Ten skills that employers want

Power skills, durable skills, human skills, people skills, durable skills, E.Q.: Whatever you want to call them, they’re in big demand now. But, as employers scramble to hire enough high-E.Q. people (including new college grads), and launch massive efforts to instill “power skills” in vast numbers of the employees they’ve already got, one question leaps to mind: Can these skills be taught?

It matters. As companies grapple with digitization, automation, and constant change, creating a culture where people can communicate their ideas is crucial to competitiveness. So are collaboration and creative thinking.

Meanwhile, for employees, as more and more tasks are taken over by algorithms, durable skills are becoming a kind of career insurance. Studies show that people with both technical expertise and strong human skills not only have their pick of jobs these days, but they earn far higher salaries too.

But it’s hard to tell if human skills training helps people change aspects of their personality—being resistant to new experiences, or having tone-deaf social skills, for instance. At the moment, no one has yet come up with a standard way to assess those skills before and after training.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Empathy

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Soft+Skills

Power skills, durable skills, human skills, people skills, durable skills, E.Q.: Whatever you want to call them, they’re in big demand now. But, as employers scramble to hire enough high-E.Q. people (including new college grads), and launch massive efforts to instill “power skills” in vast numbers of the employees they’ve already got, one question leaps to mind: Can these skills be taught?

It matters. As companies grapple with digitization, automation, and constant change, creating a culture where people can communicate their ideas is crucial to competitiveness. So are collaboration and creative thinking.

Meanwhile, for employees, as more and more tasks are taken over by algorithms, durable skills are becoming a kind of career insurance. Studies show that people with both technical expertise and strong human skills not only have their pick of jobs these days, but they earn far higher salaries too.

But it’s hard to tell if human skills training helps people change aspects of their personality—being resistant to new experiences, or having tone-deaf social skills, for instance. At the moment, no one has yet come up with a standard way to assess those skills before and after training.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Empathy

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Soft+Skills

Click this link to access the Infographic:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C318Ja6XAAE7dOD.jpg:large

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Creativity

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/?s=creativity

Computer scientists are working on reproducing all human skills using artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. Unsurprisingly then, many people worry that these advances will dramatically change work skills in the years ahead and perhaps leave many workers unemployable.

This report develops a new approach to understanding these computer capabilities by using a test based on the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) to compare computers with human workers. The test assesses three skills that are widely used at work and are an important focus of education: literacy, numeracy and problem solving with computers.

Most workers in OECD countries use the three skills every day. However, computers are close to reproducing these skills at the proficiency level of most adults in the workforce. Only 13% of workers now use these skills on a daily basis with a proficiency that is clearly higher than computers.

The findings raise troubling questions about whether most workers will be able to acquire the skills they need as these new computer capabilities are increasingly used over the next few decades. To answer those questions, the report’s approach could be extended across the full range of work skills. We need to know how computers and people compare across all skills to develop successful policies for work and education for the future.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=OECD

We all probably know someone who is very intelligent, but does blatantly stupid things. Despite evidence that intelligence predicts a variety of life outcomes, the relationship between intelligence and good thinking is less clear. This research explored whether critical thinking ability or intelligence was the better predictor of real life events.

Community adults and college students (n = 244) completed a critical thinking assessment, an intelligence test, and an inventory of life events. Individuals with higher critical thinking scores and higher IQs reported fewer negative life events. Critical thinking more strongly predicted life events than intelligence and significantly added to the variance explained by IQ.

There is ample evidence that critical thinking can be taught, so there is hope that teaching critical thinking skills might prevent the occurrence of negative life events. We advocate for critical thinking instruction as a way to create a better future for everyone.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Critical-Thinking

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Soft+Skills

We are becoming increasingly aware of the need to analyze the enormous amount of information we receive every day.  This information helps us in our cognitive development and participates in the construction of our patterns of perception of reality. In the case of children and young people, these patterns are in continual development.

Critical thought is a cognitive process that proposes the systematic analysis of information, opinion and statements that we accept in our daily life as valid or true. It is a basic skill for a competent, free and responsible citizen.

It is not about questioning every information we get everyday, it is about being critical with the information that is relevant to us when we make up an opinion about something.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Critical-Thinking