Personal Development Plan/Reflective framework

Personal Development Plan/Reflective framework

Using a narrative framework discuss how you have improved your academic and key learning skills over the 1 st year and how you have implemented an agreed personal and professional development plan.

-Write an account of how you have achieved your learning plan goals. Describe what you did, thought or felt during your learning experiences across the year.

-Reflect upon the experience

-Highlight your achievements of learning goals and make sure you provide evidence of this in your appendix.

-Identify your strengths and needs related to your current learning skills.

-From your list of needs identify more learning goals that identify learning skills to be practiced or knowledge that needs to be gained and how you plan to achieve this.

You are required to reflect upon your experiences related to the identification, development and achievement of your learning goals during the module. In your reflective account try to capture the elements most pertinent to your learning and ensure you reflect upon the process of learning as well as highlighting achievements. You should also reflect upon how he work you have completed in relation to your action plans has contributed to your overall development and enabled you to complete other modules in year 1.

Details of reflective framework

The recommended reflective framework is adapted from the work of Borton (1970) and Boud (1985)

What? (Returning to the experience)

-What happened.

-What did you do?

-What did others do?

-What was significant about this experience?

-What were you trying to achieve?

-What were the key aspects of this experience?

So What?(Understanding the experience and its context attending to feelings)

-So what were your thoughts and feelings at the time?

-So what are your thoughts and feelings now? Are there any differences?

-So what were the effects of what happened to the patient?

-So what were the effects of what happened to you?

-So what were the effects of what happened to your collegues?

-So what is the importance of this?

-So what have you learnt about this?

Now what? (Taking action for the future)

-Now what do you need to do?

-Now what might be the consequences of this action?

-Now what should you do differently in the future?

-Now what positive aspects might you apply to other situations in the future?

-Now what information or evidence would you need for a similar situation in the future?

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Information about me.

I work as a home support care worker in a full time job. The university course is Foundation Degree Assistant Practitioner. Once a week school, but because I’m in healthcare it is work based experience.

In the PDP I had to complete a diagnostic test about my key strengths and weaknesses.

Key areas for improvement for me and why…

1./ Communication in front of a group.

English is my second language and I lack the confidence in front of others. My aim is to practice presentation in front of the class more often in Human Structure and Function classes.

2./ Learning Skills/time management.

Working as a full time carer, long hours a day, morning till late evening leaves not too much time to study and read or even personal life. Make a plan to use my time wisely.

3./ I need to improve my IT skills/searching databases. It is important, because my course work involves searching for accurate data or different topics and to search for reference material.

Reflective framework:

1./ Communication in front of a group.   We had to be in groups at Human Structure and Function Classes, present on every topic. English is a second language for me, so I lack the confidence to talk in front of others. My plan was to present often in front of the class. It was little bit stressful, but most of my classmates in the group were helpful. They are mostly from other countries as well, so I was a little bit more confident because of this. Studied a lot for classes. Made plans for presentation. Searched for materials and practiced at home. After a while I felt more confident, got very friendly with my group members. I asked for their advice often. My achievement: I got 90% on my Human Structure and Function test. I have more knowledge of the human body what I can use at my work. It was a rewarding experience.

2,/ Learning skills/time management.

Working as a full time carer, leaves not enough time for anything else.  I work long hours a day, only finish at night. Use to work 5 days a week at the beginning. Starting university was stressful time, had to find time to study and for family as well. I researched about time management on the internet, looked at different styles. I asked advice from the University Drop in Service about time management as well. They advised me to use a weekly planner what I did for a while. Later I realised that I can not keep to planned study times because I was tired most of the time, so I decided to get another day of for study, which proven more successful and a 90% test result proves it as well.  I gained knowledge about how to manage my time, but I still need to improve it. It is affected my colleagues as well, because they had to take more of a work load, but helped me not to stress about time that much.

Sometimes I was still tired at study days so I struggled a lot. My family helped me a lot with housework. My friend were very supportive, when they so me stressing a lot they took me to a nice dinner. My manager was supportive giving me an extra day off.

3./ IT skills/Searching databases.

I finished school a long time ago, it’s a 20 year gap for me. Schools change since I last studied. I studied in another country, different style of teaching. I was not confident to use databases and the right material. My plan was to practice it more while studying for Human Structure and Function classes, or searching for reference material. It was a challenge, but my tutor urged me to use the university’s databases by using the library app on the university’s website. I asked help from my classmates sometimes about key words to use or their opinion what books to use. They helped me a lot, but practicing it often helped me a great deal as well. I can use this knowledge at my studies, because I need to do a lot more searching for writing essays. I confident to use the database now, although I still need to practice it.

My feelings now: More confident. Happy with my results. Good relationship with classmates. Still a challenging experience.

Future goals: Improve literature search skills as another learning goal. Essay writing skills need to be improved.

Numeracy skills needs to be improved for second year. Too much time out of school.

Still need to improve time management skills.

Reference list.

Stella Cottrell: Critical Thinking Skills. 2011 Second ed. Palgrave pub.

Stella Cottrell; Skills For Success, 2015 Third ed. Palgrave pub.

Stella Cottrell, The Study Skills Handbook 2013 Fourth ed. Palgrave pub.

Please use 3-4 reference from these books, but only these books, because I have them and reading them. Thank You.

This essay is really personal, so please ask me about anything about my feelings or plans.