“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.” John Steinbeck
Even though the journey of each person is different but each person gets to learn such things from his journey that helps him in reaching his destination. These things can be taken as inspiration for many others to include in their lives and mold them according to their ambitions to reach their respective goals. When a writer decides to become one, he embarks on the journey with tiny little steps until he reaches the time (goal) when students ask him to write my assignment for them, this is where the journey meets the destination.
So; when you are investing in professional learning then it becomes important to consider both the journey and the destination. The journey itself is key to making sure you reach your goals because it’s just as important as reaching that endpoint. For instance; when you become a lawyer you invest your heart and soul into it, you sometimes had to take commercial law assignment help or other forms of academic assistance to meet your goal. All this is counted as a part of your journey. This post will shed light on three important stages that guarantee effective professional development.
Three stages of an impactful professional learning journey:
It is the journey that keeps the learning experience focused, relevant and impactful by helping the individual in reaching his desired outcomes. It’s an invaluable resource for helping you attain the goals you’ve set. The following three stages will help in driving an impactful professional earning journey on an individual level as well as on a general level.
1. Set your direction:
The first stage of your professional learning journey is that you have to establish a clear direction for your organization’s or your own training needs. This means identification of the skills and knowledge that will help you and your team members to become more effective at their respective jobs. It also means defining how those skill sets will be applied in the workplace. This may seem like an obvious step, but it’s one that many professionals skip over because they’re too focused on what they want to learn.
To be able to define the direction, there are two things one needs to be mindful of and these things are;
- What you need to know and be able to do right now so that you can take action immediately.
- The second is what skills will help you or your organization down the road or in the long run. After all, if you only define the immediate needs, but don’t think about how those needs will change over time, it’s going to be hard to keep up with professional learning later on in your career.
2. Have a plan:
After defining your professional learning needs, it’s time to develop an action plan for how you’re going to get what you need. The goal of this second stage is to identify the resources available to help you meet your training goals. Having a plan is an essential ingredient that will help you and your company to achieve its set goals. The following few steps will help in outlining the kind of plan that you can have to improve your professional learning journey;
- Understand your team, their relation with each other, and their strengths, and weaknesses in the work so you will be able to process things for your team in a better way.
- Assess the needs of the department and the organization as a whole.
- Explore development opportunities with staff members.
- Record and analyze the progress of your teammates.
3. Keep learning:
Learning is something that you must continue even after achieving your goal. It is learning that keeps you alive and ambitious about your profession as you were in the very beginning. There are three different types of learning, which are as follows;
- Cognitive learning:
Cognitive learning is the kind of active learning style in which the way to maximize the brain’s potential is learned. It makes it easier for you to connect new information with existing ideas which deepens your memory and retention capacity. Basically, the term “cognitive learning” has been derived from the medical term “Cognition” which means the ability of a brain’s mental process to absorb and retain information through experience and senses.
- Associative learning:
Associative learning is something that encodes the relationship between two events. It is the kind of method in which a learner associates a certain response to an object or a stimulus for him that results in positive or negative outcomes.
In the narrowest definition of associative learning, it is restricted to the learning that occurs during classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning. However, associative learning can also be used more broadly to encompass all memory for the relationship between events (McNally, 2017).
- Autonomous learning:
It is the kind of learning in which the learner is responsible for his learning method. The learner takes charge of his own learning and is actively involve in taking decisions according to the need of the hour. It involves the critical thinking ability and decision-making capacity of an individual.
Tips for impactful professional learning development:
There are some people who have the zeal to do something for society; these are the people who put their best foot forward to come up with spectacular inventions. Once; they set their aim at something, nothing can stop them from achieving it; no matter the obstacles that come their way (helpwithdissertation.co.uk, 2022). Besides the above-mentioned stages of helping people professionally develop their journey; the following few steps will also help in the process and will show a pathway to reach their destination;
- Establish a sense of urgency and engage a sense of moral purpose in your professional development journey.
- Form a powerful guiding coalition to assist you in this journey of yours.
- Create a vision and understand the process to have a clearer direction.
- In order to achieve a big goal; don’t waste the small wins rather play for them as well because these tiny achievements are part of your journey of professional development.
- Accelerate movement by making sure that the network removes barriers and challenges from your pathway.
- Develop cultures for evaluation and for learning purposes.
- Keep learning from experiences whether it is the learning of knowledge, information, or skills.
- Don’t be afraid of making changes or adapting them.
Importance of professional development activities:
Professional development activities can take many different forms. Some examples include attending conferences, taking classes, participating in online learning, and networking with other professionals. No matter what form they take, professional development activities can help you improve your skills and stay abreast of new trends in your field. Professional development activities prove to be helpful in various ways, like;
- Professional growth of the employees.
- Opportunities to learn new skills.
- Increases knowledge in the given subject area.
- Development of new professional techniques.
- Gives a professional insight and helps in staying ahead of time.
Conclusion:
The destination is important but it is the journey that gives you life lessons. The journey becomes even more important when it comes to professional development. The above-mentioned post will help the readers in understanding all about the professional development journey and the stages to make it effective.
Bibliography
helpwithdissertation.co.uk. (2022, July 20th). Stephen Hawking: Complete Biography. https://www.helpwithdissertation.co.uk/blog/stephen-hawking-complete-biography/.
McNally, G. W. (2017, Oct 17th). Neuroscience of Associative Learning. Psychology.
