The English Subject Centre’s recent ‘Survey of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education’ found that whilst 39% of responding departments were using personal development portfolios and 23% were planning to introduce them, 36% were not using them and had no plans to introduce such practice. This is despite a recommendation in the 1997 Dearing Report that structures to enable PDP are in place by 2005/2006 (see ‘So what exactly is a progress file?’ on the FAQ page of the Centre for Recording Achievement’s website: http://www.recordingachievement.org/).
It is true that PDP has evoked hostility from some academic colleagues, who tend, variously, to view it as another:
• load of educational jargon
• job to do
• form-filling paper-pushing activity
• demand from QAA
• distraction from my core work as an academic
• activity the students don't want.
This is, however, not the only view held by academic staff. In 2001 the Learning and Teaching Support Network and the Centre for Recording Achievement collaborated to produce a collection of institutional case studies of developing PDP practice. In some of these initiatives English as a discipline featured strongly,1 and through them all emerged a rather different set of messages. PDP is recognised as being about improving student learning - a mainstream academic process, with very clear links to learning, teaching and the formation of a ‘graduate identity’ by our students:2
Because the elements of description, analysis, synthesis and evaluation which characterise reflection upon experience are also central to academic learning, the process makes a contribution to academic skills development, and supports academic learning
and
The skills of personal development planning are practised implicitly in many areas of the academic curriculum, especially in projects and dissertations which require the student to develop a piece of work over time, making regular interim reviews of progress, and receiving and responding to feedback in order to improve the outcome.
We need to get the balance right between institutional policy, which may suggest some commonality of approach, and developing what we might call 'psychological engagement' with the processes of PDP by staff and students. Those who see this only as an institutional responsibility might want to think again: all the evidence suggests that, where practice works, departments have had at the very least a hand in devising it.
Staff involvement and support, and particularly the consistency of this support, is likely to be highly influential in encouraging student take up – even where student responsibility for the PDP process is emphasised:
The Progress File is not a substitute for, but an aid to, effective tutoring.
Students themselves emphasised that, where the process was linked to tutorial provision, the response of the Tutor was a significant ‘driver’ (or non-response a significant ‘inhibitor’) in relation to student engagement.
and elsewhere
Where the PDP is regarded by personal tutors as an integral part of the student learning process its relevance is appreciated by students.
Ensuring that staff and students ‘buy-in’ and that links are established to learning and teaching are key: our practice must address these issues. This includes resources and workload issues. Even with the opportunity of ‘piggy-backing’ on earlier development work there is probably an initial investment to be made, but evidence from existing practice suggests that staff time and resources need not be an issue as the process becomes established.
If we seek to add PDP on top of existing provision this is likely to be a continuing issue. Unsurprisingly, almost no one is proposing this! We know that PDP processes can be configured to a range of different situations to support learning, progression and student development. If this initiative is best seen as a means of making more explicit and improving the quality and consistency of what we do already, then we need to identify what we want this process to support us in doing, and what we want to avoid.
Links
Centre for Recording Achievement: http://www.recordingachievement.org/
Readers may also wish to refer to the University of Nottingham’s PADSHE (‘Personal and Academic Development for Students in Higher Education’) project: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/padshe/ which had strong connections with English.
References
http://www.recordingachievement.org/downloads/100055.pdf; http://www.recordingachievement.org/Case_Studies/cs_detail.asp?sid=19
2 All quotations taken from Ward, R: Developing and implementing institutional policy on PDP: setting the scene. In Jackson, N and Ward, R: Personal Development Planning: Institutional Case Studies. LTSN 2001.
