

This is a high-trust and future focused model that emphasizes personal responsibility, flexibility and choice.

Below is a guide to the rating adapted from the Dreyfus & Dreyfus model:

[1]Refer to Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ (1986) model to help you understand the development levels (1-5) of people in a work context.