SkillsMap®: Website and Book Variations
If you read the peer-reviewed journal article by Kate Daubney which describes and contextualises her curriculum analysis on which SkillsMap® is based, you may notice some differences between how the skills are defined and categorised compared to the Categories and Clusters map. That will also be true if you read Kate’s book Careers Education to Demystify Employability.
SkillsMap® is, in some senses, a living thing. While many taxonomies – or categorisations – tend to be static, Kate wanted the database behind SkillsMap® to reflect the impact of using the taxonomy in real situations. So from time to time, it will be reviewed and updated. It’s also likely that the more that we talk about skills with learners in a curriculum context, the more skills we may want to include in the taxonomy because we feel more confident digging into that language and surfacing it for learners.
The research behind SkillsMap® isn’t designed to be a definitive statement about the relationship between subjects and transferable skills. In its current accessible format through this website, SkillsMap® is designed to surface 15 of the skills developed in each Subject. The choice of skills in the sample should not be seen as a judgement of the relative value of each skill either by subject or overall; in other words, these are not seen as the most essential skills or the easiest or most difficult to learn, any of which would vary hugely across subjects and between learners. They are simply a representative sample across a range of different skill types, to help learners recognise those skills when they use them, They have been chosen as a conversation starter, to help learners recognise that alongside the knowledge and information they are taking on, they are also developing a number of transferable skills, of which these are just a few.
It would be impossible and inappropriate to single out some skills as being more important than others, just as it would be wrong to single out some subjects as better or worse or more or less useful than others. The world is changing too quickly, and the combinations needed for different problems to be solved, different sectors, different innovations are going to vary. Diversity is key to our ability to adapt and address our future needs. There might be common themes that surface, but depth and nuance in skills language is more important than reducing all our skills needs to a simple hitlist. So SkillsMap® is designed instead to be a solid foundation for the most important conversations we can have about the many and diverse transferable skills that are developed across all subjects, and how we can support learners to draw on the value of their academic education in their future lives.
Kate is constantly working with careers professionals, educators and learners to explore conversations about the real day-to-day practice of educating and developing learners, and reflecting with them on their experience of teaching or learning their subjects. All of this helps Kate to continually refine SkillsMap® and the research behind it as a practical tool that supports educators and Careers professionals identify and develop Skills in their learners. If you would like to work with Kate on exploring the transferable Skills profiles for particular Subject areas, please get in touch.
Contact
For enquiries about:
- the taxonomy and research behind SkillsMap®
- INSET days on transferable skills development in curriculum or through careers education
- training and development on careers education
- designing careers and employability strategy
Please visit Kate’s website at katedaubneycareers.com
Further Information
You might be interested in browsing the following pages: