Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper explores the nature and context of students’ participation in Continuing Professional Education (post-experience), with a focus on the experiences of those engaging in a Masters level, professionally accredited qualification (MSC Human Resource Management, CIPD). This study presents a single open framework that considers the reasons for, the challenges to, and the enablers of participation across defined contextual dimensions (the psychological, the professional, the practical and the personal), for the purposes of understanding the context of post-experience participation. Viewed through the lens of an original matrix framework, findings demonstrate that participants chose to engage and continue with the learning activity as a result of a diverse range of influencing factors. The transferability and usability of the framework and its potential to contribute to wider practice is explored. It is proposed that the open, exploratory framework can be applied to a variety of different learning activities, across a variety of disciplines, as a means of identifying areas of improvement or change in post-graduate learning support practice.