Essential Skills Research and AWAL

The Essential Skills Research can be helpful in:

• Assessing and building students’ workplace skills, including literacy and numeracy; and
• Identifying relevant skill targets for building schoolwork transition programs.

Description of Essential Skills Research:

• Essential Skills (ES) are the kinds of generic skills people use in virtually all occupations; they are not the technical skills required by specific occupations. They are referred to as the “enabling skills” that help people perform the tasks required by their jobs.
• Human Resources and Skills Development Canada conducted research and interviews with Canadian workers and identified nine “Essential Skills”, including: reading text, writing, oral communication, use of documents, thinking skills, continuous learning, working with others, numeracy and computer use. Most of the essential skills have a complexity scale (from 1-4 or 1-5, with 1 being the lowest and 4/5 the highest degree of complexity). The complexity rating corresponds to the degree of skill involved in performing a given task.
• HRDC has developed essential skill profiles for over 170 occupations that can be obtained with a high school diploma or less. Essential skill profiles are available for a number of skilled trades, including Red Seal trades, and work is underway to develop them for select professional and managerial level occupations. The profiles show how essential skills are used differently in different occupations. Each profile provides information on tasks performed in a specific occupation and the essential skill and level of complexity of skill associated with performing each of these tasks (
• The National Occupational Classification (NOC) matrix classifies occupations in Canada by educational level and occupational grouping.

Resources based on Essential Skills Research for educators, workplace trainers and learners:

• Step Into the World of Workplace Learning – a collection of authentic workplace materials, such as catalogues, order forms, labels, schematics, regulations and manuals (http://eservice.nelson.com).
• Numeracy At Work – collection of stories from 20 Canadian workers about how they use numeracy in their jobs, including money math, scheduling or budgeting and accounting math, measurement and calculation math, data analysis math, and numerical estimation (http://www.skillplan.ca).
• Writing At Work – explains workplace writing skills and how to develop them. The resource provides examples of different writing formats, including: daybooks, memos, email, entry forms, logbooks, reports, bulletins, press releases, newsletters, regulations, policies and procedures (http://www.skillplan.ca).

Applications of Essential Skills Research include:

• How Do Your Skills MEASURE UP: a Web-based self-assessment and practice tool that provides more than 100 problem sets involving reading text, document use and numeracy and that are based on workplace documents http://www.towes.com
• TOWES (Test of Workplace Essential Skills): an accurate measure of reading text, document use and numeracy using authentic workplace documents http://www.towes.com
• AWAL (Applications of Working and Learning): professional development project for educators helping them make connections between skills developed in the classroom and skills used in the workplace (http://www.awal.ca).

Career Awareness Resources and the Essential Skills Research:

• Many sector councils are incorporating the Essential Skills Research in the development of occupational profiles and career awareness resources. One example is the Canadian Automotive Repair and Service Sector (CARS)’s Web site and career awareness resource, The Future is Wide Open, aimed at students in grades 7-9 (www.carsyouth.ca). More information on sector councils can be obtained at http://www.councils.org.
• VECTOR (Video Exploration of Careers, Transitions, Opportunities and Realities) is a series of over 120 six-minute video vignettes that profiles some of Canada’s most-needed careers and occupations and references the essential skills required for them. It is produced by the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education and is available online at www.vector.cfee.org and through CD and DVD.

For information on the Essential Skills Research and AWAL, contact:
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