Competence areas: Communications & Teamwork - Knowledge Translation - Listening Attitude - Skills
Self appraisal: Introduction > i. Competence Self-appraisal
Order as a Determinant for required Skills and Cohesion in Value Orientations
The lack of cohesion in value orientations in the respective cultural (better: socio-technical) parts of the world has been indicated as a root of the global sustainability crisis1.
Cohesion in value orientations are seen as a property of an order, in which people decide on their individual and collective actions.
In the Entity Dictionary three such orders, with an increasing complexity, are described: the natural order, the social order, and the techno order. Within each order, there are also different levels of elaborateness.
As the order in which people participate evolves to a more complex one, their skills for civic participation must evolve as well. The quality of society's institutions provide the evidence that sufficient skills for civic participation are present. In many developing countries, the civic participation skill base may not develop fast enough to counterbalance the private sector ferment that comes with the participation of some in a global economy.
The multiple failures of contemporary institutions is at play in many crises.
On the global scale, it is an hypothesis that this is due to our political class's inability to cope with the complexities prevalent in the order of the techno-globe2: the skills for civic participation prevalent in society are not (yet) capable to put in place the institutions to sufficiently discipline the interests that myopically seek private values with no regard for common values, nor regard for common risks.
Basic Skills
Among the basic skills, literacy and numeracy receive most attention in education programmes.
A literate person (Entity Dictionary) has an attaining in reading, writing and numeracy which make it possible to use these skills towards his own and his community's development.
Virendra P Singh (Scribd) in Rational Approach to Hindi Literacy (Scribd) (page 11) lists ten benefits of literacy:
- Literacy overcomes the limitations of time over spoken words which disappear after they are uttered. Written words are preserved for use in future. Through literacy, words become immortal.
- Literacy also overcomes the limitations of space and promotes communication among people at different places. Through literacy, languages become universal.
- Since reading and writing is done by seeing, mental activities based on the sense of vision are strengthened. Literacy is enlightenment in a real sense.
- Thoughts and records can be kept separately and there is no need to strain the brain for memorizing everything. Accumulation of knowledge outside mind is possible only through literacy.
- Literacy promotes creativity. It helps people in experimenting with new concepts and expressing new ideas generated in the mind.
- Literacy helps in developing different cognitive capacities of mind. Since cognition requires memory, many things which cannot be remembered can be made available in written form.
- Literacy promotes and enforces honesty. A person may deny what he has said but cannot deny what he has written.
- Literacy opens new areas of real and conceptual worlds to be surveyed and researched for economic development. The economic prosperity in literate societies is generally more than in illiterate societies.
- Literacy promotes social justice and equality. The exploitation of people in an illiterate society is more than in a literate society. In a literate society, there is wider base for defending human values cherished by people.
- Without organized literacy action, illiteracy will continue to stagnate indefinitely along with the associated ills of poverty and underdevelopment. One of the three components used in the calculation of “Human Development Index” (HDI) by UN is “Literacy” as it is a cumulative measure of several factors that contribute to human development.
Realizing the development benefits for oneself, and for the community to which one belongs requires a level of competence for several basic skills.
Vocational Training
Vocational training helps a person to realize development benefits for oneself.
The National Literacy Mission of India provides a large number (371) of vocational training programmes in the Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS) institutes.
Civic Participation for Community Development
Realizing the development benefits for the community to which one belongs requires a level of competence for the basic skills, with in addition skills for civic participation.
Literacy and related basic skills are also essential for realizing the human right of taking part in the government of his/her country, and to equal access to public service (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21).
In this tutorial for basic skills literacy, numeracy, digital competence, and oral competence, we use the three levels of competence defined by Vox, the Norwegian Agency for Lifelong Learning.
To the four basic skills defined by Vox, we add the basic skill civic participation. The value of the systematized content commons becomes evident in the explanation of the levels of competence for civic participation. For this skill, the levels of competence described in the Skills Framework for the Information Age(SFIA) offer a suitable model. The levels range from 1 at basic entry to 7 at a very senior level.
This collaborative tutorial is intended to improve your civic participation skills, and to allow you to share your experience with others, who may benefit from it.
International Society for Technology in Education defines NETS, a compendium of skills required for students to be competitive and successfull in a global and digital world.
NETS are defined for:
Further details at http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx
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