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This paper provides a case study of personal development planning (PDP) within an initial teacher training course for the post-compulsory sector, delivered through a large consortium in the north of England. The paper reviews conceptual and empirical studies of PDP in higher education and reports on the practice and perceptions of students and tutors in the light of these studies. The paper finds that PDP is often a negative experience and that difficulty and frustration are associated with the requirement to re-contextualise, for the purposes of external audit, practices occurring organically but less visibly elsewhere in the course. The importance of issues relating to resources, assessment and ownership of PDP processes is highlighted, but the paper concludes that conceptual and ideological difficulties imply that requirements for 'individual learning plans' and 'personal development records' for trainee teachers may be inescapably problematic.