Page 131 - International Journal of Process Educaiton (Special Issue)

Classification of Learning Skills (1992) CD

The Classification of Learning Skills contains more than 250 transferable skills organized into
cognitive, social, affective, and psychomotor domains. They are called learning skills because as
these skills improve, so does learning performance.

In 1991 the Secretary's Commission on Achieving social), 14 process areas (e.g., communication), and 45
Necessary Skills (SCANS) report, sponsored by the cluster areas (e.g., creating a message). The following
U.S. Department of Labor examined the demands of the year The Classification of Learning Skills for Educational
workplace and defined the skills needed for employment, Enrichment and Assessment (Apple, 1997) was published,
ultimately identifying five areas of competency: Resources, in which 286 learning skills were organized into four
Interpersonal, Information, Systems, and Technology, domains, 13 process areas, and 50 cluster areas. This time
and a tripartite foundation of basic skills, higher order language development was added to the Classification as
thinking skills, and personal qualities. the foundational skill area and assessment skills were added
at the top of the hierarchy. In 1999 a revised expanded
The skills that made up this foundation led to the inclusion edition of the Classification of Learning Skills was
of 26 learning skills in the first Teaching institute handbook presented in Foundations of Learning (2nd ed.) (Krumsieg
(Apple, 1991; see Figure 1). In 1992 at the Teaching & Baehr), this time with 292 learning skills organized into
Institute held at Valparaiso University, a team of 40 faculty four domains, 15 process areas, and 50 cluster areas.
members added 34 more skills to the original 26, making
a master list of 60 skills that had the potential to enhance Learning Skills and the Faculty Guidebook
learning performance. Later, a condensed list of "44 Skills
for Life," organized into seven categories, was published In 2004 the Classification of Learning Skills was updated
in Learning Through Problem Solving (Apple, Beyerlein again and presented to the engineering community
& Schlesinger, 1992). This "Skills for Life" list was again with a focus on how to use learning skills from the
modified in Teach for Learning - A Handbook of Process cognitive domain in activity design, facilitation, and
Education (Pacific Crest, 1993) using eight categories. assessment (Beyerlein, Cordon, Davis, Leise, Apple). This
scholarship overlapped with four years of refinement of
Over the next few years, with the help of Teaching the Classification of Learning Skills, as documented in the
Institute participants, especially those in the Advanced Faculty Guidebook modules Classification of Learning
Teaching Institutes, Pacific Crest continued to expand Skills (Apple, Beyerlein, Leise, & Baehr, 2007), Cognitive
and organize this list of learning skills. With publication Domain (Davis, Beyerlein, Leise, & Apple, 2007), Social
of the Taxonomy of Process Education in Foundations of Domain (Leise, Beyerlein, & Apple, 2007), and Affective
Learning (Krumsieg & Baehr, 1996), the learning skills Domain (Duncan-Hewitt, Leise, & Hall, 2007). These
were organized into domains (cognitive, social, affective, modules present the rules and logic for including a learning
and psychomotor), using a hierarchical scheme in each skill in the Classification, along with the description of
domain. The Taxonomy offered a total of 189 learning the levels of learner development for any given learning
skills, organized each into one of the four domains (e.g., skill (see Figure 2). In this most recent iteration of the

Figure 1 Learning Skills in the First Teaching institute handbook

1. Observation 10. Reading 18. Analysis
2. Thinking 11. Use of time 19. Visualizing an idea
3. Prediction 12. Estimation 20. Discovering a concept
4. Setting goals and objectives 13. Understanding your value system and 21. Experimentation
5. Modeling 22. Self-assessment
6. Synthesizing concepts that of others 23. Decision making
7. Transferring concepts 14. Writing 24. Vocabulary
8. Articulating concepts 15. Using math tools 25. Memorizing
9. Listening 16. Teamwork 26. Focusing
17. Understanding systems

International Journal of Process Education (February 2016, Volume 8 Issue 1) 129