Taxonomies of Problems and Generic Skills

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to define what we call “generic skills,” i.e. structured sets of intellectual actions, attitudes, values, and principles that are at the heart of human competencies. We will first examine the various systems that offer different yet convergent views regarding skills. One multi-viewpoint approach to the concept of skill first analyses the taxonomies of generic problems developed in software engineering. Generic problems correspond to human problem-solving skills as described in cognitive science. Another viewpoint is the concept of active meta-knowledge that situates skills in the realm of meta-cognition, i.e. as knowledge acting on other knowledge. A third viewpoint considers research in education that presents skills in the form of taxonomies of learning objectives in relation to cognitive, affective, social, or psychomotor domains.