Fostering generic skills in VET programs and workplaces: At a glance

This At a glance explains how generic skills might best be fostered in vocational education and training (VET) programs and workplaces. It includes the views of a variety of groups and focuses on what research has said about describing, teaching, learning, assessing, recognising and certifying these important skills.

In the Australian VET sector and workplaces, the term generic skills now refers to the set of eight major skills and various personal attributes developed recently by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Business Council of Australia (2002), and which they referred to as employability skills.These employability skills are: self-management, team work, communicating, planning and organising, using technology, problem-solving, learning skills, and initiative and enterprise skills.The personal attributes include loyalty, honesty and integrity, enthusiasm, reliability, personal presentation, common sense, adaptability and ability to deal with pressure.

Key findings

• Fostering the development of generic employability skills needs to be a joint responsibility of individuals, teaching institutions and workplaces, with the various groups working in partnership where possible.These skills are developed throughout life and are fostered in a wide variety of contexts essential for sustained employability.

• Teaching and learning generic skills requires processes based on real experience in a variety of contexts. A number of different approaches are currently being used to teach, learn and foster these skills.

• Much of the assessment of generic skills is unreported in the formal sector. Better assessment and certification of generic skills are critical. If generic skills are not assessed and reported, learners will not see them as important, and employers will be unable to access relevant information about their employees. Four possible assessment models, including their strengths and weaknesses, are identified.

• To improve current efforts at fostering generic skills in VET programs and workplaces, several steps need to occur. These include:
  • documenting generic skills more clearly in training packages, based on the outcomes of national pilots currently being trialled
  • promoting the importance of generic skills to all relevant groups, and encouraging them to foster their development
  • sharing real practice in the teaching and learning of generic skills, including learning from past experiences of trying to implement the Mayer key competencies
  • developing policy and processes that will certify and record the attainment of generic skills
  • providing ongoing professional development for teachers, trainers and assessors.