Anthony P. Carnevale

Workplace basics: the skills employees need and employers want

Education reform has shifted to focus on these key competencies, particularly as they pertain to life and career skills. The move towards making people both college and career ready essentially amounts to finding ways to learn basic knowledge, and transforming these capabilities into deeper learning in order to create a flexible and adaptable individual with the appropriate skills to survive in the twenty-first century. We are only at the very beginning of the dialogue and experimentation on exactly how we should teach these skills. What we do know, however, is that the learning curve is gentlest when these skills are introduced to students within a practical framework and appropriate context.