This paper draws on research which investigated how MSc students perceive the balance between postgraduate learning as a functional career enhancement mechanism, and a more personal process of identity building. An initial investigation explored student motivations for enrolling on their course of study, and subsequently their notions of the role of personal development planning (PDP) while on those courses. The research thus had two distinct components, each of which drew a set of discrete conclusions; the first of these informed the research for the second. The research used a mix of in-depth interviews, workshops with students and focus groups to generate data.
In the first component, the data was analysed to draw conclusions about the range of student motivations to study at MSc level, along a continuum from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. The research posited that a policy and institutional discourse emphasising career development as the paramount role for PDP (notwithstanding the original intentions of earlier PDP policymakers) is coercive, and could interfere with students’ capacity for using their courses as an opportunity to strengthen self-concept and a sense of authenticity. The conclusions were that those students who lack an intrinsically configured sense of career and personal development may be less likely to challenge the discourse, and thus less likely to use their programme of study as a mechanism for determining a genuinely personal developmental track.
The second component provided insights into students’ perceptions of the role of personal development planning in their taught MSc courses. Those perceptions relate to the first component, in that a student’s motivation to study (for functional career development and other extrinsic purposes, for example, or conversely for intrinsic drivers such as a deep-seated or intellectual interest in a particular subject area), may be expected to influence his or her conception of the purpose of PDP.
The conclusions from this aspect of the research were that while students themselves may lend great weight to the importance of skills and the employability agenda as represented in the PDP discourse, many of them see it as serving an equally important, but complementary, agenda of increasing self-awareness and self-esteem. This student view was considered in the light of literature which identifies the importance of satisfying the psychological needs of competence, relatedness and autonomy, for the attainment of increased well-being. In that context, the task of attempting to define generic ‘good practice’ in PDP was seen to give way to the need for each individual to determine his or her own developmental priorities. The students deemed it important that their institutions should support the necessary flexibility and diversity of approach to PDP as a result. Overall, there is a case for recasting the role of PDP more widely than as a mechanism for skills development. It should rather be framed as a means of meeting psychological needs, to create a virtuous circle of development from which other benefits (including individual capacity building) will flow.