Higher education institutions increasingly recognise the need to develop both disciplinary knowledge and soft skills to foster the employability of their graduates. For students in International Studies programmes, the workplace opportunities to develop soft skills relevant to their intended professions are scarce, costly and unavailable to many.…

This first "OECD Skills Outlook" presents the initial results of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), which evaluates the skills of adults in 22 OECD member countries and two partner countries. The PIAAC survey was designed to provide insights into the availability of some key skills and how they are used at work and at home through the…

Faced with a shrinking labor pool and increasing competition, employers are beginning to take basic workplace skills training into their own hands. Such training involves (1) identifying skills-related job changes or problems; (2) building management and union support; (3) developing a strategy; (4) performing task analysis; (5) designing and…

In collaboration, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management conducted an in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results…

This volume, one of a series of curriculum guides compiled by the Colorado Workplace Learning Initiative: 1991-92, contains seven workplace literacy courses on enhanced basic skills involving decisions, teams, problem solving, and critical thinking. Introductory materials include a table of contents and a list of the curriculum topics covered by…

Discusses seven strategies that program developers and trainers can use to produce more rapid acquisition, retention, and transfer of work skills, including: discover basic skills and concepts; analyze, define, and field test; produce and verify mastery; teach basic skills and general principles; teach trainees both correct and incorrect examples;…

This article discusses the implications of the findings of "The Workforce Readiness Report Card." The survey, which was released in September, reveals how the U.S. new workforce entrants are "woefully ill-prepared for the demands of today's--and tomorrow's--workplace." The study also reveals that employers place much greater…

Although vocational education students can handle technical tasks, they often lack employability skills. The author identifies employability skills, addresses important questions about them, and recommends action for vocational educators to take in teaching employability skills. (JOW)

The article argues that it is necessary to identify and teach mentally retarded students the work behavior that is essential for successful employment. To ensure success, students must have vocational and social skills as well as adaptability skills which help them assess a problem, set a course of action, and modify their activities. (Author/DB)

The curriculum guide is designed for a basic skills course for machine maintenance workers. The 12-week course is divided into three segments: English as a Second Language and vocabulary development; technical vocabulary and mathematics; and technical symbols, trouble-shooting, and word problems. For each of the three segments, a list of…

Three forces are combining to mandate a more highly skilled work force: (1) technological advancement, (2) job growth centered on high-skill occupations, and (3) new work organizational strategies. As many as 50 million workers, many of them minorities and immigrants, may have to be trained or retrained in the next 12 years. (CH)

The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) report lists competencies generic for all students. They include using resources, using information, interpersonal abilities, using systems, and technology. A final report is being prepared pointing out the conflicting messages in the America 2000 plan (stressing academics) and the…

This brief suggests that during the past 2 decades, the skills needed to succeed in the workplace have changed significantly. Technical skills remain important, but, increasingly, employers recognize another category of skills crucial to a worker's ability to work "smarter, not harder." These "soft,""core,""nontechnical,""essential,""generic," and…

The career preparedness component of British Columbia's Career and Personal Planning (CAPP) curriculum commits two fundamental category mistakes in its classification of employability skills, both with potentially serious consequences for education. The first type of category mistake is incorrectly conflating distinct categories of concepts under…

In 1991, a project studied implementation of the American Society for Training and Development's Workplace Basics model. Field testing was conducted in two Virginia industries: Corning Incorporated in Waynesboro and American Safety Razor (ASR) in Verona. Corning had fewer than 100 employees and an 85 percent female work force; it had shifted from…