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Web End = Int Rev Educ (2016) 62:253278
DOI 10.1007/s11159-016-9565-6
ORIGINAL PAPER
Helen Abadzi1
Published online: 26 May 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning 2016
Abstract Technological achievements require complex skills for the workplace, along with creativity, communication, and critical thinking. To compete effectively in the global economy, governments must provide their citizens with relevant education and training. To help close the skills gap, international agencies often advise governments of developing countries to de-emphasise basic knowledge and focus instead on complex cognition and systemic improvements. However, the donors advice may be due to memory biases of highly educated people. Such training strategies would fail most students, because complex skills are built by combining and automatising shorter chains of thoughts or behaviours. An effective training process requires much practice, feedback and rearrangement of subcomponents over time. Execution of various tasks must become automatic and effortless to avoid using up too much of the very limited capacity of what is termed the working memory. Marketable skills are those skills which are uently performed without excessive cognitive load. To provide complex skills for all, including non-cognitive skills, curricula should therefore rst ensure detailed instruction and practice of basic components which can then be strung together and applied to new tasks. Policy advisers seem unaware of these scientic insights, so they are not taken into account. The article reviews the essential neurocognitive functions involved in the acquisition and execution of skills chains. The author concludes that to improve the skills of economically disadvantaged populations, donors and governments must acquire expertise and offer advice on the basis of cognitive science.
Keywords skills 21st century learning curves automaticity low-income
countries vocational training cognitive science
& Helen Abadzi [email protected]
1 University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA
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Web End = Training 21st-century workers: Facts, ction and memory illusions
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254 H. Abadzi
Rsum Former la main-doeuvre du 21e sicle : faits, ction et illusions de la mmoire Les prouesses technologiques exigent des comptences complexes adaptes au poste de travail, paralllement la crativit, la communication et la...