Workplace Skills in Context

Concerns about people who are ill-prepared to perform in workplaces of the future have resulted in various policy reports identifying basic skills, and postulating appropriate educational responses. Much of the supporting data are thin, and yield descriptions that characterize work through a limited and biased sample of possible observations. Work is made to appear unambiguous, instrumental, rational, and subject to universal categorization. Fieldwork in a manufacturing plant presents a richer picture of work that counters these distortions by demonstrating the importance of alternative styles of work. strategies for managing ambiguity, and the importance of local knowledge. The conventional focus on skills in isolation is replaced by one in which both skills and our ability to describe them is constrained by the technological and organizational contexts of workplaces. Incentives, opportunities, the expressive function of skilled performance, and feedback about results all influence skills. Finally, the...