Professional development , also known as professional education , is learning that leads to or emphasizes education in a specific professional career field or builds practical job applicable skills emphasizing praxis in addition to the transferable skills and theoretical academic knowledge found in traditional liberal arts and pure sciences education. It is used to earn or maintain professional credentials such as professional certifications or academic degrees through formal coursework at institutions known as professional schools, or attending conferences and informal learning opportunities to strengthen or gain new skills.
47-679: Professional education has been described as intensive and collaborative, ideally incorporating an evaluative stage. There is a variety of approaches to professional development or professional education, including consultation, coaching, communities of practice , lesson study, case study , capstone project , mentoring, reflective supervision and technical assistance. A wide variety of people, such as teachers, military officers and non-commissioned officers, health care professionals, architects, lawyers, accountants and engineers engage in professional development. Individuals may participate in professional development because of an interest in lifelong learning,
94-534: A Continuing Professional Development (CPD) record. Chartered member of the Institution are entitled to use the designation Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner and the designatory letters CMIOSH . Chartered Member status requires approved educational qualifications, experience and should complete Initial Professional Development (IPD) Includes Skill Development Portfolio, Open Assessment and Peer Review interview. All Chartered Members are required to maintain
141-467: A "community of practice" as a group that shares a common interest and desire to learn from and contribute to the community. In his later work, Wenger shifted his focus from legitimate peripheral participation toward tensions that emerge from dualities . He identifies four dualities that exist in communities of practice: participation-reification, designed-emergent, identification-negotiability and local-global. The participation-reification duality has been
188-440: A CoP can be codified and archived, they provide rich content and contexts that can be accessed for future use. Members of CoPs are thought to be more efficient and effective conduits of information and experiences. While organizations tend to provide manuals to meet employee training needs, CoPs help foster the process of storytelling among colleagues, which helps them strengthen their skills. Studies have shown that workers spend
235-454: A CoP is central to identity because learning is conceptualized as social participation – the individual actively participates in the practices of social communities, thus developing their role and identity within the community. In this context, a community of practice is a group of individuals with shared interests or goals who develop both their individual and shared identities through community participation. The structural characteristics of
282-472: A CoP, the members learn from each other and develop their identities. CoPs can engage in community practices in physical settings (for example, in a lunchroom at work, an office, a factory floor), but CoP members are not necessarily co-located. They can form a "virtual community of practice" (VCoP) when the CoP is primarily located in online spaces such as discussion boards, newsgroups, or social media. Similar to
329-550: A Continuing Professional Development (CPD) record. Technical Members of the Institution are entitled to use the designatory letters Tech IOSH . They require approved educational qualifications like NEBOSH General Certificate, NVQ Level 3,NCRQ L3 etc, plus professional experience. They are required to continue in professional development. Affiliate level is for those who have an interest in, or are employed in occupational safety and health but are not yet eligible to join at other categories of membership. IOSH has recently launched
376-459: A Continuing Professional Development (CPD) record. This category is for those in a more senior health and safety role who are working towards the goal of Chartered status. Members can move up to Certified membership if they have a recognised and relevant degree-level qualification plus two years’ relevant experience OR progress through our experiential route if they have significant health and safety leadership experience. Members will need to maintain
423-535: A VCoP, a "mobile community of practice" (MCoP) forms when members primarily engage in community practices via mobile phones. Communities of practice have existed for as long as people have been learning and sharing their experiences through storytelling. The idea is rooted in American pragmatism , especially C. S. Peirce 's concept of the " community of inquiry ", as well as John Dewey 's principle of learning through occupation. For Etienne Wenger , learning in
470-421: A combination of academic qualifications, experience and achievement. Chartered Fellows of the Institution are entitled to use the designation Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner and the designatory letters CFIOSH . This is the highest grade. Chartered Fellows must have demonstrated an outstanding contribution to the discipline and profession of health and safety. All Chartered Fellows are required to maintain
517-832: A community member becomes part of a community occurs through legitimate peripheral participation . Legitimation and participation define ways of belonging to a community, whereas peripherality and participation are concerned with location and identity in the social world. Lave and Wenger's research examined how a community and its members learn within apprenticeships. When newcomers join an established community, they initially observe and perform simple tasks in basic roles while they learn community norms and practices. For example, an apprentice electrician might watch and learn through observation before doing any electrical work, but would eventually take on more complicated electrical tasks. Lave and Wenger described this socialization process as legitimate peripheral participation. Lave and Wenger referred to
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#1732782545480564-424: A community of practice among Yucatán midwives , Liberian tailors, navy quartermasters and meat cutters, and insurance claims processors. Other fields have used the concept of CoPs in education, sociolinguistics, material anthropology, medical education , second language acquisition , Parliamentary Budget Offices, health care and business sectors, and child mental health practice ( AMBIT ). A famous example of
611-413: A community of practice are redefined to a domain of knowledge, a notion of community and a practice: In many organizations, communities of practice are integral to the organization structure. These communities take on knowledge stewarding tasks that were previously covered by more formal organizational structures. Both formal and informal communities of practice may be established in an organization. There
658-521: A community of practice within an organization is the Xerox customer service representatives who repaired machines. The Xerox reps began exchanging repair tips and tricks in informal meetings over breakfast or lunch. Eventually, Xerox saw the value of these interactions and created the Eureka project, which allowed these interactions to be shared across its global network of representatives. The Eureka database
705-722: A division of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents ( RoSPA ). The Institution gained its charitable status in 1962 and continues to operate as a not-for-profit organisation. In 1981, the IISO was renamed as the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), and in 2002 was awarded a Royal Charter. From 2005, IOSH began awarding Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner status to recognise individual professionalism and commitment to continued learning and development. In 2011 along with other health and safety bodies in
752-465: A job requires the application of theory into practice. CoPs help individuals bridge the gap between knowing what and knowing how . As members of CoPs, individuals report increased communication with people (professionals, interested parties, hobbyists), less dependence on geographic proximity, and the generation of new knowledge. This assumes that interactions occur naturally when individuals come together. However, social and interpersonal factors play
799-433: A number of guides, such as Safe Start Up guides which are designed to help small business with health and safety. IOSH also fund and produce a number of research reports. IOSH regularly post consultations, where members can respond and have the opportunity to influence national and international policies. IOSH Blueprint is a framework designed to measure skills and competencies in occupational safety and health. The tool
846-428: A particular focus in the field of knowledge management . Wenger describes three dimensions of practice that support community cohesion: mutual engagement , negotiation of a joint enterprise and shared repertoire. The communities Lave and Wenger studied were naturally forming as practitioners of craft and skill-based activities met to share experiences and insights. Lave and Wenger observed situated learning within
893-412: A role in the interaction, and research shows that some individuals share or withhold knowledge and expertise from others because their knowledge relates to their professional identities, position, and interpersonal relationships. Communicating with others in a CoP involves creating social presence . Chih-Hsiung defines social presence as "the degree of salience of another person in an interaction and
940-1159: A sense of moral obligation, to maintain and improve professional competence, to enhance career progression, to keep abreast of new technology and practices, or to comply with professional regulatory requirements. In the training of school staff in the United States, "[t]he need for professional development ... came to the forefront in the 1960s". Many American states have professional development requirements for school teachers. For example, Arkansas teachers must complete 60 hours of documented professional development activities annually. Professional development credits are named differently from state to state. For example, teachers in Indiana are required to earn 90 Continuing Renewal Units (CRUs) per year; in Massachusetts, teachers need 150 Professional Development Points (PDPs); and in Georgia, teachers must earn 10 Professional Learning Units (PLUs). American and Canadian nurses, as well as those in
987-580: 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: The World Bank 's 2019 World Development Report on the future of work argues that professional development opportunities for those both in and out of work, such as flexible learning opportunities at universities and adult learning programs, enable labor markets to adjust to
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#17327825454801034-435: A situation based on their experiences, which may enable another person to avoid mistakes, thus shortening the learning curve. In a CoP, members can openly discuss and brainstorm about a project, which can lead to new capabilities. The type of information that is shared and learned in a CoP is boundless. Paul Duguid distinguishes tacit knowledge (knowing how ) from explicit knowledge (knowing what ). Performing optimally in
1081-411: A third of their time looking for information and are five times more likely to turn to a co-worker than an explicit source of information (book, manual, or database). Conferring with CoP members saves time because community members have tacit knowledge , which can be difficult to store and retrieve for people unfamiliar with the CoP. For example, someone might share one of their best ways of responding to
1128-403: Is a great deal of interest within organizations to encourage, support, and sponsor communities of practice to benefit from shared knowledge that may lead to higher productivity. Communities of practice are viewed by many within business settings as a means to explicate tacit knowledge , or the "know-how" that is difficult to articulate. An important aspect and function of communities of practice
1175-465: Is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly." The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger in their 1991 book Situated Learning . Wenger significantly expanded on this concept in his 1998 book Communities of Practice . A CoP can form around members' shared interests or goals. Through being part of
1222-523: Is considered to be valuable context-based experiences that cannot easily be captured, codified and stored. Because knowledge management is seen "primarily as a problem of capturing, organizing, and retrieving information, evoking notions of databases, documents, query languages, and data mining", the community of practice is viewed as a potential rich source for helpful information in the form of actual experiences; in other words, best practices . Thus, for knowledge management, if community practices within
1269-466: Is critical to success in communities of practice. Studies show that members are motivated to become active participants in a CoP when they view knowledge as a public good, a moral obligation and/or a community interest. CoP members can also be motivated to participate through tangible returns (promotion, raises or bonuses), intangible returns (reputation, self-esteem) and community interest (exchange of practice related knowledge, interaction). Collaboration
1316-647: Is currently in a beta testing stage. IOSH members, and a number of select organisations, are using the self-assessment tool to identify training and development needs. IOSH Training and Skills is a range of courses designed for different aspects of occupational health and safety. The courses are delivered by IOSH licensed trainers. Trainers must have suitable qualifications and experience before being approved to run IOSH courses. Managing Safely and Working Safely courses are also available in Arabic. IOSH tailored courses are developed by licensed training providers to meet
1363-401: Is essential to ensure that communities of practice thrive. In a study on knowledge exchange in a business network, Sveiby and Simons found that more seasoned colleagues tend to foster a more collaborative culture. Additionally they noted that a higher educational level predicted a tendency to favor collaboration. What makes a community of practice succeed depends on the purpose and objective of
1410-513: Is estimated to have saved the corporation $ 100 million. Examples of large virtual CoPs include: Institution of Occupational Safety and Health The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health ( IOSH ) is a global organisation for health and safety professionals, based in the UK. IOSH is the chartered professional body for health and safety in the workplace. It acts as a champion, supporter, adviser, advocate and trainer for those who protect
1457-444: Is increasing organization performance. Lesser and Storck identify four areas of organizational performance that can be affected by communities of practice: Collaboration constellations differ in various ways. Some are under organizational control (e.g., teams), whereas others, like CoPs, are self-organized or under the control of individuals. Researchers have studied how collaboration types vary in their temporal or boundary focus, and
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1504-756: The International Institute of Risk & Safety Management (IIRSM) or the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), and medical and legal professionals, who are subject to continuing medical education or continuing legal education requirements, which vary by jurisdiction. CPD authorities in the United Kingdom include the CPD Standards Office who work in partnership with the CPD Institute, and also
1551-754: The CPD Certification Service. For example, CPD by the Institute of Highway Engineers is approved by the CPD Standards Office, and CPD by the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation is approved by the CPD Certification Service. A systematic review published in 2019 by the Campbell Collaboration found little evidence of the effectiveness of continuing professional development (CPD). Community of practice A community of practice ( CoP )
1598-507: The UK, IOSH developed the Occupational Safety & Health Consultants Register ( OSHCR ) to raise awareness and promote the use of certified health and safety consultants in the workplace. IOSH’s No Time to Lose campaign was launched in 2014 to highlight the causes of occupational cancer and help businesses take action. The No Time to Lose website provides a host of free resources and information on workplace cancer, and offers
1645-504: The United Kingdom, have to participate in formal and informal professional development (earning credit based on attendance of education that has been accredited by a regulatory agency) in order to maintain professional registration. 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
1692-575: The award of professional status are the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications , the Institution of Structural Engineers , and the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health . Continuing professional development (CPD) or continuing professional education (CPE) is continuing education to maintain knowledge and skills. Most professions have CPD obligations. Examples are the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors , American Academy of Financial Management , safety professionals with
1739-542: The basis of their members' relationships. A project team differs from a community of practice in several ways. By contrast, In some cases, it may be useful to differentiate CoP from a community of interest (CoI). Social capital is a multi-dimensional concept with public and private facets. That is, social capital may provide value to both the individual and the group as a whole. As participants build informal connections in their community of practice, they also share their expertise, learn from others, participate in
1786-417: The community as well as the interests and resources of community members. Wenger identified seven actions to cultivate communities of practice: Since the publication of "Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation", communities of practice have been the focus of attention, first as a theory of learning and later as part of the field of knowledge management. Andrew Cox offers a more critical view of
1833-454: The consequent salience of an interpersonal relationship". Social presence may affect the likelihood for an individual to participate in a CoP (especially in online environments and virtual communities of practice ). CoP management often encounter barriers that inhibit knowledge exchange between members. Reasons for these barriers may include egos and personal attacks, large overwhelming CoPs, and time constraints. Motivation to share knowledge
1880-756: The demands of specialist industry sectors, roles or skills. They are assessed and approved by IOSH to make sure they meet IOSH’s standards. IOSH recently launched their own level 3 certificate, NCFE IOSH Level 3 General Certificate in Safety and Health for Business, which offers a more direct route to IOSH membership. IOSH membership grades Enhancing the OSH profession: an update (July 2023) Student Member: Must be studying for an IOSH qualification or equivalent. Affiliate Member will be changed to Affiliate Member: Option to upgrade to technical or certified with relevant qualifications and experience or to certified or charted via
1927-438: The different ways in which the term communities of practice can be interpreted. To understand how learning occurs outside the classroom, Lave and Wenger studied how newcomers or novices become established community members within an apprenticeship. Lave and Wenger first used the term communities of practice to describe learning through practice and participation, which they described as situated learning . The process by which
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1974-750: The experiential route with relevant experience. Technical Member no change: Continue to maintain CPD in Blueprint at 30 hours per year. Graduate Member will be changed to Certified Member: Continue to maintain CPD in Blueprint at 30 hours per year. Charted Member: IOSH e-learning and assessment and continue to maintain CPD in Blueprint at 30 hours per year. New designation of charted safety and health professional. Charted Fellow: IOSH e-learning and assessment and continue to maintain CPD in Blueprint at 30 hours per year. New designation of charted safety and health professional. Categories of membership depend on
2021-581: 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
2068-401: The future of work. Initial professional development (IPD) is defined as "a period of development during which an individual acquires a level of competence necessary in order to operate as an autonomous professional". Professional associations may recognise the successful completion of IPD by the award of chartered or similar status. Examples of professional bodies that require IPD prior to
2115-428: The group, and demonstrate their expertise - all of which can be viewed as acquiring social capital . Wasko and Faraj describe three kinds of knowledge: knowledge as object, knowledge embedded within individuals, and knowledge embedded in a community. CoPs are associated with finding, sharing, transferring, and archiving knowledge, as well as making explicit "expertise", or articulating tacit knowledge . Tacit knowledge
2162-444: The opportunity to sign a pledge to make changes and support the campaign. The Occupational Health Toolkit (OH Toolkit) is a free resource to help tackle common occupational health problems such as skin disorders, work related stress and non-work related conditions including diabetes and heart disease. The toolkit brings together information, guidance, case studies and training materials. As part of their charitable work, IOSH produce
2209-408: The safety, health and wellbeing of others. IOSH has around 48,000 members, from over 130 countries. This includes an extensive trainer network who deliver well known courses including Leading Safely , Managing Safely and Working Safely . Over 179,000 delegates attended IOSH training courses in 2016. IOSH was founded in 1945 when the Institution of Industrial Safety Officers (IISO) was formed as
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