About
About SRI’s NSF ATE Work on Professional Skills
The Projects
This site brings together research findings and instructional resources from a series of National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education projects led by SRI Education. The work began with Promoting the Development of STEM Tech Employability Skills: A Review of Practices and Needs in the ATE Community (NSF DUE 1700703), a multi-year study examining:
- The professional skills most needed in technical fields
- Why these skills matter for success in the workplace
- How professional skills develop
- How community college educators and employers support their development among early-career technicians
Building on this research, Project GOALS (Greater Opportunities to Advance Lifelong Success) developed classroom resources that help educators make instruction in communication, teamwork, adaptability, and lifelong learning more explicit within technical courses.
Our current NSF ATE project, Badging ProSkills, builds on the Project GOALS materials through a partnership with Evergreen Valley College and input from instructional advisers and industry partners. The project is developing and testing student micro-credentials that recognize professional skills and faculty micro-credentials that recognize instructors’ capacity to teach them. New badging resources and research findings will be added to this site as they become available.
Need for This Research
Technical careers require more than technical knowledge. Employees also need to communicate effectively, work with others, adapt to changing workplace expectations, and continue learning as technology and job responsibilities evolve.
Employers continue to report difficulty finding early-career technicians who demonstrate these skills. Addressing this need requires educators and employers to make professional skills visible, provide opportunities to practice them, and help learners document and communicate what they can do.
What Are Professional Skills?
Professional skills, sometimes called employability, essential, durable, or 21st-century skills, support success across technical fields and workplaces. They include skills for managing one’s learning and work, interacting productively with others, adapting to workplace roles and expectations, and applying critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Several misconceptions can limit attention to these skills. Students and educators may encounter assumptions that technical work does not require advanced communication or teamwork, that professional skills are fixed aspects of personality or upbringing, or that these skills cannot be taught and improved. Our work provides educators and employers with practical approaches for making professional skills explicit, supporting their development, and recognizing students’ progress.
Research Team
Principal Investigator
LOUISE YARNALL
Louise Yarnall, Ph.D., is a senior research social scientist in SRI Education. She specializes in community college education research, assessment design, evaluation of scaling up classroom innovative instructional and assessment practices, and journalism education research.
Co-Principal Investigator
JULIE REMOLD
Julie Remold, Ph.D., is an Anthropologist and Senior Researcher with over 10 years of equity-oriented research, design, and evaluation experience. Her current research foci include professional development for educators, out-of-school learning and open-ended STEM inquiry programs such as found in educational making initiatives and inquiry-oriented STEM instruction.
Research Methods
The project team reviewed prior research from education and workplace studies and conducted in-depth interviews with technician workforce experts. In total, we reviewed 273 articles and interviewed 40 educators, employers, and recent graduates from technician programs, with the goal of answering four key research questions:
- What drives the demand for employability skills?
- Which skills are most important for technicians?
- What learning principles and instructional practices support their development?
- What approaches to employability skills development can support improved diversity in technician fields?
Questions? Contact us.