I suppose it's inevitable as we come to the end of year that we look back on it. This year has been particularly eventful with my daughter's wedding, serious illness in the family, visits to family in Australia and visits from family in Iran and many other smaller events and achievements that connect us as a family in interesting and unpredictable ways.

This reflective mood encouraged me to think of the idea of development in the context of being part of a family. It seems to me that development is an important process for keeping the family together and for continually engaging members of the family in the process of nurturing or enabling the development of its members sometimes by design but often as a consequence of the way life unfolds.

Development as a family comes from sharing experiences good or bad and participating in and talking about small and significant events and people so that members of the family develop a shared sense of history and belonging. This was brought home to me recently as I interviewed my mother and father who are in their late 80's in order to record the story of their early life growing up in Manchester in the 1920's and 30's. One reason for doing this was to provide our family with a clearer sense of our history the detail of which will be forgotten when they are no longer with us. In fact the stories that parents tell about us and our childhood are one way in which we can appreciate our own development.

Development as a family manifests itself in what we do to, with and for each other, the sacrifices that are made and the willingness to take on rather than avoid family commitments regardless of cost. In a well functioning and caring family everyone is involved in developing themselves - to be better parents/grandparents, spouses, workers, students etc.. and often for others - children, grandchildren, siblings or the children of siblings.

A year in the life of a large family inevitably contains many events some of which cannot be predicted in advance. This year the serious illness of one family member completely disrupted our plans yet brought us together to support each other. We are all different and more empathic having had this challenging experience but we would have never wished for such an experience.

Development is easiest to see in the youngest members of the family for example my youngest grandson was born exactly a year ago and in the space of a year he has grown from a tiny helpless baby into a little boy able to walk and let you know what he wants and doesn't want to do. But another grandson shows me that not all babies are able to develop at such a pace if they are born with conditions that affect their physical and cognitive development.  Their measures of progress are smaller and much harder to see and harder for them to accomplish. Nevertheless when witnessed they bring much joy and hope for a better future.

Formal learning has an important role to play in the development of a child. A year ago my six year old grandson was a hesitant and reluctant reader. Thanks to the efforts of his mum and school he is now a fluent reader willing to search for and read the books that interest and inspire him opening up a world that is not accessible to those who cannot read. While they are at school or university our children's developmental processes are mostly hidden from us - we gain insights when we see them doing their homework or more intensely when they revise. My youngest daughter is revising intensively for her mock GCSE's at the moment - it's a serious arduous task and she is far more engaged than I ever was at  her age.

As parents we encourage our children to develop their interests beyond the classroom - we want them to have friends and be confident socially, to enjoy and engage in sport, to join clubs and societies, have hobbies and be aware of the world around them. We are happy when they want to get involved but are disappointed when they do not use the opportunities they have and sometimes we pressurise them into doing things that we believe are for their own good. We push and pull, reason and cajole, and sometimes just insist in what we believe is for the greater good of encouraging development that will help and enable our children to be happy, fulfilled and successful in the future. Sometimes these actions result in tensions as our children let us know that this is not what they want to do.

Perhaps our creative involvement as parents in these forms of development is in the success we have in enabling our children to discover things that interest them that they value rather than imposing on them what interests us and what we value. I learnt this the hard way: the fact that I was a geologist seemed to be a burden when I tried to interest my three children in the geology at our feet when we were on holiday. I carried on behaving like this with my three step children. I failed to interest any of them in something I was passionate about but when one of them became fascinated in archaeology he reluctantly admitted that he could see the parallels and could see why I was interested in it!

So our involvement in our own children's development must balance the aspirations we have for them and the need for our children to discover for themselves their own purposes and ambitions and create their own intrinsic motivations for pursuing what they value. There comes a point in this familial developmental process where we start thinking that our children must do things for themselves. For several years we tried to encourage our son to learn to drive. Thanks to friends who were willing to give him lifts and the absence of a need while at university to drive he put it off until he suddenly realised he needed it in order to get a particular job. So he paid for his own lessons and after three goes he passed his driving test. We all rejoiced at the new freedom's this act of development afforded but it only came about when his need created the desire for him to persist until he had achieved this goal.

Most personal development goes on unseen, unrecorded and unrecognised. It just goes on and on as our children grow into the people we hope and they want to become. As parents we rejoice when we think our children are moving in a direction that we think holds promise but despair when they make decisions that we don't think will lead to anything of value.

All too often we forget that much of our own learning was through the experience of trying - regardless of whether something worked out or not. Perhaps this is the hardest lesson in the family development process letting our children make their own mistakes - and being ready to help them when they do. And it can be painful process. There are times when our children develop us in directions that we do not want to go. At times we may have to compromise our beliefs in order to maintain the relationships that make up a family. Above all we have to trust that they will find their own way and make the decisions that are right for them in their circumstances.

So the continuous process of creating and recreating family is a never ending developmental process in which all members are involved for themselves and for others.

I suppose it's inevitable as we come to the end of year that we look back on the year. It sort of emerges through the process of receiving Christmas cards as friends and family send their circular newsletters recounting the significant events in their life. We never produce a letter but we do have family conversations looking back over the year, and the same thing happens when you meet up with friends who you haven't seen for a while. This year has been particularly eventful with a wedding, serious illnesses, visits to family in Australia and visits from family in Iran and many other smaller events and achievements that connect us as a family in interesting and unpredictable ways.

This reflective mood is also triggered when I make myself take stock of the progress we have made with Lifewide Education. A year in the life of a project is a significant chunk of time to think about and evaluate the effects of trying to turn ideas into reality.

During the year our community of interest grew steadily and we currently have around 320 registered members. We maintained our existing websites and our presence on Facebook, Linked-in and Twitter and we added our Values Exchange website which enables us to be part of a global network of Vx sites concerned with values and ethics in education. It also gives us new capacity to undertake on-line surveys.  Since April we have undertaken four surveys. It has proved to be particularly useful in engaging people before an event so that the results of the survey can be utilised in the presentations - for example a keynote presentation at the annual SEDA conference was formed around the results of a survey into creativity in educational development.

Under the editorial stewardship of Jenny Willis, we produced four issues of LIfewide Magazine each dedicated to a theme that enabled us to add new knowledge and understanding to our lifewide concept. Brian Cooper's diligent editing enabled us to publish  eleven chapters in our Lifewide Education E-Book - including conceptual reviews and syntheses on wellbeing and learning ecologies, moving biographical accounts of lifewide learning, research into wellbeing and learning ecologies and overviews of lifewide learning in universities and colleges. Our research and scholarship has focused primarily on examining the idea and perceptions of wellbeing and developing and applying the concept of learning ecologies to individuals' learning and development processes, work that will continue through the coming year.

We also developed further our tools for supporting lifewide learning and my daughter (one of our student volunteers) helped us pilot our approach and successfully completed the Lifewide Development Award (LDA) providing future learners with an example of an on-line portfolio of recorded learning and development. We also explored the idea of Open Badges and we are now introducing them in the current stage of piloting. We are working with Christine Fountain at Southampton Solent University's Business School with students on the HR Management masters course to examine the ways in which the LDA might be incorporated into the learning experiences of students.

Members of the team contributed to, and or participated in a total of ten conferences in the UK and overseas. In June, after submitting a paper outlining the idea of an EU-wide Lifewide Development Award I was invited to participate in an EU Foresight workshop by the research group who support development of EU educational policy. This was the first time that LWE has been invited to share our views in a close to policy forum. Through our involvement in conferences we have formed new relationships have with people who are sympathetic to lifewide learning in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, China and Argentina.  Ultimately, our future lies in the relationships we form with the people who want to promote and implement lifewide learning in their own educational and learning contexts.

Periodically taking stock of where you have got to in any project is a necessary and important aspect of the development process. It helps you maintain that sense of wellbeing knowing that you have tried to fulfil your purposes. Looking back enables you to take pride in achievements and develop a better and more realistic perspective on what has been accomplished so that questions of what to do next become clearer. 

Documenting achievements makes public the ways in which you have lived your life according to the purposes and goals you have established. Publishing our annual review so that the community can appreciate the hard work and contributions that many individuals have made enables the members of the team to gain the credit they deserve. None of the things we have achieved in 2013 would have been possible without the help, support and encouragement of a wonderful group of volunteers and the generous financial support of our corporate sponsor Chalk Mountain Education and Media Services. 

Kiboko's latest illustration sums conveys well the way in which the achievements and experiences of the past year provides the launchpad for the future.The coming year will inevitably bring with it new challenges and opportunities which we can face with confidence.  In March we will achieve another of our ambitions - to host our first national conference on lifewide learning and education in universities and colleges and publish a new E-book on lifewide learning and education in universities and colleges.

New developmental needs pop up all the time in life, some of them are driven by interests and curiosity and some are forced on us. For example, this week my laptop suddenly packed up.  It was Monday morning  and I had just started to prepare a presentation. There was a bit of a crunching noise and then a few minutes later the screen went black. I tried to restart it a few times but it went off after a few seconds. All sorts of things go through your mind but the main one is the possible ‘loss’ of all that stuff on the hard disc. This is quickly followed by - 'I wish I'd backed it up recently'.



After complaining loudly to anyone who would listen to me. I put my coat on and took it to our local computer man - Keith who can fix anything. He wasn’t there but his kind assistant went through his routine examination and concluded the fan had gone. It could be repaired for a tidy sum but it should work again.. I was much relieved.

I have another computer a MacBook Pro which I have hardly used and this became the focus for my development this week. Now others have told me how hard they have found learning to use the Mac so I was forewarned.  Everything felt unfamiliar and everything took so long to figure out. I had a deep sense of lacking basic knowledge. I know I have developed a lot of knowledge about PC's over the two decades of working with them and perhaps I assumed that this would transfer easily to the Mac. Most of it did but every so often I would discover that I didn't know how to do something. On the Mac I lacked the skill to do some very basic things, like take a screen shot and re-find my safari short cut when it suddenly disappeared off the bottom navigation bar! The absence of right click and the need to use the top navigation bar all the time felt ponderous and I had to unlearn this procedure.  This carried on like for the rest of the week. I struggled to do tasks that I normally accomplished easily on my old laptop. Even trying to save things in the right folder, or create a new folder to save something in, took time to work out. I noticed that I wasn’t very patient with myself. Instead of thinking - oh this is great I'm finally learning how to use the Mac
I was quite negative and angry about the experience. (Actually there were other things going on like the boiler not working and being cold and having no hot water that added to this mood!).

I have now been using it for a few days and I’m getting better and its obvious that I know more about how the Mac works and I can do more things now than I could a few days ago. I know how to access my emails, I can edit my website and find and upload images to it after downloading  adobe flash player. I activated my iTunes account and downloaded Garage Band and then did the first lesson for piano. And did some Christmas shopping on line. I have more or less completed my presentation in powerpoint but was stopped from copying slides from one presentation to another with an error message I still don't understand. Not much but it’s a start. Even though I know I have learnt something nothing felt creative. In fact quite the opposite I felt unable to do certain things so my creativity was thwarted.  So I guess this bit of personal development is just about acquiring some basic competency before I can do anything creative. I've now got my laptop back and the challenges will be to persist with my Mac and carry on using it.

A new development process may begin with an idea, and that idea might take a while to germinate, but it only begins to become a reality when thoughts are acted upon. This week I embarked on another development process that had grown out of 
an earlier process in which I tried to develop a better understanding of the role of creativity in individual's developmental processes. This work was motivated by the need to give a talk at the SEDA conference in November and my desire to try to make my talk relevant and interesting for participants. I created an ecology for learning that I described in a previous blog  (11/15/13) and out of this emerged the suggestion by one of the participants that I might see if others would be interested in sharing their understandings of how their creativity is involved in a particular developmental process by creating a narrative inquiry.

Over the last few weeks I contacted a number of people to see if they would be interested in joining a process. Their enthusiasm for the idea provided the motivation I needed to act. So on Sunday I set up a project website to encourage people to get involved and provide participants with the means to share their narratives and understandings. I also invited one of the enthusiasts Chrissi Nerantz to join me as co-convenor which she readily agreed. I also wrote a short article for Lifewide Magazine to advertise it and posted it on ACADEMIA.COM & LINKED-IN. Only time will tell whether ambitions will be realised but one thing is certain there is much potential and possibility in the idea.

So my new developmental project involves contributing to the process as a participant and supporting the process and encouraging the involvement of others.

So where is the creativity involved in starting this new developmental project? The idea for a narrative inquiry around the theme of creativity in development was not my own so I cannot claim an original thought, neither is the idea new to me because I am aware of other examples. To some extent it must be present in imagining the possibility that new things will or might be brought into existence if certain things are done or put in place. It is the vision of what might come out of the project that provides the energy to actually do something. Organised processes for learning require structures to support communication and interaction. Before today this website did not exist. I have developed websites before so making one is not new to me but the design and content of this one are new. Creativity must also lie in the way a project is framed and communicated to others so that more  of the potential in the idea can be realised. It is most definitely in the way that people are encouraged to become involved and 'selling' the value of being involved. It is also in the way relationships are grown to create the energy, spirit, capacity, agency and inventiveness when people come together around the things they care about. I am delighted that CN has agreed to be a co-facilitator. She positively oozes energy and enthusiasm and it will be enjoyable working with her. Also her willingness to collaborate combined with all the ideas that she will bring increases the potential for me to be creative. Creativity in development is in the thinking, the actions and interactions and their effects, and the relationships that hold the potential for new possibilities