What's in SkillsMap®?

The research behind SkillsMap® has surfaced over 250 different transferable Skills developed across 36 standard subject areas. But sharing that number of skills with learners would be overwhelming and confusing! Even in its simplest form, SkillsMap® research shows that between 50 and 100 of those skills are developed in each subject.

So to introduce learners to these Skills for the first time, SkillsMap® shares a snapshot of just 15 of those skills for 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. Think of them 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.

Many learners will be encountering transferable skills for the first time, so we can’t assume they can make sense of what they are discovering. Definitions help simplify what the skills are and give an indication of why and how they are important and useful. If you explore the Categories and Clusters map which shows how SkillsMap® is constructed, you’ll find some additional information there about how different groups of skills are defined and also used in the workplace.

One of the reasons SkillsMap® was created was to close the gap between education and work, which is possible because these are transferable skills. In other words, they are literally transferable between the education context where they are first developed and the workplace where they are needed, as well as between multiple workplace contexts. So each of the skills listed for a subject has four workplace examples that will help learners understand how that skill is used in different workplace situations and sectors. Even if none of those workplace situations or sectors is of interest to the learner, they should immediately be able to see the transferability and the relevance of the skill, and be able to connect their subject study directly to work.

If you look at the skills of more than one subject, you will see in most cases that a few appear across different subjects. The research behind SkillsMap® shows that every subject has a number of transferable skills in common with every other subject. This is not only true for subjects in the same discipline like Chemistry and Biology. It’s also true for subjects as diverse as Dance and Physics, Computer Science and English Language, Physical Education and History, and so on.

The examples on SkillsMap® will not show those connections strongly because there are only 15 skills shown for each subject, but in the larger dataset of 250 skills the overlaps are quite significant. Nonetheless you can still use this idea of common transferable skills to help learners recognise the connections between the subjects they choose and enjoy, as well as the ones they find more difficult.

You might also be interested to know that the research behind SkillsMap® shows that some subjects like Media Studies, Design & Technology, Physical Education and Sociology develop a really large number of transferable skills. These subjects often get a negative press for being less academically rigorous, but that is an unfair and inaccurate representation. They provide a rich range of skill development that reinforces both other academic learning and the transition to work. This can be useful to reassure learners that whatever subjects they study now will help them prepare for their future working lives. This can also help you refute claims that these subjects are not useful to learners. They are incredibly useful to learners and develop huge numbers of skills sought after by employers.

Sometimes, when 2 or 3 subjects are picked, SkillsMap® will show no overlapping skills between those subjects. In the full database of 250 skills, that doesn’t happen, but because the search database is so much smaller, and the subject samples are only 15 instead of the 50-100 skills they have in full, there are combinations of subjects where no overlapping skills can be shown. The search response explains this to learners, and you can reiterate this when using SkillsMap® with your learners, particularly emphasising that in such cases learners are developing a really wide range of different transferable skills across all those subjects, which is really helpful for their future working lives. You can also explain the broader value to learners of what happens when subjects do have skills in common: it can help them recognise why they might enjoy different subjects that might otherwise not seem very similar, or emphasise why subjects in the same discipline seem to go well together.