Need for Personal and Professional Development - Essay Example

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Table of Contents PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 1 Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Section A 4 Development Activity - Mentoring 4 Learning Style Employed and Approach Chosen 6 Section B 7 Learning Activity - Group Work 7 Evaluating the Achievement of the Outcome 8 Section Three 9 Reflection 9 Conclusion 11 Personal Development Record 13 Personal Development Plan 15 References 17 Personal and Professional Development Introduction In the modern-day world, the school systems have been charged with managing the growing demands: espousing evidence-based practices, lessening the achievement gap, ensuring that the yearly progress goals that have been met are sufficient, handling the requirements of special-needs and second-language students, and being up-to-date with content area and pedagogical research. It has become imperative for educators to keep pace with the crucial advancements happening in the education sector. In consequence, this has created the need for professional development. Professional development can be described as the process of enhancing the competencies or skills required to generate excellent educational results. Noteworthy improvements can hardly happen in education devoid of professional development; therefore, professional development is fundamental to meeting the modern-day educational demands. The Professional Development and Practice (PDP) module intended to improve the self-awareness levels that would facilitate students to effectively articulate their work-related and educational competencies as well as skills to graduate recruiters and allows for conscious decision making with regard to their future career progression. The objective of this piece is to identify and justify mentoring, which is a development activity that I have undertaken and document group work, a learning activity undertook. Furthermore, I demonstrate how I used formative assessment to evaluate the achievement of my outcome and I will reflect upon my development activity. Section A Development Activity - Mentoring One development activity that I have undertaken is mentoring, which is the process where an individual with knowledge and experience helped me to develop; thus, allowing for my continued professional growth. By enrolling in the peer mentorship program, I was able to gain new perspectives, expand my professional networks, and achieve practical support. The mentor was an experienced person from our field who guided us through the development and enabled me to advance more quickly. Mentoring enabled me to learn what I needed to do to become successful in my career. Mentors normally enable people to learn the knowledge and skills needed; they may as well offer profound understanding regarding the ways that the organisation works. As a protégé, I gained new technical expertise, ideas, as well as managerial and interpersonal skills. Mentoring improved my academic achievement since I was encouraged to take educated risks and reach for higher goals. My self-confidence in making decisions was improved and I gained a relationship with an individual who could act as a role model by giving feedback on personal and professional ideas and goals. The mentorship program improved my interpersonal skills and competencies and helped me to understand ways of identifying my weaknesses as well as how to manage them. As mentioned by Lamm and Harder (2015), the mentor and protégé relationship must be confidential and personal. The mentor must support and challenge devoid of informing the protégé what he/she should do. A good mentor should improve the protégé's independence as well as confidence. By setting goals, I was able to take effective and complete responsibility for my future development. During the mentorship program, I felt I was gaining personal growth and personal satisfaction during the mentoring relationship progress. Evidence points out that different factors, like the relationship between mentor and the student as well as the mentor’s communication skills, competencies, knowledge, and attitude play a crucial part in students’ learning (Lamm & Harder, 2015). The nature as well quality of the mentoring relationship is crucial to the process of mentoring and the learning experience quality. Therefore, when the relationship is rooted in a sense of partnership and mutual respect, the learning process amongst the students is likely to be improved. The mentor-student relationship is not something that happens immediately; it develops in the fullness of time and goes through different stages. The first stage is the initiation phase, whereby the student and the mentor get to know one another by working and observing each other closely. In this stage, the mentor and student have offer support to one another; thus, influencing how their relationship develops. The second stage is the working phase, whereby the student gains from the relationship by learning the skills of the work placement. When the student and the mentor spend adequate time together, they are likely to gain a sense of trust as well as closeness. This stage is very active; therefore, the relationship intensity moves to that of solid partnership as well as common understanding. At this stage phase, the student progressively becomes self-reliant and responsible and would need assistance infrequently. When the student becomes more and more confident and independent, the mentoring relationship moves to the final stage. Termination phase is the final phase, whereby the mentor-student relationship comes to an end either negatively or positively. A friendly and supportive relationship is likely to develop when the relationship ends positively. When it ends negatively, the student and mentor are left dissatisfied. More importantly, the demise or success of the mentor-student relationship relies on numerous factors, such as progressing to the next education level successfully, a career change for the student, absenteeism or a variance in personal qualities. Learning Style Employed and Approach Chosen I used social/interpersonal learning style since we were learning in groups and I had the intention of working with other people as much as possible. According to Quibol-Catabay (2016), interpersonal learning style operates mainly through person-to-person communication and relationships. Interpersonal learning style was suitable for me because I am often in a conversation, either talking or listening, with the goal of understanding other people’s thoughts and communicating my ideas. As an interpersonal learner, I am often motivated to express my individual feelings and thoughts and I always respect other people’s feelings and thoughts. Aside from having improved communication skills, interpersonal learners easily pick up on nonverbal cues such as body language. For instance, when the mentor was having a bad day but trying to hide from us, as a social learner I was always the first to discern his changed demeanour. I chose mentorship program because it involves communication, social interaction and many people. I am a good listener and like providing advice. As a social learner, I like learning and working with other people since it helps me to learn from others and work through multifaceted problems or ideas through conversation or dialogue. In the mentorship program, social learning was suitable since it encourages listening to and communicating with the mentors. Through interpersonal learning style, I could initiate a conversation with the mentor and it enabled me to understand ways of collaborating to create successful quality products as well as ideas. Through the interpersonal learning style, we were able to create a mentoring team. The team approach was an informal one and the mentor’s combination of personal approach and style and professional expertise to facilitating learning influenced the form of mentoring we received. Basically, the mentoring was effective since it was multidimensional as the mentor played important roles to improve our personal, professional and educational growth. The mentor helped us to understand how our discipline has changed as an enterprise of knowledge. Mentoring left us better and deepens our personal capacity in the face of continuous change and challenge. Section B Learning Activity - Group Work The learning activity that I undertook was group work, which is normally utilised to encourage active learning, motivate students, as well as create key decision-making, communication, and critical-thinking skills. Group work for classroom assignment enabled me to develop scores of key skills that I need for my future success. Group work enables students to develop crucial Employability Skills or soft skills through group work engagement. Group work results in improved student achievement and enhanced metacognition as well as self-esteem. It could be utilised to promote inclusion and to facilitate active learning by improving contact amongst diverse groups. The group work enabled us to demonstrate our knowledge in retrieving as well as synthesising information, whereby we were required to write a research paper. Even though it was possible to complete this activity individually, group work allowed us to practice skills that we require in the workplace. In the group work, we collaborated to critically examine a question and report the findings. As pointed out by Chiriac (2014), group work is utilised as a way of learning at every level in nearly all educational systems. Group work’s main purpose is to act as a learning incentive. Group work results in educational experiences which are student-owned, social, active, engaging, and contextual; thus, leading to deeper learning. The group work promoted interaction between students, facilitated the development of oral communication, higher-level thinking, leadership, and self-management skills. It increased the group members’ self-esteem, retention as well as responsibility. More importantly, it improved our understanding with regard to diverse perspectives and prepared us for real life employment and social situations. In the group work, all members were encouraged to become active instead of passive learners through the development of lifelong learning skills as well as co-operative and collaborative skills. Group work created the need for the establishment of a setting for nurturing co-operative, trust and support learning. Group work results in an increased individual achievement in contrast to students working single-handedly. Students’ discussions and interactions with others members make it possible for the group to create new knowledge and it becomes easier to handle more complex problems. Evaluating the Achievement of the Outcome Formative assessment was used to evaluate the group work achievement, which is a process that utilises informal assessment strategies for collection of information on student learning. Through formative assessment, teachers can establish what students have understood and what they have to learn to master an outcome or goal. Basically, the strategies utilised to collect information for formative assessment happen during normal class instruction since instruction and formative assessment are closely related. The majority of formative assessment strategies are easy to employ and fit flawlessly in the instruction process. In our group work, descriptive feedback accompanied the formative assessment to allow the group members know whether they have successfully mastered an outcome or whether more practice is needed (Regier, 2012). The formative assessment is normally connected to the instruction and concentrates on finding what the students know as well as have to know regarding the end outcome or goal. The instructor utilised formative assessment strategies to determine our understanding and decide about current as well as future instruction. We utilised the formative assessment information to establish what we need to do to achieve the unit’s outcomes or goals. We had to adapt to the learning so as to master the unit’s outcomes. The information offered by the formative assessment strategies was utilised to help us reflect on the existing learning goals. Normally, the instructor would ask us what we have learned during the unit with the aim of identifying the skills that we should practice or the information we need to clearly understand the topic. The teacher posed a question to the whole class and asked all groups to write down their responses. After that, the teacher met ever group to have a conversation with regard to the assignment and topic. Besides that, every group had a checklist, which offered us with valuable information and points out areas that we had to focus out learning on. We used the checklist to assess whether we had completed every step in a task and if we had included all the needed information in the assignment. Section Three Reflection The group work offered me, someone, to talk to with regard to the problem and to generate many ideas to solve the problem. In the group, I was more willing to voice my opinions and it made it possible to cooperate on a problem which could be challenging to do so individually. I also benefited from the mentorship program since I received skill development, social support, information access, and a sense of belonging. Mentoring improved my generic skills which include a set of life and work skills. The development of generic skills (such as information literacy, use of mathematical tools, communication, as well as critical thinking) was made possible by the mentorship program. As a mentee, I acquired academic support and knowledge, which is crucial for my success not only in the university but also my future workplace. I also received emotional and psychological support through mentoring, which consequently offered encouragement and enabled me to identify problems easily. Before enrolling in the mentorship program, I struggled with my academic performance. The program helped me succeeded academically and prepared me for work. Mentoring introduced me to the idea that it was possible to aim higher by not bending my expectations. Thanks to mentoring, I have been able to develop as well as progress in my profession. I realised that having an effective mentoring relationships could be very rewarding to both the mentor and mentee. My mentor offered me valuable learning experiences, which expanded my = perspective, insight and awareness  I learned that a mentoring relationship should be a personal one and by understanding each other personal desires it becomes easier to meet personal best interest. Therefore, establishing a good mentor-student relationship can be achieved through introductory meeting since it enables the mentor to know the mentee, his/her experience, individuality, as well as learning needs. The information would enable the mentor to come up with suitable strategies that would facilitate the student’s learning. Therefore, the introductory meeting acts as an ‘icebreaker’ and allows for the students to become comfortable. The mentorship program was beneficial to me because it improved my confidence and provided challenges for taking risks and setting higher goals. It improved my academic and social confidence and developed my study, communication, and personal skills Conclusion In conclusion, this piece has identified and justified mentoring, which is a development activity that I have undertaken and has documented group work, a learning activity undertook. Furthermore, I have demonstrated how I used formative assessment to evaluate the achievement of my outcome and I have reflected upon my development activity. This module offered me many opportunities to develop suitable work-related skills and offered an opportunity of practising such skills. Besides that, the module introduced me to ‘softer skills’ that many employers are seeking thereby making us be prepared for workplace entry. As evidenced in this piece, the emerging knowledge economy needs creative graduates that can find, develop, as well as synthesise new knowledge. That is to say, transiting from resource-based to knowledge-based economies is one of the world’s challenges and has turned out to be the innovative development for many countries. Therefore, managing the problem of personal and professional development amongst the university students based on their innovative activity readiness can help reveal an important role of personal potential in creativity. Monitoring, Reflecting and Planning – Based on Kolb’s Learning Cycle (1984) Development Need: Mentoring Activity: Reflection Date of Activity: What happened in this activity I have reflected about mentoring with the aim of identifying development and learning needs. In this activity, I have recorded my development need and devoted an appropriate time for reflection. I have demonstrated how the mentoring program at improved my academic performance, campus engagement and connectedness, as well as my personal development and growth. In this activity, I have also demonstrated how group work is an extremely crucial skill that which is applicable in the working life. Group work was one of the most rewarding learning activities.  I have also written a reflection in this activity, which has allowed me to engage in reflective and critical thinking, while at the same time helping me to effectively process my outcomes and experience. What I thought and felt during and after the activity Before this activity, I thought that reflection was merely fundamental to the learning experience, but have learned that it transforms experience into learning regarding individual goals as well as critical. More importantly, it challenged me to connect learning activities into course objectives as well as created problem solving and higher-level thinking skills. This activity has enabled me to understand how group work and mentoring can lead to improved professional practice. What I learned from completing the activity By completing this activity, I have learned that continuous learning is the only effective way of adapting to changing roles in the modern-day job market. Therefore, learning to learn is an important skill together with being responsible for one’s own development. I have also learned that reflection is crucial for a person’s progression and developing reflective skills would improve the learning process. More importantly, reflecting on personal learning accomplishments could empower the learner in making intelligent decisions regarding how to progress their learning needs. What I will do as a result from this experience From this experience, I am planning to become more reflective since it will help me to fully utilise observations, change in action, and to strategically re-conceptualise as well as transform practice. I will espouse a continuous learning approach since the contemporary employee must have adaptable all-rounders with an entrepreneurial attitude. Personal Development Record Name: Period Covering: Date What did you do? Why? What did you learn from this? How did you feel? How have/will you use this? Any further action? June, 2017 I participated in the mentoring program with the aim of improving academic excellence and to understand the job market I wanted to learn from the experienced and to create a relationship that could be beneficial in the long run. I wanted to meet the mentor and other mentees and socialise. I learned knowledge and skills that I need to become successful in my career. I also learned the value of being a keen listener, which consequently improved my communication skills. I have started mentoring fresh students with the aim of helping them adapt to new life. I will use the knowledge from mentoring program to my leadership skills and technical abilities. I will use this to understand the organisation's unspoken rules and culture. Personal Development Plan Name: Date: What do I want/need to learn? (specific and realistic) Where was this need identified? What will I do to achieve this? (achievable) What resources or support will I need? (awareness of limitations and opportunities) What will my success criteria be? (measurable) Target dates for review and completion (time constrained) Leadership skills In the modern business world, leadership skills have become a prerequisite for all employees. Taking leadership training course (eight weeks) Money to pay for the training course Reading materials from the local library Transport Courses Assessment Mentoring as well as performance appraisal October, 2017 References Chiriac, E.H., 2014. Group work as an incentive for learning – students’ experiences of group work. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 5, pp.558-67. Lamm, A. & Harder, A., 2015. Using Mentoring as a Part of Professional Development. [Online] Available at: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/wc082 [Accessed 22 June 2017]. Quibol-Catabay, M., 2016. The Learning Styles Of The Marketing Management Students Of Cagayan State University. International Journal of Advanced Research in Management and Social Sciences, vol. 5, no. 3, pp.371-83. Regier, N., 2012. Book Two: 60 Formative Assessment Strategies. Saskatchewan: Regier Educational Resources. Read More

The nature as well quality of the mentoring relationship is crucial to the process of mentoring and the learning experience quality. Therefore, when the relationship is rooted in a sense of partnership and mutual respect, the learning process amongst the students is likely to be improved. The mentor-student relationship is not something that happens immediately; it develops in the fullness of time and goes through different stages. The first stage is the initiation phase, whereby the student and the mentor get to know one another by working and observing each other closely.

In this stage, the mentor and student have offer support to one another; thus, influencing how their relationship develops. The second stage is the working phase, whereby the student gains from the relationship by learning the skills of the work placement. When the student and the mentor spend adequate time together, they are likely to gain a sense of trust as well as closeness. This stage is very active; therefore, the relationship intensity moves to that of solid partnership as well as common understanding.

At this stage phase, the student progressively becomes self-reliant and responsible and would need assistance infrequently. When the student becomes more and more confident and independent, the mentoring relationship moves to the final stage. Termination phase is the final phase, whereby the mentor-student relationship comes to an end either negatively or positively. A friendly and supportive relationship is likely to develop when the relationship ends positively. When it ends negatively, the student and mentor are left dissatisfied.

More importantly, the demise or success of the mentor-student relationship relies on numerous factors, such as progressing to the next education level successfully, a career change for the student, absenteeism or a variance in personal qualities. Learning Style Employed and Approach Chosen I used social/interpersonal learning style since we were learning in groups and I had the intention of working with other people as much as possible. According to Quibol-Catabay (2016), interpersonal learning style operates mainly through person-to-person communication and relationships.

Interpersonal learning style was suitable for me because I am often in a conversation, either talking or listening, with the goal of understanding other people’s thoughts and communicating my ideas. As an interpersonal learner, I am often motivated to express my individual feelings and thoughts and I always respect other people’s feelings and thoughts. Aside from having improved communication skills, interpersonal learners easily pick up on nonverbal cues such as body language. For instance, when the mentor was having a bad day but trying to hide from us, as a social learner I was always the first to discern his changed demeanour.

I chose mentorship program because it involves communication, social interaction and many people. I am a good listener and like providing advice. As a social learner, I like learning and working with other people since it helps me to learn from others and work through multifaceted problems or ideas through conversation or dialogue. In the mentorship program, social learning was suitable since it encourages listening to and communicating with the mentors. Through interpersonal learning style, I could initiate a conversation with the mentor and it enabled me to understand ways of collaborating to create successful quality products as well as ideas.

Through the interpersonal learning style, we were able to create a mentoring team. The team approach was an informal one and the mentor’s combination of personal approach and style and professional expertise to facilitating learning influenced the form of mentoring we received. Basically, the mentoring was effective since it was multidimensional as the mentor played important roles to improve our personal, professional and educational growth. The mentor helped us to understand how our discipline has changed as an enterprise of knowledge.

Read More