Defining skills for a digital age

ACT (2105) Unpacking “Career Readiness” Iowa City IA: Act Inc.

ACT Inc, the organisation that designs and administers the most widely used high school standardised tests in the USA, has just published a short but interesting document. In it, they state:

In the report Broadening the Definition of College and Career Readiness: A Holistic Approach (Mattern et al. 2014), ACT has begun to describe the skills needed for postsecondary success through a new model of learning readiness that encompasses at least four overlapping but distinct domains:

• Core Academic Skills in English language arts, mathematics, and science
• Cross-Cutting Capabilities such as critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, and information and technology skills
• Behavioral Skills related to success in education and the workforce, such as being dependable, working effectively with others, adapting, and managing stress
• Navigation Skills, or skills needed to successfully negotiate educational and career pathways, such as self-knowledge of abilities, likes and dislikes, and values; knowledge about majors, occupations, and future career opportunities; and the variety of skills related to educational and career exploration, planning, and decision making needed for long-term success in the workplace

The documents also states:

Readiness assessments that focus solely on academic proficiency risk ignoring what education, business, and industry leaders have long recognized: behavioral and career skills and crosscutting capabilities are no less essential to success in the 21st-century college classroom and the workplace. The “life skills” framework suggested by this new model supports this holistic picture of readiness.

Comment

It is good that ACT is raising the issue of the skills needed by learners and graduates in today’s society. Identifying the most important skills is an essential first step to ensuring that they get taught.

However, the paper raises more questions than it answers, such as:

• is this the ‘right’ list of skills? For instance, shouldn’t knowledge management and digital literacy (which is not the same as IT skills) be in there somewhere? And who should decide what skills are important?
• is it the job of colleges and universities to teach these broader skills? I believe it is, but that raises further questions, such as:
  • do instructors currently have the knowledge, time and inclination to develop these new skills?
  • do these new skills replace or are they an addition to what schools and colleges are already teaching? What are the trade-offs that will be necessary if more focus is given to these skills?
• what teaching methods are most likely to enable students to develop these skills?
• what is the best way to measure or assess such skills?

The last question is particularly important to ask, because I suspect ACT is looking to build standardised, computer assessments for such skills, but this may not be the most appropriate form of assessment.

My online open textbook, Teaching in a Digital Age, attempts to address at least some of these issues, but I don’t pretend that I have all the answers. It is good though that ACT is raising the issue of identifying and assessing these ‘soft’ skills, even if there may be a commercial motive behind their research.

Reference

Mattern, Krista, et al. (2014) Broadening the Definition of College and Career Readiness: A Holistic Approach. Iowa City, IA: ACT Research Report Series 2014-5