Having bookmarked the page and then spent many months thinking what a good idea it would be get some professional accreditation relating to learning development, I finally set about writing the application for CeP status earlier this year with only days to spare before the next submission deadline. (My first piece of advice, if you’re thinking about applying, would be to give yourself plenty of time to write it!) Having had the experience of writing similar applications for Fellow, then Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE (/HEA), and, as many of us do, of teaching reflective writing, I felt happy about my ability to write reflectively about my practice. That said, it took time to identify suitable exemplars of practice to write about, plan the reflective statement itself, and to focus the writing on the different values I needed to address. Thankfully, I did it well enough to be awarded CeP status. What follows is my own account of why I decided to do it and, more importantly, how I went about completing the application. I hope it’s of some use to anyone reading who might be thinking about doing the same.
Why was it important to me to get CeP status? Clearly, from a CPD perspective, gaining professional recognition of your skills and expertise in the area in which you work helps to enhance your standing within the learning development community; it also serves to enhance your CV by providing tangible, widely recognised proof of your experience. More than this, however, is what it can give you at an institutional level. I’ve sometimes felt, from time to time, peripheral to the business of learning that goes on in higher education. This is in part due to where I – and many of us – sit. Working in a professional service (i.e. not in an academic school) has its benefits, but it often burdens us with the status of ‘outsider’, from the perspective of both students and members of academic staff. ‘Self-promotion’, therefore (if I can call it that), via professional recognition schemes such as this one, is vital to boost professional and even academic identity. I’ve always felt that this is essential to my ability to build solid collaborative relationships with colleagues in academic schools. It was with this in mind, therefore, that I set about completing the application for CeP status.
How did I go about completing the form? As I said above, I hadn’t given myself long to do it, and so adopting an organised and planned approach was even more important than it might have been if I’d allowed several weeks for preparation. To begin with, I reviewed the form itself carefully, to work out what, exactly, I needed to do; I then looked at the values to establish the goalposts – what I needed to bear in mind when it came to shaping the writing. Just as with any form of assessment, it’s really important to get a clear understanding of the task. Spending some time reflecting on the values is a good idea; doing so will certainly help to kick start that process of identifying suitable examples to discuss in your application, a challenging aspect of the task.
Next – and as we tell students to do when tackling an assessment – I created a plan. I often create very detailed plans when I’m doing my own discipline-based research. Here, I think it’s more important to make a note of the key points you intend to make within each section of the form. As I always tell students when it comes to creating a plan, I treated it as a live document; as other points occurred to me as I went deeper into this process, I added them, just as I deleted others which seemed less relevant. Don’t be afraid to add, amend or delete as you work on this plan.
Planning will certainly help with the first section, on your learning development philosophy. Articulating, in writing, such a philosophy is difficult, especially when you’re trying to link it to your professional experience. To help, I asked myself questions: what drives my approach to the work I do? What principles shape it? What do makes my practice effective? How does my work enhance student learning? What do students – and staff – gain from my work? If you’re struggling to express your ideas here, you might find it useful to revisit any of the well-known handbooks on learning and teaching in higher education. Such books can help to sharpen your perspective on what you do. It’s also useful to discuss it with a colleague. It’s always amazing, to me, what ideas emerge from a coffee-fuelled conversation first thing on a Monday morning!
Moving into the main part of the application, the greatest challenge I found here was in identifying examples to use when discussing my practice in relation to each of the values. The examples you use need to be suitable, in that each one should give you a platform to critically reflect on your practice in light of each value. Thus, a suitable example to use in relation to the first value, about working in partnership with students and staff to get the most out of higher education, would showcase your experience in working collaboratively with these groups while, at the same time, promoting better understanding of learning at university. An induction scenario, for example, would be useful here; what did you do to help acculturate students on a particular programme to learning at this level? The examples provided in the handbook are useful here. Discussing your practice with a colleague may also be helpful. It’s sometimes just as effective to look through your calendar at the work you’ve done over the last twelve months, to jog your memory. The examples are there; you just need to unlock your mind to find them!
In terms of writing up the reflection, I adopted a fairly simple approach: what was the context for the example used? What did I do? What impact did it have on my practice, student learning, and the practice of others? In terms of context, there is always a reason as to why you’re doing something. For example, did you have a conversation with a colleague who mentioned, in passing, that the students on their programme really struggled with referencing? Such a conversation might be reason enough to explain why you intervened, once you’ve expanded on the reasons for the difficulties they were experiencing. What did you hope to achieve by intervening? Try to be specific. It’s less about ‘improving their referencing’ and more about ‘helping students to understand the importance of referencing to their ability to demonstrate their engagement with relevant discourse’. When describing what I did, I tried to be factual and to the point here. Nothing flashy is needed. In terms of impact, what evidence do you have to illustrate the impact you had? Did you gather any feedback? What did colleagues who might’ve observed the intervention say to you afterwards? What might you do differently next time to improve the outcome? I found using these questions very helpful in structuring my reflective writing. Critically reflecting on what you did, as we all know, is as much about identifying what went well as it is about identifying what didn’t go to plan; in other words, it shouldn’t be entirely negative or, less likely, entirely positive. I always try to focus on the meaning of the reflection; what does it tell me about my own practice? Assessing impact is then about interpreting what happened in light of this objective.
Therefore, in summary, based on my own experience, I would suggest (i) engaging fully with the values and the structure of the form itself; (ii) plan carefully – set out bullet points under each heading which reflect what you intend to say; (iii) identify suitable examples to use – if necessary, discuss your practice with a colleague if it will help you to find these examples; (iv) when writing up your reflection, think why did I do this, what did I do, and what impact did it have on my practice, student learning, and the practice of others? None of this advice is a guarantee of success, of course, but this approach certainly helped me. I hope that at least some of this advice will be useful to you as you go about completing your application. Good luck!
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Chris Dennis has worked for many years in higher education; teaching, to begin with, medieval history, before moving on to the field of learning development. Chris has worked as an Academic Skills Specialist, at Cardiff Met, for more than ten years. Chris is jointly responsible for developing ‘academic skills’ provision across all of the university’s constituent schools. Chris has a particular interest in approaches to learning, writing practice, and notions of success and excellence as it might be applied broadly to a student’s learning experience.
