| General
skills
Knud
Illeris & Claudia Pasti
Summary
of the topic study - October 1999
(Original
topic study of 1999 in DUOQUAL folder)
Message
General
and specific skills
Search
model
Learning
and education
Practical
experience
Message
The
question of how to combine vocational and general education is usually
solved by a combination of vocational and educational subjects in a fixed
scheme or with the possibility of individual choices following certain
rules. This sort of curricula will be likely to assure that both vocational
and general skills are developed, but certainly not in an integrated way
including the development of ‘higher order skills’ or ‘key qualifications’
such as the understanding of vocational areas in a broader professional
or societal context, or such personal qualities as flexibility, responsibility,
creativity and the like. In order to come closer to this type of qualification
some sort of curricular integration, interdisciplinarity or project education
must be developed – a process which will inevitably meet problems and resistance
as it brakes with traditional administrative and academic patterns, psychological
defence structures and actual teacher qualifications. However, the very
process of overcoming such obstacles is at the same time contributing to
the development of the type of skills demanded. In the DUOQUAL project
the Danish-Italian topic study on General Skills is dealing with this challenge
in theory and practice.
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of the page
General
and specific skills
This
topic study is focusing on the concept of general skills. Skills are broadly
defined as all practical and mental abilities and capacities that an individual
can develop in all kinds of activities throughout life. In education and
working life - and also in the DUOQUAL project - some types of skills are
regarded as general and others as specific. However, which skills are general
and which are specific depend on the point of view.
From a societal point of view general skills are what everybody should
acquire in order to keep up with the actual requirements of today’s working
and everyday life, and specific skills are what only some members of society
need in order to fulfil their specific jobs and private situation. And
a very important development in modernity has been that more and more skills
have become general needs.
But seen from the individual´s point of view the question of what
is general and what is specific is related to the individual self or subjectivity:
it is the personal touch or the connection to the personal ideas and understandings
which constitute generality. What is general is what a person can recognize
and appreciate as relating to his or her generalized self, i.e. to his
or her identity. And as learning is an internal psychological function
it is important for educators and the educational system to understand
and respect the subjective meaning of generality, not the least in relation
to the acquisition of societally general skills.
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of the page
Search
model
In
order to illustrate to clarify and to keep attention to the duality of
what is perceived as ”general” in relation to the acquisition and meaning
of skills the topic study concentrates on the development of a search model
that can be used as a basis for understanding and delibera-tion of skills
in different contexts, the central problem being to find categories and
establish a connection between essential differences of skills in such
a way that it can be normative for the character of the learning and qualifying
processes through which they can be developed.
The construction of the model is made in two stages. In the first stage
three different areas of the inner dynamics of subjectivity are delimited:
Working life, social life and the personal area. This is illustrated in
the so-called ”Tulip model” showing the external areas of working life
and social life as two petals folding round the internal core of the personal
area.
In the second stage the ”tulip” is folded out so that the petals take the
form of two wings bordering the core, and a horisontal division is made
between three levels of skills. In the bottom and closely integrated are
the basic skills which concern the individual´s understanding of
himself or herself in relation to the personal role and placing and to
the basic consciousness or unconsciousness of assumptions as to how working
and social life are structured. In the middle is the comprehensive level
of skills that are indicative of a broader insight into or understanding
of contexts or causes that make it possible to process and transfer experiences.
And at the top are the more separated and concrete specific skills that
can be linked to a given context or be of limited significance for the
individual.
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of the page
Learning
and education
Finally,
it is given a practical example of an Italian training course in an enterprise.
The training concerned mainly general skills. The model, together with
the empirical experience, draws the attention to some important basic features
of learning and education:
Firstly, as already indicated that learning is a subjective process and
therefore must be understood in the psychological context of the individaul
and its situation (and not in the external context of the subject matter
that is to be learned). This means that the learner must be considered
as a person, as a whole, with different aspects (personal, social and working
area) that are connected and integrated between them. The individual´s
past experience, needs and motivation do have an influence on the learning
process. This consideration has a practical consequence: educational efforts
must be made to recognise the importance of the learner in the learning
process, and this should be considered while planning the curricula.
Secondly, that the learning of one kind of skills is always subjectively
related to other kinds of skills and to the entirety and identity of the
individual. As suggested by the model, there are different areas and different
levels of generalisation, divided by transparent barriers. One of the challenges
for the educational system is to provide instruments to break through these
barriers; to help teachers and students, or trainers and trainees, to find
connections and links between the different areas. The teacher, or trainer,
therefore will be a facilitator, that supports the transferability of skills
between areas.
Thirdly, that some kinds of skills are closer to the personal identity
and therefore also closer integrated into the entirety and more difficult
to influence and change.
The search model in this way is meant to be a tool or a mind map which
can help to draw and keep attention to some very basic conditions in relation
to the understanding and planning of educational activities.
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of the page
Practical
experience
Linking
a theoretical model to a practical experience can be useful for different
reasons. The mutual learning of this topic study has been:
-
that the
totality of the learners´ situations and motivations must be taken
seriously when policy makers and practitioners try to work out educational
approaches;
-
that theory
and practical experience are both necessary for developing knowledge and
gaining deeper awareness on the topic under study;
-
and that,
although apparently quite far away, it has been nevertheless proved useful
to deal with cross-country problems and trends in the complicated area
of the development of general skills.
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