Study notebook

We recommend that you keep a study notebook (learning journal) for this course to support your professional development. You may have kept one before or the idea may be new to you. Essentially, this is a notebook in which you note such things as:

• ideas that may come to you when you are either studying or in the workplace, or at any other time
• notes about articles that you read as you go along
• reflections on your own learning as you move through the course.

The last item here – reflection on your own learning – is one of the most important. It is helpful to identify how your own personal theories, ideas and beliefs change, or are reinforced, by your study.

Sometimes this learning will be very clear to you; at other times, your learning will only become apparent over a much longer timespan – for example, when you introduce some ideas into your place of work or draw on some of your practice in your learning.

Your study notebook is personal to you and it should be useful to you. You may want to share parts of it with a friend or colleague. There is no set formula for keeping a study notebook: some days you may write a great deal; at other times only a little. However, you are advised to write notes in such a way that you can understand them when you return to them months later. Throughout the course you will be prompted to note down a response in your study notebook.

You can keep your notebook in a format that appeals to you and is easy for you to maintain – it could be an ordinary paper notebook or on a desktop or mobile device.