CPD – Continuing Personal or Professional Development - is the term that describes a commitment to structured skills enhancement and personal or professional competence.

The Dance Teachers' Convention of seminars and workshops are CPD certified. This means that the CPD Certification Service has deemed the show's seminars, workshops and content relevant to Professional Development.

The CPD Certification Service helps organisations provide certified CPD and acts as a point of contact for those seeking to obtain certified CPD material. It supports further learning initiatives being undertaken by Government, professional institutions, trade associations, individual organisations, training providers, suppliers and so on.

If you attend a Teachers' Convention seminar or workshop at the show you are eligible for a CPD certificate of attendance. Teachers obtaining this certificate can keep this piece of paper for their personal record or so their employer can appraise them. It shows that they’re committed. CPD is the term given to describe taking a structured approach to further learning.

Our programme was sent for CPD assessment to an independent CPD assessor and has been recognised as good educational learning value of the seminar programme. The event has been independently certified for CPD purposes.

What counts as CPD?
Many different activities can qualify as CPD, and you will need to think about which of these are most appropriate to your particular situation. It is not only achieved as a result of formal training and qualifications but can also occur through experience-based learning in the workplace and through personal roles and activities outside.

As an example, although all of the time spent training colleagues or as a school governor will not qualify as CPD, it may be possible to identify specific areas within these roles where learning has been achieved. These activities can therefore be incorporated into a CPD Planner as relevant CPD as long as an indication of the subject area and outcome of the particular experience accompanies them.

The following list is not exhaustive, but suggests some examples that you might find useful.

Formal Events 
- Courses, seminars, conferences
- Workshops & briefing sessions

Long-term qualifications & projects (6 months or more) 
- Full/part-time study
- Open distance learning
- Contributions to original research

On-the-job development
- Internal discussion groups
- Adviser/consultancy positions
- Professional interviews
- Voluntary (professional) work
- Special project work
- Staff training
- Developing transferable skills e.g. languages, IT, business/financial skills
- Skills related to management responsibilities

Private study, structured reading 
- Assimilation of knowledge on specific topics from various texts & references
- Use of audio, video or multi-media resources and company, public or institute Library services

Presentations and Publications (Professional meetings, working groups and panels)
- Research for publications and papers
- Preparation for presentations to colleagues/clients/branch
- Participation in public meetings
- Lecturing on careers/the profession
- Practice, policy & market panels
- Special working groups
- Course accreditation exercises
- External examiner positions
- Branch officer, (i.e. organisational skills)

Responsibility within the community 
- Voluntary (non-professional) work
- School governor/member of PTA
- Parish council/other local government work
- Youth groups
- Local business community boards (e.g. TEC, Chamber of Commerce) 

MANAGING AND PLANNING YOUR OWN CPD
The learning process should be an integral part of both your working and your personal life. As you acquire new skills and experience you should improve both your levels of performance and the amount of job satisfaction that you obtain. It may also be that you are able to transfer skills between your working and your personal life. A new language, for instance, might have been obtained in order to increase the enjoyment of an overseas holiday but it may also open up new career opportunities. Lifelong learning, or Continuing Personal or Professional Development (CPD), has long been recognised as a pathway to success in an increasingly competitive and dynamic business environment.

Historically, the undertaking of CPD has been perceived as only being relevant to members of professional bodies with most of them expecting their members to carry out CPD as a ‘duty of membership’.

None of us stop learning, however, whether or not we are members of professional bodies. What is important is that rather than acting as a ‘sponge’, absorbing any information that helps us at work, we take a structured or planned approach to the learning process. Only by doing this will we be able to make others aware of the new skills that we have developed.

Equally, it is only by adopting a structured approach that we will be able to maximise the value of the learning that we do by ensuring that our efforts are directed into beneficial areas and that we do actually "learn" something as opposed to obtaining information and then promptly forgetting it.

The benefits of taking a structured approach to skills and knowledge enhancement are common to all, irrespective of what job they do or how senior within the organisation they are.

When CPD first became obligatory there was a temptation to over-emphasise the quantity of hours spent "doing CPD". It is now recognised that it is the quality of CPD that makes a difference and the CPD Certification Service’s Personal Development Planner which follows has been designed with this change of emphasis in mind.

It aims to link your personal and career needs to business and lifestyle goals and to provide a structured way of planning and recording your CPD so that you will get the best out of it.

Find out more about CPD at http://www.cpduk.co.uk/