Personal Development Planning (PDP) is a simple process of reflecting on your own learning, performance and achievements that helps you to plan your personal, educational and career development
A PDP can help you to increase your self-awareness- who you are and what you want, identify the skills and experience that you already have, and those that you need, create a plan to acquire the skills you may need for your academic studies or your chosen career path and keep a record of your achievements that you can draw on when you apply for further study or employment.
A Personal Development Plan (PDP) helps ‘you to plan ahead towards your dreams’ it ‘helps you shape your own ambitions, identify the skills and qualities needed to achieve your goals’, it ‘helps you develop skills, qualities and attitudes that help you to find a good job as a graduate. It ‘helps develop skills that will help in your studies, in your career and in life more generally,’ it will, ‘prioritise your time more effectively to allow time for your study’. (Cottrell, s (2003))
It is essential that health and social workers have the confidence to question their own practice, the organisation that they work in, and dominant power structures in society at large (Fook, 1999).
Whilst creating my PDP I found that self-awareness exercises are key tools in familiarising myself with the techniques used to reflect on my use of helping skills.
Creating my PDP wasn’t just about me gaining and broadening academic skills but about developing my own personal skills. I found that using the Johari Window was a great tool for me to become more self aware.
Johari’s Window is based on the principle that of all the things about us that exist can be found through positive and honest information. The theory consists of four windowpanes. This visual is monumental in grasping the true message of observation and trust, or does it?
Johari’s first pane, “the arena,” embraces the