Generic skills for the new economy: Review of research

This research review of generic skills has been undertaken for the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) at a time of radical change in the workplace, economy, and in society. Fundamental shifts such as the emergence of an information society and the knowledge-based new economy raise a broad spectrum of issues relating to the essential generic skills required by enterprises, individuals and communities for success in this environment.

The review has followed the approach adopted by the British National Skills Task Force (NSTF) in its recent report in defining generic skills in the following terms:

Generic skills - those transferable skills, essential for employability which are relevant at different levels for most.

Like NSTF, I have recognised that a concept of generic skills defined in these terms includes the current key competencies (key skills in Britain) but extends beyond the ambit of these competencies to include a wider set of transferable skills which are generic to most work. Identifying and defining this wider set of generic skills, and considering their relationship to the current key competencies, is a central issue.

The review examines how sets of key competencies/key skills have developed in Britain, the United States and Australia and identifies two broad approaches:

• A United States model involves a broader, more flexible, and more holistic set of generic skills, which include basic skills, personal attributes, values and ethics, learning to learn, as well as workplace competencies of the Mayer type.
• An Anglo/Australian model has resulted in a more narrowly focussed and instrumental set of key skills/key competencies which are broadly similar. In both countries personal attributes and values have been excluded from the identified key competencies.

There is an examination of how these approaches developed in the United States (with the American Society for Training and Development and Department of Labor (ASTD/DOL) and the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) sets of generic skills) and in Australia with the Mayer key competencies.

The review then considers the implications of key contextual shifts for generic skills. The changes discussed are the emergence of the knowledge-based new economy and the impact of new technologies; the consequent pressures for lifelong learning and maintaining employability; changes in the workplace, including the emergence of the high performance workplace; initiatives to foster an enterprise culture and innovation, and revision of the National Goals for Schooling.

The cumulative impact of these changes is seen as pointing to the need for a broader framework for generic skills that is responsive to all these requirements.

These shifts raise a range of conceptual issues which go to the character and role of generic skills and their link to human development over the life cycle. These broader conceptual issues are being examined in a four-year Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) program titled DeSeCo. Expert papers from a number of academic disciplines have been commissioned by OECD and are discussed in this review.

The requirement for a broader range of generic skills that go beyond technical skills is reflected in the response of employers to surveys in Australia, Britain and the United States of America. However, the issue then follows as to the identification of these broader generic skills, and there is less consensus on the question of which generic skills are essential.

The findings of the review in respect of the specific questions follow.

What are the essential generic skills?

There is no international consensus on the identification of the essential generic skills, but two directions for policy are identified:

• a pragmatic approach, as in Britain, of strengthening the existing base of key competencies through addressing the issues identified in this review
• an alternative view that a broader and more holistic set of key generic skills is required by the conditions of the information-based new economy, the mounting pressures for lifelong learning and maintaining employability in the workforce, and for creating a culture that supports learning, enterprise, innovation and creativity

The analysis of the review inclines to the need to address the second and more complex option in order to integrate a number of discrete initiatives in a more comprehensive and holistic approach to building Australia as a competitive learning society attuned to the pressures of the knowledge-based new economy.

If the first option were followed, a minimum requirement would be to add the learning competence ('willingness and capacity to learn') to the current set of key competencies.

Possible implications of the second option approach are illustrated in boxes in this review.

Teaching and learning implications of generic skills for VET providers

Fostering generic skills requires active learning strategies in which learners take responsibility for their own learning so that they develop the attitudes, habits and skills of motivated lifelong learners and the acquisition of generic skills becomes a lifelong process. There are many examples of good practice in Australia and overseas of the use of strategies such as action learning, situated learning and project-based learning. The impact of new learning technologies is widening these opportunities, but learning strategies need to keep pace with technological change. This is a challenge for national collaborative action to foster flexible learning where pedagogical aspects need to be strengthened, in line with technological change, to achieve a synergistic relationship between learning and technology.

Impact on business performance

This is both direct and indirect evidence of the impact of generic skills on business performance. This includes the increased employer demand for generic skills and for higher skill levels generally, market valuations of generic skills in remuneration levels (especially for university graduates) and the role of generic skills in the operations of high-performing firms. There is evidence that as firms cultivate the high performance workplace, the demand for generic skills rises and skill strategies are more closely integrated in other human resource strategies and in strategic business development.

Overall, this review points to the increased significance of generic skills in the context of the knowledge-based new economy, and the associated pressures for lifelong learning and the maintenance of employability, with the consequent need to address the issues identified in this review as a priority concern.