Information on Personal Development Planning for students is available on the Careers Service website.
What is Personal Development Planning (PDP)?
Personal Development Planning (PDP) was introduced by all UK HEIs in the 2005/06 academic year to encourage students to record and reflect on their academic and personal progress, and to plan ahead for their future professional development. Alongside the academic transcript, it forms a notional ‘Progress File’ of the student’s achievements. PDP and its potential benefits are defined by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in the following statement:
‘Personal Development Planning is a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and / or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development.
The primary objective for PDP is to improve the capacity of individuals to understand what and how they are learning, and to review, plan and take responsibility for their own learning, helping students:
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/progressFiles/guidelines/progfile2001.pdf
What must the University do to support PDP?
The QAA asks that all HEIs offer their students opportunities to engage in PDP processes but has not been prescriptive about how this should be done. This means that individual institutions have been able to develop PDP on their own terms and allow academic departments to offer support in a variety of ways. The ideal scenario is that PDP opportunities are integrated into academic programmes through learning, teaching and assessment, or through personal tutoring mechanisms, and that any optional training and support available through the University is clearly signposted for students.
After investigating several possibilities, the Skills and Progress Files Working Group (SPFWG) recommended in 2004 a ‘semi-supported’ model for PDP implementation. This permits flexibility and allows departments wishing to embed PDP in their programmes to do so with the support of the Skills Development Officers and Support Services, using an e-portfolio system, if desired. Senate agreed in February 2005 that this semi-supported model should be offered alongside a ‘minimum support’ model. The onus for engaging with PDP is therefore on the student but opportunities to do so must be flagged by academic departments. Any department wishing to support PDP in more depth is of course encouraged to do this.
A key purpose of PDP is to help students develop reflective practice. This should help them to self-assess and develop their academic performance in the short term and also to develop their professional skills and employability for their future careers. PDP can be encouraged in a number of ways:
Note, however, as the QAA statement points out, that PDP should be a supported process. Giving students access to an e-portfolio or set of forms does not mean that reflection will take place. The tool is not the same as the process it supports, as several HEIs have discovered.
What are the skills against which student progress can be measured?
The University's Skills and Progress File Working Group agreed in September 2005 on a list of core and further skills for undergraduate and taught postgraduate students. These are as follows:
Core skills
Further skills
For postgraduate research programmes, please refer to the Joint Skills Statement.
PDP is still a relatively new concept in most HEIs, although reflective practice has been integral to disciplines such as education and medicine for many years. For other disciplines, it has been a case of identifying and enhancing existing practice; it is rare for there to be no goal-setting or reflective activity present on an academic programme. Research into whether or not PDP is working and is beneficial to its practitioners is in its early stages, but many case studies are available through the Centre for Recording Achievement (CRA) to provide examples of where PDP has been integrated into academic modules and programmes.
Many HEIs have found that for PDP to be adopted successfully by staff and students, it needs to be: relevant to the subject discipline, where possible; seen to be valued by staff; tied into assessment or is a criterion for progression. There are examples of PDP currently in practice at Bristol, as well more detailed information on PDP processes, in the PDP Guide for Staff 2008/09. You may also wish to look at the work into PDP and skills development being carried out by the University’s Skills Group.
If you have questions about any aspect of PDP, please contact Dr Tracy Johnson for more information.
This updated document contains guidance and suggestions for PDP implementation in academic programmes, as well as examples of current practice across the institution.
Also available here is the PDP Pilot Report that went to Senate 2004/5.
This is a guide produced for students by the Universities of Bristol and Bath, containing practical advice on learning from experience, enhancing learning through reflection, skills development and goal setting.
This is an optional module offered as part of the Teaching and Learning Programme in Higher Education. The half-day workshop looks at the theories underpinning PDP; how to apply PDP to learning, teaching and assessment, and how to use PDP techniques to improve staff effectiveness and motivation.
The idea of concise guides for busy academics originated in a workshop for academics experienced in using PDP. Five Guides for Busy Academics and a paper entitled ‘Connecting PDP to employer needs and the world of work’ have been produced.
Links to other institutional PDP websites:
LUSID - University of Liverpool
PESCA - University of Exeter
RAPID - Loughborough University
e-PARS - University of Nottingham
KEYNOTE Nottingham Trent University
Other resources and academic research into PDP
Centre for Recording Achievement (CRA)
Promoting the recording of achievement and action planning processes as a way of improving learning.
Clegg, Sue, ‘Progress files and the production of the autonomous learner', Teaching in Higher Education, 9:3, 2004
Clegg, S. and Sally Bradley, 'Models of Personal Development Planning: practices and processes', British Educational Research Journal, 32:1, 2006
East, Rob, ‘A progress report on progress files: The experience of one higher education institution’, Active Learning in Higher Education, 6:160, 2005
Gough, D.A. et al, ‘A systematic map and synthesis review of the effectiveness of personal development planning for improving student learning’
Higher Education Academy information on Progress Files and PDP
Knight, Peter T., and Mantz Yorke, ‘Employability: judging and communicating achievements’
QAA Guidelines for HE Progress Files