professional accreditation iconProfessional Development

Registered Practitioner
of the Institute for Outdoor Learning

In response to demand from the outdoor field, we are developing a new accreditation to precede APIOL – Registered Practitioner (working title!).

Who wants this accreditation?

  • Practitioners want to know what they have to do, to become an integrated professional and work towards ARPIOL.
  • Employers want a map of good practice that they can use in appraisals and staff development.

Key Features that we are being asked for

  • not too much paper!
  • simple administration that will work for small employers/centres
  • in-house training/mentoring
  • cost-effective – practitioners are still chasing qualifications at this stage of their career, so don’t have a lot of time or money to spend
  • be applicable across the whole field of outdoor learning

Who is RPIOL for?

  • People who take charge of groups on their own
  • You’re not necessarily working in “challenging environments”
  • Most people will be at the early stages of their outdoor career

RPIOLs can be:

  • Employed, sole traders, freelancers, volunteers
  • Workers in voluntary organisations, environmental studies, adventure therapy, art and drama therapy, teaching, youthwork etc

So RPIOL is not just for technical specialists in “outdoor pursuits”!

What does RPIOL cover?

RPIOL does not “retest” your specialist skills in your branch of outdoor learning.  It is about how you have used these skills in your work with groups.

Two key areas are how you Facilitate Learning and Manage Risk. 
The way you do this will depend on your Personal Philosophy of outdoor learning, your Values and Ethics, and your Reflection and Career Development. 

These are therefore the 5 key areas of RPIOL.

The format of RPIOL – is it a course, a qualification?

RPIOL is not a course; it’s a Logbook where you record:

  • Your qualifications, achievements and experience
  • Your Continuous Professional Development: how you keep yourself up to date, and how you want to develop
  • Evidence against 5 key criteria, to show you operate at RPIOL level

You can provide evidence in a number of ways, for example:

  • giving examples of things you have done with groups 
  • attending training courses and showing how you use this in your work
  • observing other practitioners and/or visiting other centres and talking about what you have learned
  • reflecting on your own practice and what you are learning

The Accreditation Process

To help you gather the evidence for your Logbook, we are setting up:
RPIOL Facilitators - A network of trained RPIOL Facilitators
Professional Development Modules - a range of professional development modules related to RPIOL.

The stages of the accreditation process are:

1. Complete your Logbook with your RPIOL Facilitator
2. The Facilitator will:

  • identify extra experience that you can include
  • check your logbook is true reflection of your experience
  • write a statement about you to back up your Logbook

3. You then meet with a different RPIOL Facilitator for a professional discussion about your logbook. 

4. Provided you meet benchmarks and criteria, the Facilitator then recommends for RPIOL accreditation

Benefits of  RPIOL – it provides

  • map of good practice; shows practitioners what they have to do to become integrated professional
  • evidence of practitioners’ experience of taking charge of groups; ready to move to the next level
  • a stepping stone towards APIOL
  • a framework that can be used in appraisals and staff development
  • relates experience to other areas of outdoor learning; increases flexibility and career options.

To find out more about the pilots and the RPIOL Benchmarks and Criteria, contact Heather Brown on he.brown@btopenworld.com

 

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