Continuing Professional Education

2013.4.18 루오만 20122034

Continuing Professional Education: Multiple Stakeholders and Agendas

R M Cervero, B J Daley

Since the 1960's, Continuing Education (CE) has grew rapidly. CE is a kind of formal educational programs through which professionals would maintain their competence by continuing to learn throughout their careers. In different professions, the guidance and models of CE relied on their own knowledge base and structure. However, it was noted that the CE efforts of individual professions are similar in terms of goals, processes, and structures. Thus, these similarities led the appearance of the concept -- Continuing Professional Education (CPE) in the late 1960s.

As within many education systems, Continuing Professional Education has many stakeholders with multiple agendas. The purpose of this paper is to chart the expansion of CPE and three agendas' present and future.

Outline Systems of CE for the professions (The Expansion of CPE) Three Agendas' Present and Professional and Social Agendas Future Institutional Agendas Educational Agendas Conclusion

Systems of CE for the professions

In the 20th century, a central feature of societies is the professionalization of their workforce, such as teachers, physicians, lawyers, social works and so on. The feature of this professionalization project is educational systems including 3-6 years of initial preservice education of professionals and CE for the following 40 years of professional practice. Now, many leaders in professions, who believed preservice education with some refreshers are sufficient in the past, understand the need of CE. Following is the development of CPE form the 1960s:

History of CPE's Development The year of The view of CPE was firstly published in a conceptual scheme for the lifelong 1962 education of physicians by Dryer. The 1970s The 1980s CPE began to be used as a basis for relicensure and recertification. Organized and Comprehensive programs of CPE were developed in many professionals, such as accounting, engineering, nursing and so on. This decade The systems of accreditation of the providers of CPE were developed in many professions. At present time, the professions are in a transitional stage, experimenting with many different purposes, forms and institutions for CE. So the systems of CE are primitive and has two characteristics: devoting mainly to update practices about the newest informations; delivering in a didactic way by providers that do not work together in any coordinated fashion.

Systems of CE are in their infancy now. Like the preserves professional education now, the systems of CE are likely to achieve an equivalent coherence, size and stature in the future. However, it is quite unclear what form they will take in the future.

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2013.4.18 루오만 20122034

Social and Professional Agendas

Within every profession, there are segments using knowledge for different social purposes. Because professions are \" loose mixture of segments pursuing different purposes in different ways and held together under a common name at a particular period of history.\" So the existence of internal dissension and value conflict is not new. Likewise, CPE can and does serve different and even conflict social purposes.

The present and future of social and professional agendas:

CPE is being used more frequently to regulate professional practice by developing the

accountability systems. Although it has been criticized that CE do litter or noting to address the competent practice and only promoted the appearance of accountability, more and more states began to use CE as a basis for relicensure to regulate professional practice from the 1970s and the number of states has risen consistently for the past two decades.

In the future,more professions are likely to follow the example of the Royal College of physicians and Surgeons of Canada who have developed the Maintenance of Competence Program for the recertification. This system allows physicians to use activities such as participation in audits of practice and a personal learning portfolio, which is a database of items of new learning recorded during the past years.

Institutional Agendas

Various institutions developed the second part of agenda for CPE. Four components of institutions are considered here: multiple goals; multiple providers; multiple modes of delivery and collaboration among providers and professions.

Multiple goals:

The goals of the organization in which CPE is provided is often the primary factory in determining the institutional agenda. Institutions tend to view CPE differently according to the overall mission, vision, and values of the institutions. For example, some institutions may view CPE as a method of employee development. Within these institutions like Healthcare, educations assists employees to provide better services that clients need and the CPE is an link in provision of institutional service;Other institutions may rely on CPE as a way to generate revenue to support their overall mission, such us higher education and professional schools, especially in those areas that require CPE for recertification or relicensure of professionals.

Multiple providers:

The providers of CPE include workplace, higher education and for-profit companies and so on. The workplace is by far the largest provider of CPE, which is often accomplished by HRD.

The model of theoretical orientations in continuing professional development:

This model from Dirkx and Austin help us understand the nature of multiple providers in CPE and their multiple goals. There are three dimensions in their model: aim of professional development , context though which the goals are met and the focus of professional development. Their model, depicted in Figure1, demonstrate the complexity of currently developing systems of CPE.

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Figure1 Dirkx/Austin model of theoretical orientations in continuing professional development

Aims Technical Practical Contexts HRD CPE Staff development Training in the workplace Education provided through professional association and higher education associated with schools Instrumental action, the scientific method and the hard science Communicative action and human interest Emancipatory Power and understanding our actions through self-reflection and self-knowledge Faculty development Education accomplished in colleges and universities This model promotes a new understanding of institutional agendas in CPE. Each cell in this model could be considered as a different type of CPE offering.

Multiple modes of delivery:

Most of CPE is offered as limited short-time educational programs in a face -to-face format and the mode of delivery focuses on an update of technical information. However, increasingly distance education technologies are being incorporated into CPE programming, such as video-conferencing, Internet-based courses and conferences, online group discussion and so on. Additionally, Lehman proposed a relatively new form of distribution in CPE--learning objects, which are \"digital chunks of information\"of learning. These smaller learning units can be download to hand-held devices making them easy to access and to share.

Collaboration among providers and professions:

Collaborative arrangements can not only help increase learning and understanding,but also

decrease the cost of providing CE. However, collaboration can raise issues within institutions. For example, providers of CPE may feel that too much collaboration can decease the need of

CPE.Once again, Dirkx and Austin's mode offer us a new way to consider collaboration. Different providers and professions can analyze their own strengths and then collaborate with other providers offering different kinds of education in different methods.

Educational agendas

The educational agendas in systems of CPE is shaped by the model of professional learning, by an understanding of the nature of expertise, and by the overall effectiveness of CPE programs.

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The model of learning

In early models of professional learning, knowledge for practice was created in one location,often university setting, deliver though CPE programs and then transferred to or adopted in professional practice.

In the 1980s however, Cervero proposed a model of learning based on an understanding of how professionals \"develop knowledge through practice\". Within this model, he combined components of cognitive psychology, reflective practice and studies of expertise.

With the continuing development of CPE, expanded models of learning will need to be the base for educational offerings in the future. Professionals do not simply learning information and then incorporate it in a practice context. Recent research indicates that professionals construct a knowledge base on their own interpretations of the environment by linking the new knowledge with their practice experience. So it is essential that education providers recognize the complex process of professionals' knowledge construction and change to incorporate a more active and integrated type of learning.

An understanding of the nature of expertise

In addition, we need to understand how the nature of professional practice impacts learning. Recent work by Donaldson indicates that individuals within different professions fundamentally think in different ways. Therefore, dose the nature of the professional practice drive the thinking and learning process? If the answer is yes, how does the nature shape the educational agendas? The idea of collective expertise within a profession is also an area that will shape the educational agendas in the future. When the professionals study professional expertise from a novice to an expert practitioner, they develop the ability to think more abstractly and

comprehensively. Then their studies of expertise move toward to developing an understanding of connection between learning and their expertise. So professionals on different levels of

professional development learn in different manners, which has been indicated by researches. So studies of expertise that on development of collective expertise are also needed.

The overall effectiveness of CPE programs

The question \"Does it make a difference in the service provided to the clients\" exists when

professionals attend CPE programs. Early studies showed totally different results on this question. To clarify the variabilities in the results, Umble and Cervero conducted a meta-analysis of 16 studies on this topic. They found a general causal connection between CPE and impact on professional practice in terms of knowledge, competence, performance and outcome and the types of programs can promote performance change. At the same time, they advocated more studies on the impact of CPE on practice.

Conclusion

The task of building systems of CPE is more complex than the existing systems of preservice professional education. Firstly reason is that CE must help professionals for 30-40 years Secondly there are multiple institutions that offer CE.

As a humanly constructed system, the building of a system of CE for any professional is a political process, which is crucial that all the stakeholders participate in a substantive way in negotiating the three agendas of CE.

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