Approaches to Professional Development

Approaches to Professional Development

In a broad sense, professional development may include formal types of vocational education, typically post-secondary or poly-technical training leading to qualification or credential required to obtain or retain employment. Professional development may also come in the form of pre-service or in-service professional development programs. These programs may be formal, or informal, group or individualized. Individuals may pursue professional development independently, or programs may be offered by human resource departments. Professional development on the job may develop or enhance process skills, sometimes referred to as leadership skills, as well as task skills. Some examples for process skills are ‘effectiveness skills’, ‘team functioning skills’, and ‘systems thinking skills’.

Professional development opportunities can range from a single workshop to a semester-long academic course, to services offered by a medley of different professional development providers and varying widely with respect to the philosophy, content, and format of the learning experiences. Some examples of approaches to professional development include:. Consultation - to assist an individual or group of individuals to clarify and address immediate concerns by following a systematic problem-solving process.

Coaching - to enhance a person’s competencies in a specific skill area by providing a process of observation, reflection, and action.

Communities of Practice - to improve professional practice by engaging in shared inquiry and learning with people who have a common goal

Lesson Study - to solve practical dilemmas related to intervention or instruction through participation with other professionals in systematically examining practice

Mentoring - to promote an individual’s awareness and refinement of his or her own professional development by providing and recommending structured opportunities for reflection and observation

Reflective Supervision - to support, develop, and ultimately evaluate the performance of employees through a process of inquiry that encourages their understanding and articulation of the rationale for their own practices

Technical Assistance - to assist individuals and their organization to improve by offering resources and information, supporting networking and change efforts

Professional development is a broad term, encompassing a range of people, interests and approaches. Those who engage in professional development share a common purpose of enhancing their ability to do their work. At the heart of professional development is the individual’s interest in lifelong learning and increasing their own skills and knowledge

Business Workflow Analysis (BWA), sometimes known as Business Management Systems, is a management tool that streamlines, automates and improves the efficiency of business procedures.

As part of the move towards the paperless office, BWA is a method allowing businesses to better comprehend their current needs and to establish future goals. The long- term objectives of BWA are those of reducing transaction costs and managing performance. BWA generally necessitates the participation of:

Employees whose everyday role includes the processing, handling and sharing of documents

Experts with a vision of how the work should be done

IT staff with an understanding about how the vision could be translated into a realistic solution

A ‘facilitator’ whose role it is to manage the project and keep to specified limits in time and expenditure

Examples of BWA are actions such as routing documents to different locations, securing approvals, scheduling and generating reports.

Executive Education is the term used for programs at graduate-level business schools that aim to give classes for Chief Executives and other top managers or entrepreneurs. These programs do not usually end in a degree, although there is an ever-growing number of Executive MBA programs that are very similar and offer a Masters of Business Administration upon completion of the coursework. Executive education programs are seen as a boon to both the school (as it usually comes with a hefty price tag in the form of tuition and fees) and the younger, traditional Masters of Business Administration students. The alumni network of the business school is bolstered by the ranks of these high executives, who can help the younger MBAs with finding jobs.

Estimates by Business Week magazine suggest that executive education in the United States is approximately an $800 million per year business, roughly 80% of which is provided by universities (mostly business schools). The fastest growing segment of the market is so- called “customized” programs, which are tailored for and offered to executives of a single company (as opposed to “open enrollment” programs).

executive education programs are in a way the descendants of the MBA, which was developed in the U.S. in the early 20th century as a way to strengthen the management skills of senior executives. The concept spread rapidly and globally, and companies soon recognized the advantages of educating their workforce. Their desire to do so without losing an employee to a classroom for two years gave birth to a variety of more flexible programs, from part-time studies to online degrees.

Executive education developed in the 1980s and 1990s, as the increasing pace and scope of global business demanded higher levels of education among employees. The dot- com boom further changed the scope of the U.S. business landscape by favoring employees and organizations who were quick to adapt and capable of change. As longstanding business concepts became obsolete, continual training was necessary—but earning a degree was not.

Today, the participation of the most prestigious universities around the world has lent credibility to executive education, unlike other non-degree/certificate programs that may or may not be recognized as valuable. The dot-com influence may be diminished, but the emphasis on learning new concepts throughout one’s career has continued, and made executive education extremely popular in the U.S. (Duke University, for example, reports 25% annual growth for its Corporate Education programs.