References
This database has been compiled to provide a searchable repository on published research addressing “future skills” that will be a useful tool for researchers and individuals interested in the future of work and the future of skills.
The database integrates existing bibliographies focused on future skills and the future of work as well as the results of new ProQuest and Google Scholar searches. The process of building the database also involved consultations with experts and the identification of key research organizations publishing in this area, as well as searches of those organizations’ websites. For a more detailed explanation of how the database was assembled, please read the Future Skills Reference Database Technical Note.
The current database, assembled by future skills researchers at the Diversity Institute, is not exhaustive but represents a first step in building a more comprehensive database. It will be regularly updated and expanded as new material is published and identified. In that vein, we encourage those with suggestions for improvements to this database to connect with us directly at di.fsc@ryerson.ca.
From this database, we also selected 39 key publications and created an Annotated Bibliography. It is designed to serve as a useful tool for researchers, especially Canadian researchers, who may need some initial guidance in terms of the key references in this area.
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Reference
Educational mismatches versus skill mismatches: Effects on wages, job satisfaction, and on-the-job search
Education‐job mismatches are reported to have serious effects on wages and other labour market outcomes. Such results are often cited in support of assignment theory, but can also be explained by institutional and human capital models. To test the assignment explanation, we examine the relation between educational mismatches and skill mismatches. In line with earlier research, educational mismatches affect wages strongly. Contrary to the assumptions of assignment theory, this effect is not explained by skill mismatches. Conversely, skill mismatches are much better predictors of job satisfaction and on‐the‐job search than are educational mismatches.
Reference
Using electronic portfolios to explore essential student learning outcomes in a professional development course
The following study utilizes an ePortfolio platform to examine desirable employment competencies during an introductory level professional development course for cooperative education students at a large, research intensive institution. The researchers created course activities allowing students to demonstrate essential learning outcomes derived from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) LEAP Report (2008). While it is recognized that the student learning outcomes identified in the LEAP Report are intended to be examined through summative analysis at the conclusion of one's undergraduate experience, this study proposes that these learning outcomes can be promoted early during students' undergraduate careers through formative feedback in an ePortfolio development process. The results of this study suggest that ePortfolios could be used as a medium to encourage student confidence with respect to employment preparation. Further research should be conducted to longitudinally evaluate students' understanding and ability to demonstrate the LEAP Report's essential learning outcomes within the context of a cooperative education curriculum.
Reference
Assistive learning technologies for students with visual impairments: A critical rehumanizing review
Students with visual impairments (SVIs) are often dehumanized in mathematics education, based on deficit perspectives, the assumption that mathematics learning must be visual, and a lack of tools that allow students on the entire spectrum of vision to collaborate mathematically. The current advent of assistive learning technologies (ALTs) holds promise in helping SVIs learn mathematics, particularly through making mathematics accessible in nonvisual ways. In this critical literature review, two authors, one blind and one sighted, use a disability studies and rehumanizing mathematics education framework to examine currently available ALTs. We organize our findings using the substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition (SAMR) model, then critique the technologies based on their capacity for humanizing SVIs in mathematics learning. We found that most technologies rely on a substitution or augmentation model, merely replacing visual information with audio or tactile information and then requiring SVIs to “act” more like their sighted peers. We found few technologies that recognized the unique mathematical experiences SVIs hold, or empowered SVIs to create and own their own mathematical knowledge through collaboration with all students on the spectrum of vision.
Reference
Canada's employment equity legislation and policy, 1987-2000: The gap between policy and practice
Over the past 16 years, a legislative and policy framework has evolved in Canada to address systemic discrimination in employment in the federal jurisdiction, and in organizations that sell goods or services to the federal government. Data collected pursuant to the Employment Equity Act, as well as published literature and government documents, are reviewed in order to provide a critical analysis of the federal policy framework as set out in 1987 and revised in 1996. This review is the basis for assessing both progress and lack of improvement in the employment status of racial minority, aboriginal, and disabled women and men, as well as white women, within the federal sector. Reasons for limited results are proposed, and issues posed by contemporary labour market trends are identified. It is argued that the results of employment equity policy are disappointing because the policy is not being implemented by employers and effectively enforced so that there are consequences for employers’ failures to comply. In other words, there is a persisting gap between employment equity policy and practice. This gap presents difficulties in evaluating the content of employment equity policy, since it is not possible to evaluate a policy that is not implemented.
Reference
Impact of Canadian postsecondary education on occupational prestige of highly educated immigrants
This paper uses data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada covering the period 2000 to 2004 to assess short‐term employment and occupational attainment of recent immigrants who, despite having completed a university degree in their countries of origin, chose to obtain additional credentials at a Canadian postsecondary institution. The main finding of this paper is that occupational attainment of highly educated immigrants is affected by choice of postsecondary education in Canada regardless of differences in sociodemographic, premigration characteristics, and postmigration conditions. Four years after entry, immigrants worked in jobs with significantly lower occupational prestige than those held prior to migration. Immigrants who pursued a university education in Canada attained highest occupational outcomes when compared to nonparticipants and those who chose a community college pathway. Nevertheless, the majority of highly educated immigrants failed to gain entry to the professions.
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The labour market value of liberal arts and applied education programs: Evidence from British Columbia
In this article, labour market outcomes of British Columbia graduates from liberal arts and applied education programs are investigated by examining the 1996 cohort of baccalaureate graduates one year and fi ve years after graduation. We argue that the individual return to education has to be analyzed from a multi-dimensional perspective, in relation to initial educational and career goals of graduates who have anticipated both intellectual challenges and economic rewards from their investment in education. The study reveals differences in outcomes (i.e., employment, earnings) by program type, gender and age. Our main conclusion is that graduates from applied education programs experience a more rapid integration into the labour market as compared to graduates from liberal arts education programs. Although earning differences by program type and age either decrease or even disappear over time, earning differences by gender are enhanced fi ve years after graduation. Also, we conclude that graduates from applied education programs establish and accomplish more focused educational and career goals, while graduates from liberal education programs establish broader educational and career goals.
Reference
Transforming employer signaling in the talent marketplace
This chapter begins by describing how most employers traditionally communicate the qualities they seek, and how education and workforce systems take these into account. Next, it identifies three new types of employer signaling needed in today’s economy, and it examines promising examples of their use. Finally, the chapter makes a series of recommendations for how to improve on these promising practices, while also highlighting key challenges that will need to be overcome by both public- and private-sector stakeholders if improved employer signaling is to become a reality.
Reference
Precarious employment and people with disabilities
This interdisciplinary volume offers a multifaceted picture of precarious employment and the ways in which its principal features are reinforced or challenged by laws, policies, and labour market institutions, including trade unions and community organizations. Contributors develop more fully the concept of precarious employment and critique outmoded notions of standard and nonstandard employment. The product of a five-year Community-University Research Alliance, the volume aims to foster new social, statistical, legal, political, and economic understandings of precarious employment and to advance strategies for improving the quality and conditions of work and health.
Reference
Closing the gaps between skilled immigration and Canadian labor markets: Emerging policy issues and priorities
Although Canada’s immigration policy has long emphasized the selection of highly skilled immigrants—and since the 1990s, preferably those with high levels of post-secondary education—certain critical gaps have emerged between this skilled immigration emphasis and what actually happens in Canadian labor markets. Emphasis on education is usually described as necessary to meet the demand for skilled workers, projected to become more severe over time because of the requirements of an emerging knowledge economy. However, there are three major “gaps” between this skilled immigration and the actual role of immigrants in Canadian labor markets.