Appendix A:
Generic Skills for
Adult Basic Education Footnote ^{1 1}

Generic Skills are skills that:

1. can be developed and applied across a variety of subject areas and contexts, and
2. take longer to acquire than subject-specific skills.

Generic Skills are best viewed as transferable general life skills or skills that contribute to independence. They may be transferred into contexts different from the ones in which they were first learned. The intent is that learners acquire the skill and then transfer and further develop it when attending further training and education, when in the workforce or when participating in other lifelong learning activities. Generic Skills are essential to personal, social, and employment success.

Three primary references for the development of the General Skills were as follows:

1. Common Essential Learnings (C.E.L.s) incorporated in Saskatchewan's K-12 curriculum guides (retrievable from http://www.aee.gov.sk.ca/abe/).
2. The Employability Skills 2000+ developed by the Conference Board of Canada (retrievable from http://www.conferenceboard.ca/education/learning-tools/employability-skills.htm).
3. Equipped for the Future Content Standards of the National Institute for Literacy of the United States (retrievable from http://eff.cls.utk.edu/PDF/standards_guide.pdf).

The following broad categories comprise the Generic Skills:

• Lifelong Learning
• Communications
• Numeracy
• Technological Literacy
• Creative and Critical Thinking
• Valuing Diversity
• Interpersonal Teamwork

Generic Skills are fundamental to each curriculum area in Adult Basic Education, illustrated in the chart on the following two pages.

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