You have probably seen the movie, ‘Meet the Parents’ and if so, you will have a smile on your face about now….. Well, sorry to disappoint you, this conversation is not about Gaylord Focker and his funny adventures with the in-laws. Rather it is about parenting and being parented and how this applies to our professional development. Saying that, you could probably say that Mr Focker got a pretty good dose of professional development from his father-in-law during ‘Meet the Parents’.

So let us now focus on how parents encourage and enhance learning for their children…… And that is ok, if you are not a parent as you can reflect on your upbringing because chances are that you are in the position that you are in today because of the fine example you were set for the love of learning.

Let us take reading as an example.

Reading is great at any time of the day, however, it is particularly special at bed time. Yes at bed time. Once every day. The frequency is at least once every day. We read to our child. We read they gradually get better. How can they not get better? After all, they do it every day. Same place, same time, same fun of reading a book. But it is not just the same book and same pictures and same words every night. We move onto bigger and more complex books, more comprehensive dialogue, counting objects, remembering names of characters, spotting little details and more. It is continuous learning guided by a loving parent.

By spending precious moments reading with our child we watch our little ones blossom in front of our very eyes.

Let us take time to reflect on this. As parents we adopt a habit of professional development for our children. They love it and we love it. We all see, feel and hear the benefit.

At Engineering Education Australia, we are always discussing our lives and how they relate back to professional development. Yes, it sounds a bit strange but it is true….. So how about you take the time to think about what your equivalent to reading every night to a child is in your professional lives? Are you alive and learning or are you stuck in a rut, or even worse, are you fading?

So no matter where you are with your professional development, today is the day to reflect on how you can apply the simple approach of parenting to your professional development. Give yourself the gift of professional development in the same way that children are given the gift of parents reading to them.

Let us start by taking a journey back to high school….. For some of us that is a long time ago and perhaps for others not so long ago….. Either way, we are going back to year 10 Science….. Can you picture the science laboratory, smell the subtle hint of chemicals in the air and hear the sound of gas as you turn on the bunsen burner for the very first time.

It is all fun, that first experiment….. Yes, that is right, we are now heating a beacon of water to boiling point….. Mr Porchelli keeping a keen eye on you to make sure you didn’t commit the sin of leaving the bunsen burner unattended (and especially not with a non illuminous flame). Oh yes, so much fun…..

But then the real work begins….. Physics….. Just when you thought that mathematics was confined only to the walls of Mathematics Class….. But that is ok, we are talking amongst engineers here and we all have a common love of the fundamentals of Physics.

And now that we are on the topic of Physics, there is no better place to start than Sir Isaac Newton and as always Engineering Education Australia likes to link all things back to professional development. So let us now apply Newton’s First Law of Motion to your professional development.

Now, a bit of a reminder on Newton’s First Las of Motion ……

Newton’s First Law of Motion says that if an object is not pushed or pulled upon, its velocity will naturally remain constant. This means that if an object is moving along, untouched by a force of any kind, it will continue to move along in a perfectly straight line at a constant speed. This also means that if an object is standing still and is not contacted by any forces, it will continue to remain motionless.

And now, let us apply this to professional development by looking at what type of person we are…..

Since 1989 we have discovered that 8 out of every 10 engineers will fit into 1 of the following 2 categories:

(1)   You occasionally undertake professional development. You are in motion, but the friction of the outside world is hurting you….. It is slowing you down and you can feel it and it is hard to break out of this pattern….. Are you up to date? Or are your warning lights on?

OR

(2)   You are long overdue for some professional development….. In fact you are no longer in motion…..  Are you out of date? Are your emergency lights on?

Ok….. Ok…… You are not in the 8 out of every 10 we are talking about here….. No….. You are in the 2 out of every 10 engineers who continually invest in professional development….. You make ongoing deposits into your professional development bank account….. You are in motion and you are counteracting all external forces to make sure that you stay in motion…… You can feel it and this is what is making you the engineer that you want to become……

Regardless of what category you fall into, please take a moment to think about your professional development in the upcoming months. It could be as simple as picking up that book that you have been meaning to read for months, or reading that publication that over the past months has gone from the mail box to the coffee table to the bin without as much as a few glances at the cover, or it may even be attending a conference or a professional development course. You can be sure that Sir Isaac Newton did his fair share of professional development to give him the edge when it came to success. A quality that all successful engineers and professionals share….. But we will save that thought for another conversation.

Sir Isaac Newton, born 4 January 1643 Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire and died 31 March 1727 in London England