Key Findings from the International OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) - Prof Kjell Rubenson
Channel: UBC Education Research
Date: 2014-01-06

Lecture by Kjell Rubenson, Professor in Educational Studies and Co-Director - Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education & Training (CHET), University of British Columbia; November 6, 2013 A decade after the publication of results from the first round of the PISA assessment of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds, the OECD has conducted its first survey of adult skills, which extends the assessment of skills to the entire adult population. The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) conducted in 22 countries focusses on skills - literacy, numeracy and problem solving -and on how adults develop their skills, how they use those skills, and what benefits they gain from using them. To this end, the survey of adult skills collects information on how skills are used at home, in the workplace and in the community; how these skills are developed, maintained and lost over a lifetime; and how these skills are related to labour market participation, income, health, and social and political engagement. If there is one central message emerging from this new survey, it is that what people know and what they can do with what they know has a major impact on their life chances. From this perspective it is striking how widely countries vary in how well their populations are prepared, how effective they have been in developing literacy skills through successive generations and the role formal and informal learning structures play.  The seminar will focus on some of the seminal national differences and what we can learn from the data about the way inequalities are being structured in the so called knowledge economy and knowledge society.