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 use 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


Further information about skills