The University Professional and Continuing
Education Association (UPCEA) is a leading
association for professional, continuing and online education. Recently, the
association has been inviting proposals for a prototype of a credential that could
signal to prospective employers in clear, verifiable ways that an individual could
communicate effectively as an ideation challenge. The need for such credentials
with appropriate learning outcomes have been felt of late due to employers who
have had to leave jobs unfilled because recruits who appeared qualified on
paper but lacked the appropriate character skills (e.g. ability to articulate
clearly) when interviewed in-person. Worse yet, it was experienced that an
individual may be hired only to discover later that the employee lacked key
interpersonal skills.
Summary: We know that success in the workplace requires not
only knowledge and technical expertise but also soft skills such as teamwork,
leadership and communication as has been evident from the age old traditional rural
work culture at least in the Indian context of Father to Son skill transfer.
Yes, these soft skills are no doubt typically difficult to measure yet these
attributes are nowadays increasingly sought after as they have been found to be
more indicative of job compatibility than the usual high grades and
qualifications viz. the theory and practical sessions inclusive, listed on a
resume. In this age of social media, the way in which we communicate has also
been constantly evolving, yet however, we know that effective communication
comes from building meaningful relationships as has been again more evident
from then Father to Son skill transfer especially in entrepreneurial rural occupations
such as sculpturing, metal working, wood working, pottery, tailoring, etc. to
name a few.
To cater to
this problem, there have been tremendous growth of classroom/online learning
options initiated by private enterprises who may have realized the true need of
such initiatives may be due to their own corporate experiences or by word of
mouth. This was possible which no doubt is due to the rapid growth in social
media systems wherein students, job seekers and workers are able to acquire
various badges, licenses and/or certifications pertaining to such soft skills
and the like from any part of the world. While these achievements have been
touted as a means to increase one’s employability and earning potential, the
sheer number and diversity of credentials has made it incredibly difficult to
measure their quality and ultimately their value because such credential/s conferring
bodies have been operating parallel and independent to the main stream
government approved education systems.
Introduction: What are these soft skills or people oriented skills? The people-skill
(PS) variables could be classified as follows (From source:
http://ftp.iza.org/dp5324.pdf):
1. Talking and/or hearing.
2. Adaptability to dealing with people beyond giving
and receiving instructions.
3. Adaptability to situations involving
interpretations of feelings, ideas or facts from personal viewpoints.
4. Adaptability to influencing people in their
opinions, attitudes or judgments about ideas or things.
5. A preference for activities concerned with the
communication of data versus a preference for activities for dealing with
things and objects.
6. A preference for working for the presumed good of
the people versus a preference for activities that are carried out in relation
to processes, machines and techniques.
7. A preference for activities involving business
contacts with people versus a preference for activities of a scientific and
technical nature.
8. Complexity of function in relation to people, etc.
The
remaining non-people-skill (NPS) variables could be broadly classified into
three categories (From source: http://ftp.iza.org/dp5324.pdf):
1. Cognitive skills,
2. Motor skills and
3. Physical strength.
Discussion: Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Father-to-son-skill-transfer-dwindling/articleshow/23125169.cms
asserts that traditional skill sets were becoming
scarcer nowadays because the earlier practice of skill transfer from father to
son was dwindling.
Under such
circumstances the source: http://ftp.iza.org/dp5324.pdf
calls for an urgent need to examine the effect of
parents’ social skills on their children’s sociability. Even after controlling
a variety of background characteristics, including cognitive skills, the said
source reveals that the sociability relationships between fathers and sons and
between mothers and daughters remained statistically significant. Also the dollar value to the sons’
of a given increase in their fathers’ sociability was found one-sixth of the
value to the sons’ of the same standard-deviation increase in their fathers’
education. A literature survey conducted has revealed several previous studies
which have indicated that social skills (e.g. skills in communication,
interpersonal interactions and leadership) were important determinants of labor market outcomes viz. Kuhn and Weinberger (2005) found positive returns
for people who occupied leadership positions in high school especially for
those in managerial occupations, Borghans et al. (2008) demonstrated that
people who were sociable early in life were more likely to hold jobs in which
people skills were important and that the returns to people skills were greater
in those jobs, Machin et al. (2001) found positive labor market returns to
sociability for U.K men and subject scholars have established the predictive power
of social skills for labor market outcomes by using large population samples.
Although many studies have documented the intergenerational transmission of
earnings and education (Solon 1999; Black and Devereux 2011) fewer studies have
examined the link in sociability between parents and their children but for the
same, historical endorsement at least in the Indian context has proved the
successful occupational skill (social + educational) transfer from Father to
Son since the Vedic period. Therefore, by examining the intergenerational
transmission of sociability, one could evaluate whether the contribution of
differences in parents’ sociability affects the differences in sociability and
earnings among their children.
Further, the
source:
http://ftp.iza.org/dp5324.pdf
suggests that a worker’s behavior is determined by
job circumstances and the worker’s personality and that a worker with a
comparative advantage in certain behavior would be assigned to the job that
demands more of that behavior. The above assumption that workers hold
occupations that match their traits and personalities also corresponds to the
following observation made by Robert Hauser (1998, 5): “Job-holding tells us
about the technical and social skills that we bring to the labor market. . . .
As market labor has become nearly universal among adult men as well as women,
it was increasingly possible to characterize individuals in terms of their own
current or past jobs.” However, of late the demands of a changing job market
has made lifelong learning to become the new norm that would require students
to work during their studies and to constantly learn new skills. Students of
tomorrow need design their own curricula and pair it with paid work,
internships, opportunities abroad, certificates and mini degrees obtained
online or from niche providers.
Based on the
above discussions it could be deduced in the Indian context the strength of the
intergenerational link in sociability was approximately the same as the
strength of the intergenerational link in education upto the 1960’s, but the
findings of labor market returns to sociability alone to be only one sixth of
the value of the labor market returns to education persists even today i.e.
the dollar value to a son of a given increase in his father’s sociability would
be one-sixth of the value of the same standard deviation increase in his
father’s education. Summarizing the above discussions, we have senior (fathers’)
sociability has always had a positive and significant effect on their
junior (sons/daughters’) sociability and a non negligible
effect on their sons/daughters’ wages. Hence, could we in present circumstances
consider such age old rural intergenerational overall skill transfers in terms of
seniors to juniors in a modern teaching – learning educational framework that would double up as
alternative credential providers to take care of further micro credentials
created?
The discussion above could also be extended at the workplace especially for the middle aged workforce who may be undergoing/planning a career transition as the credentials/qualifications gained when as youth may not have been much supportive (wages/job satisfaction or both) at workplace for all these years. Such a workforce would then need a Son (Junior, age wise) to Father (Senior, age wise) skill transfer approach in their 2nd career innings, evaluate the accommodating ease with which such new skill/work could be mastered for some years till coming in-line with the new environment and then apply for fresh credentials/certificates/diplomas, etc. to grow and evaluate options for growth in the new environment. Why? Same as said before that, of late the demands of a changing job market has made life long learning the new norm that would require such middle aged students too to study during their work and learn constantly new skills, design their own curricula, get the relevant certificates/diplomas and pair it with paid work in the new working environment as credentials gives way to new options.
CONCLUSION:
The truth
here lies in that, there has been in the past four to five decades,
a significant change in the ways of sociability.
‘Modern education for all’ then had opened opportunities for every class in the
human social structure that may have resulted in appropriate father – son
transfer of only day to day sociability skills without really applying them in
the right way at the right place and time i.e. at the job floor. Say, an
alternative medicine practitioner (Ayurvedic medicine) may have received the
age old knowledge and diagnostic skills from his father and his father from his
father and so on.....The practitioner and his son/daughter would undergo the
same social and education skill transfer but for the new entry of modern
allopathic medicine which even today holds prime importance especially so in
the West. The sociability skills could only be gained pertaining to the
alternative medicine by the children but need to be seriously altered when
applying the same with the newly learnt allopathic medicine, if the children
had adopted for the change. Similarly, a goldsmith, potter, village accountant,
tailor, etc. all must have had to face the same problem i.e. a mismatch within
the family learnt sociability skills and blending it to the newly learnt
occupational skills of today i.e. a case of preferential voluntary change in
occupation by the children having now none to fall back on.
Hence, a
model could be visualized based on the traditional Father (senior) to Son
(junior) skill transfer but within the main stream education system, right from
school to the degree programs operated solely by the student groups with an
academic facilitator for enabling such value adding interactions which thereby
would help inculcate in them a need to communicate effectively at the least
with their seniors and juniors under the watchful eyes of the facilitators who
later on would be certifying them (annually/semi – annually) on such task issues
along with the normal on – going curriculum tasks. Due to professional
limitations, the type or nature of task/s to be designed be ignored momentarily
giving only a hint regarding what people and non - people skills should/could
be evaluated through appropriately designed task/s.
Currently,
tasks have been designed at least in the Diploma curriculum to engage students,
but of the same class/level (horizontal interaction) to encourage understanding
the subject matter needs in the long run. The approach
that could be rightly proposed would be similar but directed vertical i.e. interaction with juniors
and seniors to encourage understanding the subject matter needs in the long
run. Appropriate
scheduling of the tasks may need attention in the regular teaching – learning
framework as now the interacting students would not be of the same class or
level but would be of different levels, say a student of 3rd year degree
reporting task progress to 4th year degree but delegating some tasks to a 2nd
year degree; all collaborating with the facilitator (faculty) - top in the
ensuing hierarchy who would expect timely task completion for the award of
credentials.
The
effectiveness of the above model could be gauged by defining the goal of a test
strategy towards implementing a plan that:
Ø Detects problems,
say early learning shortcomings in talking and/or
hearing especially at school/college level as against more professional shortcomings at the
diploma/degree level viz.
i. Adaptability
to dealing with people beyond giving and receiving instructions.
ii. Adaptability to situations involving
interpretations of feelings, ideas or facts from personal viewpoints.
iii. Adaptability to influencing people in their
opinions, attitudes or judgments about ideas or things.
iv. Understanding preference for activities concerned
with the communication of data versus a preference for activities for dealing
with things and objects.
v. Understanding preference for working for the
presumed good of the people versus a preference for activities that are carried
out in relation to processes, machines and techniques.
vi. Understanding preference for activities involving
business contacts with people versus a preference for activities of a
scientific and technical nature.
vii. Understanding complexity of function in relation to
people, etc.
Ø Reduces rework
after an assessment and pin-points to an unusually
better trait in some alternative direction if not in effective communication
say, ability to remember heard data’s, conversations, etc. rather than talking;
generating employment through innovative ideas rather than be
employed,.............
Ø Verifies functionality
through appropriate in – situ project works,
industrial visits for school/college level and industry – institute interaction
for the diploma/degree levels.
In the event
of other micro credentials evolving in the ever changing job market scenarios, the
same model would
suffice albeit by redefining the goal of adopted test strategy (as mentioned
above) through appropriate design of task work/s in tune with job market needs
that could signal the employee’s eligibility to upgrade himself/herself via. ‘a
back to school approach’ to earn the micro credentials and thereby prove
his/her competence in the present/future job transitions.
References
(Websites and books):
6. http://monitor.icef.com/2015/06/the-growing-importance-of-alternative-credentials/
9. Leadership
Skills and Wages, by Peter Kuhn and Catherine Weinberger, Journal of Labor
Economics, Vol. 23, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 395-436, Published
by: University of Chicago Press
10.
The Economics and Psychology of
Personality Traits, by Borghans L,
Duckworth AL, Heckman JJ, ter Weel B, Journal of Human Resources. 2008 Fall
11.
Centre for Educational Research and
Innovation, Educational Policy Analysis, 2001
