What do we mean by skills?

"Skills" means a number of things, including:

* people's capabilities and abilities

* people's knowledge and understanding

* people's motivation, willingness and ability to use their capabilities and knowledge

Skills can be thought of in a number of ways:

* foundation skills - things we need to know, understand and be able to do in order to do most other things

* generic skills - skills that we can apply in a range of contexts, and often enable us to make use of other skills

* technical skills - skills that are often specialised and required for particular activities

ITOs are interested and concerned with all these ways of thinking about skills.

We are interested in:

* the development of people's skills

* the recognition of people's skills, and

* people's ability to put their skills to use