innovation as it is more traditional forms of work, such as teacher education,
community and social work and industrial production. In contrast to the other
conceptions of generic skill discussed, Zuboff and Engestrom et al recognise that, in
order to innovate and solve problems, people have to be able to mediate between
different types of knowledge held by experts and between different work contexts and
social relationships. In this sense, they are much more conscious of the social, cultural
and communicative basis of skill compared with many other writers.
Generic skill and the ‘knowledge economy’.
One way of making sense of the contrasting foci and emphases that are associated with
the concept of generic skill is to distinguish between those conceptions which view it
primarily as though it were the property of an individual and those conceptions that
explicitly recognise the contextual basis of skill. This distinction helps to distinguish
between first, the diverse range of meanings associated with the term in the policy and
academic literature that were discussed in the previous section. Second, the diverse
demand for generic skill, since it is clear that the concept serves as an all-inclusive,
umbrella term to encapsulate the skills required in different work contexts. These
issues also alert us, therefore, to the complex nature of the problems that policy-makers
face as they try to devise educational policies and reform qualifications in order to
support young people’s employability in the EU knowledge economy.
[Insert Table 1: A typology of generic skill]
Traditionally, the main role of qualifications has been standard-setting, thus denoting
the proportion of any population that had achieved a specific level of academic or
vocational attainment. The emphasis on generic skill, however, represents a shift
towards demonstrating a potential to achieve in future, albeit in different ways from
those normally associated with conventional qualifications. As Chisholm has cogently
argued (1998), qualifications are both losing relative significance as well as gaining
24
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