Autobiography and narrative in personal development planning in the creative arts

Personal development planning (PDP) is being promoted to enable students to examine their practices, beliefs, behaviours and achievements in the fullest context of their learning. This article will summarize developments to date with progress files, consider what PDP is, including the tension between its external, sociocultural role (the demonstration of skills and assets to others) and capacity to enhance internal, individual understanding. The special contribution made by creative arts education in shaping PDP will be explored. Ambivalence in the sector as to both PDP and writing will be considered in the light of experiments with alternative writing practices. In particular, these will relate to the emergence of personal narrative and authorial voice, detectable in both the visual product and the learning process. Drawing on my research into autobiography and PDP I will propose a two-tier narrative framework for PDP that can be both motivating for the learner and productive as a metacognitive tool.