Skills, Skills and More Skills

In the previous blog, I explored Essential Skills, and how literacy skills and Essential Skills correlate. (Just in case you need the reminder, Essential Skills are the application of literacy skills to a workplace task.) Currently in our boom-bust northwest, there is much promise about Essential Skills training, testing and upskilling. The faster the better – jobs are here today ready and waiting for skilled workers. What skills and what work? Apparently essential skills for essential work! But first there is one more skill area we need to explore, one that is also often discussed in the world of work: transferable skills.

 

Transferable skills are skills that transfer from one job to another or one workplace to another. Communication with fellow workers and the ability to work with others to problem solve are the types of skills that can be used in most workplaces. They are very transferable. While operating a specific piece of equipment may not be highly transferable, the skills around heavy equipment operation are very transferable. If someone has operated one type of equipment, other types are easier to learn, because the skills around the task do transfer.

 

The trick to transferable skills is understanding that you hold those skills, how you use them and how you can further develop your transferable skills. You might think of transferable skills as skills you keep when you move from one job to another: you own your transferable skills. Then, when you are looking for a new job, you need to be able to articulate the transferable skills you have so others understand, or have an employer who can do the translation for you when you apply for a job. Either way, most people, whether they realize it or not, hold transferable skills that will allow them to work in a variety of workplaces.

To see how Essential Skills, literacy and transferable skills all come into play with a workplace task, consider this example:

A worker needs to mix Chemical A with water. He uses a bucket with a mark on it and fills Chemical A to the line, then tops it up with water. This makes the task easy to learn for the non-skilled worker.

Q.  What happens when the special bucket goes missing? What happens if Chemical A starts being produced in different concentrations?

A.   If the workers have the literacy and Essential Skills required for the task, they can use their math skills and an appropriate liquid measuring tool to figure out the required concentration. Those same math skills can also be applied to other workplace tasks.

 

The literacy and Essential Skills are what is referred to as “transferable skills”. If we go back to using the special bucket, and the worker then transfers to another job, he will not have a transferable skill, the foundational understanding because he relied on the line on the bucket.

 

In best practice, Essential Skills are embedded in on-the-job training. They include the specific pieces of the actual task, but also the literacy foundations behind the task. In this case, the workers involved would learn about chemical concentrations and the calculations required for specific concentrations. The required formulas might be posted somewhere, along with a table indicating amounts related to various dilutions. While some days the task may look like “fill to the line” the workers have the skills and supports for when the bucket goes missing or the concentration changes. Even more importantly, they would also understand why it was important to ensure the concentrations were correct.

 

In another example, truck drivers with low level literacy skills were able to competently complete their tasks, on most days. As soon as there was a new customer, a detour or a similar change, they were no longer able to do the job well. They did not have the basic skills and critical thinking required to deal with the change, resulting in accidents, late shipments and safety violations.

 

Literacy, Essential Skills and transferable skills are all hugely important for the workforce. They have been referred to as “the elephant in the room” when it comes to workplace accidents. (The bucket disappears.) You might also hear that transferable skills are essential, or, that “literacy is the essential skill” as those skills can then be applied to any workplace task. The skills can all be effectively taught or mentored, some can be assessed and perhaps there are some that can be accurately tested; ask anyone with experience in the literacy field and you will hear that literacy, Essential Skills and transferable skills are all integral to a skilled workforce. But, and this is a big BUT, there are no shortcuts; there is no quick fix.  

Understanding Essential Skills

There is much hype in the literacy world about essential skills. And much misunderstanding across the literacy and education field about what essential skills are. There is also the work connection – often essential skills is capitalized and is referenced to work. As in Work Essential Skills. Or Essential Skills for Work. Or Workplace Essential Skills. And there are skills that are essential for work – absolutely. But are Essential Skills essential for work?

The Nine Essential Skills are as identified the Government of Canada are:

1.   Reading

·         notes, letters, memos, manuals, specifications, regulations, books, reports or journals

·         forms and labels if they contain at least one paragraph

·         print and non-print media (text on computer screens)

2.   Writing

·         writing texts and writing in documents (filling in forms)

·         non-paper-based writing (typing on a computer)

3.   Document Use

·         information displays in which words, numbers, icons and other visual characteristics (eg. line, colour, shape) are given meaning by their spatial arrangement. For example, graphs, lists, tables, blueprints, schematics, drawings, signs and labels are documents used in the world of work.

·         print and non-print media (equipment gauges, clocks and flags)

4.   Numeracy

·         the workers' use of numbers and their capability to think in quantitative terms

5.   Computer Use

·         covers the variety and complexity of computer use in the workplace

6.   Thinking

·         differentiates between six different types of interconnected cognitive functions:

·         problem solving

·         decision making

·         critical thinking

·         job task planning and organizing

·         significant use of memory

·         finding information

7.   Oral Communication

·         use of speech to give and exchange thoughts and information

8.   Working with Others

·         extent to which employees work with others to carry out their tasks.

9.   Continuous Learning

·         knowing how to learn

·         knowing how to gain access to a variety of materials, resources and learning opportunities

 

But the key piece of understanding Essential Skills is that Essential Skills are the application of everyday basic literacy skills: reading, writing, to which we can also add numeracy and technology. (Many people will add other skills to the basic list.) It is the application of those skills to workplace tasks. Essential Skills are all tied to specific tasks that are present in the workplace.

So far, so good. It would appear that one could then figure out the Essential Skills for any job (yes, and it has been done) and then test for those Essential Skills. And this is where it gets tricky.

 

Let’s consider my job. One of my tasks is to create documents using a computer. Pretty easy to create a test for that, and to get a fairly accurate assessment of my skills in the three Essential Skills required for that task.

 

Now let’s consider a millworker. One of the tasks a millworker might perform is running a saw to cut a log for maximum production, after assessing the log and consulting the computer screen. There are at least five of the Essential Skills all mixed up in that task. How do you test, with pen and paper for that? Or with a computer? How can you simulate that task to test those skills?

 

And what about testing workers for their Essential Skill Levels, prior to them getting a job? Or teaching those skills? Remember Essential Skills must have a task, so in teaching it is sometimes teaching the literacy skill and then how to apply the literacy skill to an out of context workplace task for practice. Workers learn how to use their reading and writing skills to fill in a workplace form. Or they may be tested for their Essential Skill Level using forms they have never seen before.

If this is beginning to sound like rocket science, that is good. It is rocket science. The problem is, not everyone realizes this. Essential Skills have become catch words for what a non-skilled workforce needs; they can be tested, “skilled up” then retested and made into a skilled worker in six months or six weeks or whatever the government funding might determine.

Going Back to School

Formal education, adult education, staying in school all mean different things to different people at different times in their lives. People without educational privilege (see previous blog) have diverse reasons for returning to education. Going back to school as an adult, who did not complete secondary school, is not as easy as it might sound; adults face different challenges and barriers when they return.

Several years ago, I was involved in a National Literacy Secretariat research project related to what adults need in order to return to school, and later, the reasons why adults come to school. This was a participatory action project, where adult learners did the research.

The group generated a list, and then we attempted to order the items in terms of most important to least important incorporating Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That was interesting in itself as the group could not always agree. In the end, the needs were listed alphabetically under the title “Some of the Needs of Adult Students” as the group recognized they did not have everything covered. Here is the list:

 

Some of the Needs of Adult Students

Childcare

Clothing

Comfort

Community

Culture

Desire

Dignity

Dreams

Drive

Drug free

Ease of mind

Encouragement

Exercise

Family

Food

Funding

Future

Goals

Good judgment

Health

Healthy body

Healthy mind

Hope

Know where to go

Money

Motivation

Need

Nourishment

Patience

Personal control

Purpose

Reason

Recreation

Respect

Security

Self-confidence

Self-respect

Shelter

Support

Transportation

Validation

Will

 

I think this list gives us a little glimpse into why it is so difficult for adults to not only return to school, but to stick with school. It is also why the drop in/drop out pattern is so common for adult learners. If circumstances related to one of these needs changes, it will likely affect other needs and their participation in school is then compromised. (I hope you are thinking of the busy intersection now and how it allows the learners to step in and out of learning as they are able.)

 

Another discussion, on another day, two adult literacy learners generated a list of titled:

 

Why am I coming to school?

More education

Learn about things

Math

Reading

English

To find my career

Figure out my life

Unscramble my life

To take the time to figure it all out

Meet people

Potluck lunches

To keep myself busy

To keep myself occupied

Different atmosphere

Want different lifestyle

Reason to get up in the morning

Need the strength of school

To show my daughter I am on the right path

More education to find work

Get different ideas

To speak more about my feelings

Speak out more

Something to do

Have a reason

Enjoy life

To learn computers

To catch up to the world

To think

To get specific skills like a driver’s license

Something other than Nintendo to fill the day

Something other than walking around

To show them that we can do it

To be a role model

To be a good example

Want to learn about other places/cultures

Gives me strength to be able to talk to instructors

Missed out in high school

Because I want to graduate and get diploma

Because I want to have everything I want in life

To respect myself

Again, a powerful list recognizing that even formal institutionalized learning is not just about the academic curriculum (the diploma is just one of forty items) and being in school can be extremely meaningful and important for adult students. It is rather interesting that the list of Some of the Needs of Adult Students (before they attend school) may be met by attending school. Yet another reason why it often works for adults to start in on the busy intersection, even if they do not have “all their ducks in a row”. The busy intersection can have satellite learners orbiting the periphery and participating in informal learning activities as they are able, activities that build their capacity, and their comfort, for when they are ready to take the giant step and formally go back to school.

 

Thanks to Anne for her comments about The Piece of Paper. See comments under previous blog entry.