NN46, September 2011
Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark
Towards a Taxonomy for Skills
By Kate Shoesmith, City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development
Email: kate.shoesmith@skillsdevelopment.org
Keywords: Taxonomy; Cognitive and non cognitive skills; Technical skills
Summary: This paper argues that a broader basis for defining ‘skills’ is necessary to not only improve understanding and status but also to improve the quality of TVET.
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Defining the term ‘skills’ seems both easy and a challenge. Sometimes, ‘skills’ is taken to have a broad meaning and can encompass any and all of the following: basic skills, such as literacy and numeracy, life skills, employability skills, practical skills and technical skills. In more recent times, however, the term ‘skills’ has become synonymous with technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and this has created an assumption that skills from TVET programmes only relate to technical skills, sometimes also referred to as ‘manual’ or ‘non-cognitive’ skills.
Some of the responsibility for how we explain the different types of skills goes back to the taxonomy developed by Benjamin Bloom et al in 1956 (Anderson 1994). Bloom suggested there were three educational domains: the cognitive, the affective and the psychomotor.
To conflate TVET as a process for developing psychomotor skills alone is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of TVET. Like all branches of the education system, TVET is only successful when pedagogical approaches seek to develop the psychomotor, knowledge and attitudinal domains in concert. The purpose of Bloom’s taxonomy was to do exactly that – to bring the different domains together and demonstrate their connectivity. Unfortunately, however, there has been a fundamental misunderstanding in how to utilise the domains suggested by Bloom and by others subsequently.
Technical skills alone will not, in all probability, win individuals jobs or see them keep those jobs; moreover, they will not enable businesses and nations to meet their targets. A more holistic approach to understanding skills is therefore needed. Definitions of skills, and by association TVET, have been further complicated and confused because skills are often viewed as the answer to any number of social and economic problems.
Developing a taxonomy for skills that seeks to inform the question ‘what are we hoping to achieve through skills development?’ may go part of the way to increasing acceptance and understanding for the process of skills development in occupationally specific areas and TVET, and for the broader outcomes of TVET – skills of all kinds, not just technical or manual skills. Equally, having a clear rationale as to what TVET is seeking to achieve can assure and improve the quality of provision.
Given that TVET programmes should not be seen as developing technical skills in isolation, a new way of defining TVET is required. If a ‘taxonomy’ approach were to be used for skills, it would need to include all of the following components:
- -Basic skills – the literacy and numeracy skills that are the foundation for developing all other skills.
-Generic skills - also known as interpersonal or life skills. Their broader relevance to daily life, not just to the workplace, is why they have been separated out from employability skills.
- -Employability skills build on the generic skills and while they are specifically about helping individuals become and remain active participants of the labour market, they are transferable between sectors and occupations.
- -Finally, technical or job-specific skills are defined as the skills needed to work in a particular industry or business. It is perfectly possible that one person may have more than one area of technical expertise.
Underpinning all these types of skills, teaching approaches need to consider how to instil the ability to learn (learning to learn) in students so they can continue to develop their skills over the course of their lifetime.
In many societies, the first step towards developing a skills system should be an attempt to understand the drivers behind skills development and the promotion of skills. In supporting these drivers, a more holistic approach, perhaps through a taxonomy for skills, can enhance the reputation of the TVET branch of the education system and may go some way towards breaking down the artificial distinctions between so-called vocational and academic routes. Most importantly, greater understanding for TVET and skills may also help improve the training provision so it better prepares individuals for the variety of challenges they will face in life and at work.
Further information
Anderson, Lorin W. & Lauren A. Sosniak, eds. (1994), Bloom's Taxonomy: A Forty-Year Retrospective. Chicago National Society for the Study of Education
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Cite article as: Shoesmith, K., (2011) ‘Towards a Taxonomy of Skills’, in NORRAG NEWS, Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark, No.46, September 2011, pp. 30-32, available: http://www.norrag.org
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