What is Continuous Professional Development?
It is a process by which a professional person maintains the quality and relevance of professional services throughout his/her working career (CPD Institute). CPD promotes a practice culture where it is acceptable as part of everyday practice to: – Evaluate and question practice – Explore alternative approaches to practice and present them for critical review – Debate different approaches for their potential merits – Make judgements about the relevance of evidence in the context of practice – Introduce different approaches, monitor and evaluate them. (Alsop 2000 p1000) Fish & Twinn (1997 p151) argue that good – or quality – work in professional practice encompasses not the pre-specified list of individual competencies that take no account of context but a repertoire of skills, abilities, capacities, professional knowledge, personal attributes, personality and ability to work with other professionals together with what determines their appropriate employment (namely flexibility, educati
