Professional Development Report

The report would be structured on the basis of Gibbs Reflective cycle, which is as follows:

Figure 1.1 Gibbs Reflective Cycle(Gibbs, 1998)

1.1 Description

The debate started with a vague statement how the menace of poverty can be solved? First the group members were introduced about what is aid and how does it work. Then everyone expressed his/her part. The group applied critical thinking to the matter and with the help of critical analysis different propositions were given. First different tools to critical thinking were used before the argument moved to a fast pace. The tool proposed by Paul and Elder (2009) were used to work out the debate. The tool consists of nine distinct ways to critically assess any argument, which are:

a) Clarity
b) Accuracy
c) Precision
d) Relevance
e) Depth
f) Breadth
g) Logic
h) Significance
i) Fairness

1.2 Feelings

Feelings were mixed because the topic was so interesting and new. Most of us heard it the first time that's why we were so interested in how it turns out. Poverty sickens everybody and thinking a way to eradicate the problem is something, which is necessary for the society.

1.3 Evaluation

The ideas were analysed using different techniques. To construct different arguments, two different techniques of creativity were used which are SCAMPER and The Nominal Group Technique.

SCAMPER takes an existing idea and then manipulates it. SCAMPER stands for Substitute; Combine; Adapt; Magnify-Modify; Put to other uses; Eliminate; Rearrange-Reverse. We cannot use this technique efficiently because there was not any concrete idea which was there to manipulate.

The second technique, which was used, is The Nominal Group Technique. In this technique upto ten participants can take part and one facilitator for every group consisting of 3-4 members and a lead facilitator as well.

Figure 1.2 Nominal Group Technique

The first step is when all the members are introduced together and then purpose of the meeting is explained. For our debate the purpose was to devise a way to eliminate poverty. The second step is when members are given sometime to come up with their ideas, groups silently work on their ideas till the facilitator asks for sharing the idea. The third step is sharing the ideas. Some of ideas which were shared in our debate were to educate the masses, to deport all foreign workers in the country, bring retirement age to 55 years, giving relief to farmers so more and more join the profession to feed the world etc. We then discussed those ideas one by one. After discussing the ideas, the ideas are voted and prioritized.

1.4 Conclusions

While devising different strategies we use the FAO framework for reduction in poverty, which proved very helpful.

Figure 1.3 (Von Braun, 1995)

The above framework can be explained, as the resources for generating employments are land, capital, labour and entrepreneurship. There can be two types of employments programs: one can be agricultural employment and other can be non-agricultural employment. Non-agricultural employment is then sub-categorised in small-scale informal and formal manufacturing and service. As agricultural employment is based on land, so it is land based and sub divided as employment from agricultural marketing and processes. This employment generation leads to income generation thus asset creation, which will eventually result in, reduce poverty.

We as a group devised came to the conclusion that due to populations outburst the cultivatable land is shrinking and the pressure on farmers to create more food is very high. It is leading the farmers to leave farming as a profession and come to cities to find work which further pressurises the economy because cities are already filled up to their necks and there are not more jobs there. The solution is to use farming as a profession to give some room to poverty, this can happen by giving farmers subsidies. Subsidies will attract the new farmers as well as old farmers to keep doing farming(Chung and Chin-cheng, 2016). It will lead to reduced poverty and also increase in food supply, which will help to keep cost of feeding people low.

1.5 Action

We used two techniques to analyse the possible way to eradicate poverty. It was very difficult to control both techniques because of time constraint as well as high flow of new ideas. If next time we will execute this type of debate we will try to stick to one technique so we can use it in the best way we can. It will not only save the time but also enrich the ideas.