Peter Hinton, Institute of Field Archaeologists

The IFA and CPD

The status of a professional depends upon their competence - and professionals must show that they have maintained that competence by updating their skills. Currently, IFA members have an obligation to maintain their skills, in a system that places the responsibility for the updating of skills on members' own sense of professional duty. In the next few years, the IFA will review whether to move from this obligation of duty to a compulsory scheme, which will benefit members in terms of the professional credibility it will bring, when it will be recognised that membership proves that an individual is a trained and skilled archaeologist.
To define these skills, the IFA has been managing a project to define the roles that archaeologists fulfil, and the skills that they need to fulfil those roles. This has led to the development of occupational standards, a mechanism for measuring competence which can be used by archaeologists to identify areas where they needed to gain training and experience.
One way that the IFA will be using the standards will be to establish a system whereby they can be used to validate short courses. Comments from the Group on the practicalities of applying such a model to any currently available or proposed maritime archaeology courses will be welcomed, as will a wider discussion of where training shortfalls exist that the IFA can seek to address.