Looking Back on and Forward from PDP
Peter Lumsden – [email protected]
University of Central Lancashire
www.uclan.ac.uk
Starting out
When asked to write an article for On Reflection it was somewhat of a shock to realise that it was
eight years ago, in December 2005, that I first wrote a piece about learning and teaching entitled
“PDP, Starting from where we are in Learning and Teaching terms”. I’d been in the role of the
Teaching and Learning Co-ordinator for Science for about 2 years, having been at UCLan for over
15 years, mostly in the school of Biological Sciences. There I had had some exposure and
involvement in the broader ‘skills’ agenda – as acting head we had taken part in a key skills project,
and I had introduced a skills portfolio. However, when I wrote that piece I was fairly new into the
arena of the scholarship of teaching and learning. I wrote then (2005): PDP – Personal
Development Planning – can form the ‘core’ of any Learning and Teaching strategy. A useful
analogy is that while the modules are the bricks of our wall of provision, PDP is the mortar which
runs through and holds them together. However, an ongoing challenge is to engage staff. While
there is still a challenge of engaging staff, and while I would offer a different analogy for describing
the curriculum, I think that progress has been made, and that can be seen through a gradual
process of enriching the curriculum.
For this article I had thought to provide a sequence of events charting my own experience of PDP,
but once I started, I realised that it is not that simple, and that it is hard to articulate what has been
an iterative process. What follows is therefore more of a reflection on my journey as an educational
developer, which started with PDP.
Challenges of a Faculty role
In 2005 there was no overall Faculty ‘model’ for PDP, so, largely based on my own experience, I
identified the following elements to constitute the ‘minimum’ of what PDP ‘involves’, and therefore
to feature in Departmental strategies.
Self-awareness – strengths / areas to improve e.g. time management
Reflection – undertake at appropriate junctures, e