THREE DIMENSIONS OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

A simple and practical approach to helping learners to assess themselves against models of good practice is described. Many models of good practice – are available to help learners assess themselves and to improve their performance but it can be difficult for learners to use these models to assess degrees of ability. The most common way of dealing with this problem at present is by providing a single linear scale of grades of ability. It is argued that people who are assessing themselves against models of good practice are thinking not in the one dimension of a single linear scale, but in three dimensions: quantity (or consistency); quality (or degree of skill), and range (ability in a variety of circumstances). The use of these three, quite different dimensions can lead to accurate self‐assessment.