The changing meaning of skill

An old but interesting article on the changing definitions of skill. A bias towards educational establishments but a great overview on the impact to the UK policy and economy.

The changing meaning of skill and its implications for UK vocational education and training policy
Author: Jonathan Payne

During the 1980s and 1990s, UK policy-makers have stressed that economic competitiveness and national prosperity depend on a highly skilled workforce. At the same time, the meaning of "skill" is now considerably broader than it used to be and embraces a range of desirable behaviours, attitudes and personal characteristics. This feature looks at some of the implications this is likely to have for vocational education and training policy...

More at European Industrial Relations On-line

Competency in training

Having been looking through the discussion board there are some really interesting posts on competency in training. These are specific to management systems auditing but will expand the list to cover off other areas in that big wide corporate world.

Definitions of competence
Competence, awareness and training

Thoughts on skills based assessment for personnel certification
Skills and competency certification

About regulation of organizations that employ certified professional
Should certification bodies be running like a business?

All found at IRCA online forums

Welcome to Personnel Certification and Training

So as the very first post on this blog I simply want to compile an up-to-date list of the organizations, papers and feeds that have been making a big impact in the world of personnel certification. This first post is starting off small but the information will grow over time.

As we all know significant debate is happening around the focus on skills and competency based certification. The purpose of this blog is simply to have a central point where information is gathered for convenience. I'll leave the cut and thrust debate (well maybe we can have some) to the discussion boards such as the excellent one IRCA provides (http://forum.irca.org/).

So here we go:

On-line personnel certification e-zines:
IRCA Inform
RABQSA e-momentum


Personnel Certification Organizations:
IRCA
RABQSA

Accreditation Organizations:
International Accreditation Forum
ANSI (Personnel Certification)
UKAS
Standards Council Canada (SCC)
JAZ-ANZ (www.jaz-anz.com.au, website seems to be down at the moment)

Generic sites:
Conformity Assessment
Canadian Council of Personnel Certification

The above is a tiny snapshot of the organizations and references out there. My mission over the next while will be to create an up-to-date reference of not just these organizations, but also papers and feeds as appropriate.

If anybody would like any specific kind of information reported on a (fairly) frequent basis then just post a comment on this blog or pop me off a quick mail.

Stephen Davies