Employability skills for today
Educators, employers, and researchers agree that to succeed in the workplace, learners need skills and competencies beyond technical or academic knowledge.
Based on an extensive review of existing 21st-century frameworks, academic research, and labor market trends, Pearson has identified six common skill sets that are crucial for employability: critical and creative thinking, communication, collaboration and teamwork, self-management, social responsibility, and leadership.
Explore reports that summarize existing research on the best practices for how to teach and assess each of these skill sets.
A journey, not a destination: What we mean when we talk about employability
Based on formal and informal research with employers, educators and learners, this brief paper presents a common understanding of the four areas that make individuals employable, and sets the tone for how we should consider the development of these skills as part of a lifelong learning journey.
Read more: Core Academic Competencies
Read more: Occupational Competencies
Skills for today: What we know about teaching and assessing critical thinking
Matthew Ventura, Emily Lai, and Kristen DiCerbo
Broadly, critical thinking is defined as a multifaceted skill that involves problem-solving in the face of ill-defined information. Based on the literature, Pearson has more specifically defined critical thinking as consisting of four core skills:
- systems analysis: the ability to determine the relationship between variables in a system;
- argument analysis: the ability to draw logical conclusions based on data or claims;
- creation: the ability to construct a strategy, theory, method, or argument based on a synthesis of evidence (the artifact that is created goes beyond the information at hand);
- evaluation: the ability to judge the quality of procedures or solutions. Evaluation involves criticism of a work product using a set of standards or specific framework.
Skills for today: What we know about teaching and assessing creativity
Emily Lai, Jessica Yarbro, Kristen DiCerbo, & Els de Geest
There are many different approaches to defining creativity. However, creativity is commonly understood as the ability to produce novel and useful ideas. A person’s creative potential depends on their
- level of expertise in a given subject;
- ability to engage in unconventional or divergent thinking;
- intrinsic motivation to engage in creative activities;
- personality factors, such as a tolerance for ambiguity and a preference for risk-taking.
Creative potential also depends on the level of support within the creative environment, which can include a person’s home, school, and/or work.
Skills for today: What we know about teaching and assessing communication
Ross Metusalem, Daniel M. Belenky, and Kristen DiCerbo
Communication can be defined as a social process in which information is exchanged in order to convey meaning and achieve desired outcomes. Communication takes many forms — from writing a paper or reading a book to delivering a presentation and engaging in conversation or debate — and includes both the production and reception of communicated information.
From our review of existing communication frameworks, we identified the following core communication skills:
- Identifies desired outcomes: determining desired results or consequences of the communication.
- Crafts clear messages: creating messages that clearly convey intended meaning and appropriately utilize nonlinguistic cues, such as body language and visual aids.
- Models others’ minds: recognizing and accounting for others’ knowledge, beliefs, dispositions, and emotions.
- Adheres to conventions: following the rules or norms of specific disciplines or communicative contexts.
- Accounts for social and cultural differences: identifying and accounting for variability in social and cultural norms.
- Selects appropriate channels: utilizing the most appropriate communicative channel.
- Actively listens: actively attending to communication, withholding judgment, and monitoring and clarifying understanding.
- Deeply reads: critically analyzing text or speech, monitoring comprehension, drawing inferences, questioning, and reflecting.
Skills for today: What we know about teaching and assessing collaboration
Emily Lai, Kristen DiCerbo, and Peter Foltz
Many frameworks for collaboration and teamwork exist, but the elements that are common across multiple frameworks include:
- interpersonal communication;
- conflict resolution;
- task management.
Individual skill in collaborating varies depending on a person’s willingness and ability to consider the views of others, to coordinate ideas and problem-solving processes with those of teammates, to forge consensus, and to use negotiation strategies to compromise and resolve conflicts.
Skills for today: What we know about teaching and assessing self-management
Jessica Yarbro and Matthew Ventura
Self-management is broadly defined as the ability to intentionally and strategically manage one’s emotions, behavior, effort, and environment in the pursuit of goals. The terminology used to refer to self-management or its component skills (e.g., self-control, self-discipline, self-regulation, self-regulated learning, effortful control, and willpower) varies across disciplines. Through careful evaluation of discipline-specific terms and definitions across several different fields, Pearson has defined self-management as consisting of six core skills:
- Planning: Sets realistic yet challenging goals and plans activities ahead of time; manages time according to plans.
- Organization: Keeps work artifacts in an organized fashion to improve efficiency.
- Persistence: Applies appropriate levels of effort to tasks, in spite of obstacles or difficulty.
- Progress monitoring: Accurately tracks and assesses one’s knowledge, skills, and progress; chooses appropriate strategies to evaluate and improve knowledge, skills, and progress.
- Control: Effectively regulates behaviors and emotions, typically to support goal pursuit.
- Attention to detail: Pays attention to detail and has careful and precise work habits.
Skills for today: What we know about teaching and assessing leadership
Jessica Yarbro and Matthew Ventura
There are several different models of leadership in the research literature, including some developed specifically for young adults. This paper covers new trends in leadership — from managing and controlling to inspiring and motivating as well as nonhierarchical and collaborative leadership strategies. Synthesizing across the literature, Pearson has defined leadership as consisting of eight core skills:
- Challenges assumptions.
- Establishes vision and possibilities for the future.
- Fosters collaboration among followers by promoting communication and cooperation and assigning appropriate roles.
- Respects and acknowledges the contributions of followers and treats them fairly.
- Empowers followers to complete high-quality work and provides them with the authority to make their own decisions.
- Maintains accountability — provides adequate rewards (or lack thereof) for accomplishments (both followers and for self).
- Stays open-minded to ideas and viewpoints.
- Provides mentorship and support to help followers accomplish goals.
In addition to our eight core skills, we also highlight the importance of leader facilitation of creative problem-solving. This aspect of leadership requires application of several leadership skills (e.g., challenging assumptions, staying open-minded, facilitating collaboration), critical thinking, and advanced domain knowledge.
Skills for today: What we know about teaching and assessing social responsibility
Jessica Yarbro and Matthew Ventura
Social responsibility occurs when an individual takes responsibility to behave ethically and with sensitivity towards social, cultural, civic, and environmental issues. While various models and definitions take slightly different perspectives on social responsibility, there are several common themes. Reviewing these models, Pearson has identified the following four key components of social responsibility, which we have termed “dimensions of competence.”
- Multicultural - is knowledgeable about different cultural identities and sensitive toward cultural differences.
- Ethical - demonstrates knowledge and awareness of ethical standards and issues, and applies ethical reasoning and standards to make decisions in ethically ambiguous situations.
- Civic - is an informed and active citizen at the local, national, and global level, and understands and acts on issues of local, national, and global significance.
- Environmental - is knowledgeable about current issues of environmental significance, is concerned about the well-being of the planet, and engages in sustainable behaviors.