10 Assignment Guidelines: Transferable Skills Exercise for Teacher Certification Candidates
Learning Objective for Transferable Skills Exercise: Education Majors
The intent of this exercise is to raise your awareness of the connection between the skills students use to complete academic assignments and the skills used to carry out job responsibilities in the workplace. What exactly does this connection look like? As an Education major at College of Professional Studies in the Center for Education Preparation, you will see this connection clearly in your EDU courses because they are field-based. But what about your other courses? What is the connection between thinking analytically and evaluating information in a general education course or a course in your content major and the competencies you will need as a professional educator? When you read the assignment guidelines, please keep in mind that you’re not expected to be an expert in thinking through strategies for applying for a job. Should you run into difficulty with Part II of the assignment, complete Part I, post your document in the discussion forum, and ask for help.
Guidelines for Transferable Skills Exercise: EDU Majors
Part I: Create a Transferable Skills Document
1. Create your transferable skills document by clicking on the following link and saving the document in your word processing program: Transferable Skills EDU Majors.
2. Compare the skills in your Professional Education Competencies description with the following list of CRIT 602 transferable skills:
- Determine the information needed.
- Evaluate information and its sources using validity criteria.
- Access and use information ethically and legally.
- Analyze concepts or evidence.
- Question assumptions.
- Identify relevant context.
- Draw logical conclusions based on information.
- Identify consequences and implications.
- Reflect on your experiences and learn from them.
- Use feedback to improve your performance.
Note: If you need more information about each transferable skill listed above, scroll down to the green-shaded section below.
3. Identify one (or more) of the Professional Education Competencies that aligns with one (or more) of the transferable skills on the above list.
4. Use the comments feature in your word processing program to annotate one (or more) of the Professional Education Competencies with one (or more) of the transferable skills from the above list.
Part II: Create a Discussion Post
Respond to the following scenario and attach your transferable skills document to your post.
Imagine that you are applying for a teaching position, and the SAU1 wants to check your ability to make connections among concepts that on the surface might not appear connected. They’re asking you to provide an example of an actual or hypothetical academic experience in which you used one (or more) of the skills reflected in the Professional Education Competencies. What example would you provide them?
Part III: Respond to at Least One Post
Do you think the example your classmate provided in his or her post makes the connection between academic skills and the skills required for the job clear enough to get an interview? If not, what revisions would you recommend to make the connection more clear? If so, what follow-up question would you anticipate being asked in the interview?
1 SAU= School Administrative Unit. This is the main administrative body for the school districts in Northern New England. Students not in New England should check their own public school administrative body for job posting examples.
Goal: Evaluate Information
Determine the Information Needed. You select types of information (sources) related to concepts or answering the research question.
Evaluate Information & Its Sources. You choose a variety of information sources. You select sources using basic criteria such as relevance to the research question and currency.
Access & Use Information Ethically & Legally. You distinguish between common knowledge and ideas requiring attribution through use of citations and references. You demonstrate a developing awareness of the differences among paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting. You demonstrate an emerging understanding of the ethical and legal restrictions on the use of published, confidential, and/or proprietary information.
Goal: Think Analytically
Analysis. You break concepts or evidence into parts and explain how the parts are related to each other.
Conclusions & Related Implications & Consequences. Your conclusion is logically tied to information. You have identified consequences and implications clearly.
Goal: Reflect on Learning to Guide Professional Practice
Reflection. You relate present ideas, concepts, or experiences to previous ones. You demonstrate an emerging awareness for future professional practice.
Application. You use feedback to develop learning goals and strategies for further learning that have potential application to professional practice.
