SKILLS: The Future Industrial Worker in Skilled Practice

Contemporary debates over "the factory of the future" show that industries will need vocational workers that are empowered and skilled to act as decision-makers and controllers, holding technical and social skills of a high standard. Further, industrial development demands enough supply of skilled vocational workers. In the SKILLS project we have emphasized to gain knowledge on the characteristics of the generic competences required in future industrial work. In particular we have gained contextual knowledge of the following competencies: 1) understanding the company's value chain of production, 2) how to initiate innovation processes, and 3) how to act autonomously in daily operational activities without supervision. We denote these competences "value creation skills", "innovation skills" and "responsible operating skills". Within this context we have accomplished action research oriented experiments on innovative collaboration between lower secondary schools, vocational colleges and industrial enterprises as to gain knowledge on how to motivate young people to become vocational workers who are educated in these generic skills. We find that workplace-learning motivates young people to learn both trade specific and generic competencies. We argue that the lower secondary school-system must be included in what traditionally has been vocational education-workplace collaboration. Further, we find that the learning of future skill requirements presupposes collective learning processes and authentic problem solving. We also find that competencies fit well as an inclusion in both the social- and technological dimensions of socio-technical systems design, but more research is needed on the mechanisms by which competencies become "inputs" and "outputs" of future work designs. In the SKILLS Project we have also developed and tested a quantitative survey on the work-specific characteristics of the genereic skills and how workplace-based learning aims at operationalising the skills. When validated through a representative survey this questionaire will produce valuable knowledge of the degree to which future competence requirements can be learned in the educational system or must be developed by means of the characteristics of work processes in a Company setting.

Prosjektet vil kunne påvirke hvordan bedrifter og skoleverket samarbeider om å utdanne fagarbeidere som både har de nødvendige fagspesifikke og generiske kompetansene som industrien trenger. Ved å inkludere ungdomsskoleelevene i samarbeid med elever fra videregående skole og bedrifter, vil ungdom kunne foreta bedre kvalifiserte valg om yrkesfaglig utdanning. Fremtidens kompetansekrav består både av fagspesifikk og generiske kompetanser. Vi finner at ansvarskompetanse, å være innovasjonsaktiv og å ha verdiskapingsforståelse er særlig viktig. Kompetansene læres i en arbeidsorganisering som gir ansvar og myndighet til fagarbeideren. Vi har utviklet et spørreskjema for fagoperatører hvor vi kartlegger en bedrifts sammenheng mellom arbeidsorganisering og ansattes nivå på disse tre generiske kompetansekravene. Med videre forskning kan undersøkelsen bli et godt redskap for bedrifter som vil jobbe innovativt med læring i bedrift for eksisterende fagarbeidere.

The factories of the future will not be labour-free, but will require employees with substantial skills, some of which they do not have at present. This anticipated shortage poses a challenge. Higher levels of automation and new technology, as well as a higher innovation rate require competent and interdisciplinary skilled people at the shop floor. Manufacturing industry may become an even more important element in the economy - but this takes SKILLS. The objective of SKILLS is to develop knowledge and models for high-skilled vocational knowledge practices in the factories of the future. In order to do so, the following must be done: -Synthesize state of the art knowledge on vocational work in future manufacturing and extend this through empirical study, enabling articulation of challenges accurately and in detail. -Develop systematized model of vocational education value chain as enabler for future manufacturing. -Develop framework for an extended competence development interaction between student, school, and industry, embedding mechanisms for coaching in practice. -Design an overall system for future vocational work in manufacturing. This will include the interface between school, company, unions, management and apprentice, and how to use technology as enabler, securing an sustainable overall system for skill maintenance and development. Vocational education is formulated by politicians, carried out by schools, taught to youth and put to use in companies. A multiplicity of actors and system parts must be analyzed, understood and engaged in order to develop new knowledge. In the research approach we therefore want to exploit the opportunities of a multimethodological approach. SKILLS emphasizes networking and both popular/professional and scientific dissemination activities. The steering committee, broadly and nationally anchored, will be an important mechanism for disseminating project results in for wider audiences, and a PhD project will be carried out.