Transversal Skills as a Missing Link Between School and Work: Experiences from the Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract

This chapter highlights the importance of transversal/twenty-first-century skills in facilitating transitions to life beyond school and for ensuring a closer match between graduates’ skills and employers’ skill demands. The chapter provides a regional overview of how these skills are categorized and addressed in policies, curricula and pedagogies in Asia and the Pacific region. It argues that economic discourse is prevailing in integrating transversal skills into education and training. The chapter, based on UNESCO research in the Asia-Pacific region, presents policy and institutional levels of analysis and adds a regional perspective to the discourse on twenty-first-century skills. In addition, it urges that guidelines and tools for assessing transversal skills should be relevant to different contexts. Lacking of coherent approaches towards assessment could become a barrier in developing these skills and assisting learners in their transitions to work.