
For a class assignment, I wrote a one-page summary on the topic of the effectiveness of blogging as a professional development tool for critical thinking. Something like that. I don’t know. My topic changes every freakin’ 5 seconds probably because I’m just not that into this class. Light 3K on fire, right? Anyway, I had included the term ‘learning professional’ in my topic title originally. Big mistake.
When the professor is critiquing my summary in class and says, “what is a learning professional? Am I a learning professional? Isn’t everyone in the industry ‘professional’?” Laughs. More laughs. I ended up dropping the term entirely from that paper because I really used it to limit the study to a particular group (as opposed to professional development for scientists, engineers, etc.) and it shouldn’t have been in the title to begin with. Whatev.
Anyway, I decided that I’m part of the problem here. I’ve used “learning professional” 100s of times. In blog post titles, in reports, web copy, etc. I thought I wrote about my dislike of the term before but can’t find anything. I probably tagged it “learning professional” and then in a fit deleted it. Perhaps it was in a dream or nightmare where I was searching for professionals to learn from or learning about professionals or trying to find professional learners.
Just answer me one little question. Does anyone actually hold the job title, “Learning Professional”? If so, my apologies. If not, what is your job title? What blanket term describes your role? What would you say you do to a six year old? And I don’t want “Performance Improvement Professional” or something equally head-cockingly lame.
Poking job sites, I see frequent variations of the following job titles associated w/ workplace learning. Note there is not much in the way of “learning”:
Training Manager
e-Learning Developer (Specialist, etc.)
Instructional Designer (and the various pay scale/skill descriptors: I, II, trainee, Sr., Rock Star, etc.)
Corporate Trainer
Curriculum Design (Development, etc.)



Bersin & Associates
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