Continuing Professional Development for Mariners

Abstract

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is now a part of our life in exponentially changing posture of the world. We are living in disrupted development which requires to adopt new technologies in our profession as well as to support emerging new professions. It is important for professionals to keep up with technologic developments and enable themselves to adopt challenging requirements. All the leading parties of maritime industry should understand and evaluate the future of the maritime business and advice the Maritime Education and Training (MET) and research institutes to prepare CPD programmes for mariners. More important the maritime industry should decide their requirement for CPD and manage themselves to get benefit from the CPD to secure their business ensuring their employers’ career development to adapt to challenging requirements. The purpose of this research is to evaluate what kind of initiatives should be started to achieve a reliable and sustainable CPD system for mariners as well as encouraging them to get benefit from CPD programmes. As a continuation of this investigation, possible CPD providers and suitable delivery methods for mariners will be defined. This paper argues for a more realistic approach for CPD for mariners who have very limited access to regular education opportunities due to nature of their job at sea. A detailed literature has been conducted to understand CPD concept and applications supported with a survey conducted with respective persons in the industry to realize the facts which directly affecting CPD opportunities for people working in the shipping industry. We review related data to evaluate how we can develop an effective and reliable CPD system considering existing limitations. Herein lies the contribution of this paper; it is argued that how we can assist the mariners providing them a practical CPD system and meet the new requirements which sector needs under the pressure of rapidly changing technology and its effects on the professions. This is an initial study and results of this study may be used by other researchers who will make further studies on the facilitation of CPD.