Building Durable Skills into Middle School Career Exploration
As the needs of the modern workforce evolve at an unprecedented rate, durable, or “soft,” skills are often eclipsing demand for sought-after technical skills in high-demand jobs across industry sectors, geography, and educational level.
Through research, collaboration, and feedback from more than 800 educators, workforce professionals, industry leaders, and policymakers, America Succeeds—a leading educational policy and advocacy group—has developed Durable Skills and the Durable Skills Advantage Framework to provide a common language for the most in-demand durable skills. With 85% of career success being dependent on durable skills, this framework bridges the gap between the skills students are taught in school and evolving workforce needs.
To help students build these skills, Edmentum has partnered with America Succeeds to incorporate durable skills, as defined by the Durable Skills Advantage Framework, into our new middle school career exploration courses.
These skills are divided into 10 competencies:
- Communication
- Leadership
- Metacognition
- Critical Thinking
- Collaboration
- Character
- Creativity
- Growth Mindset
- Mindfulness
- Fortitude
The inclusion of durable skills in our middle school content provide learning opportunities and empower students to say things that matter to employers, such as:
- I can manage my time.
- I am a good communicator.
- I am comfortable with problem solving.
- I can adapt.
- I know how to find solid information, think about it critically, and make good decisions.
- I can apply my knowledge and collaborate with a team.
Not only will they be able to say these, but they will have practiced them.
What This Looks Like in Action
All 10 durable skills competencies are present across our middle school career-focused electives; however, each individual course focuses on the three to five competencies and subskills that best align with its subject matter, themes, and goals.
Specifically, we’ve integrated durable skills into the activities and discussion sections of each course—building vocabulary and practice around the ways learners interact with and think about the course information.
The objectives and introduction section of each activity clearly states the durable skills covered in developmentally appropriate language.
The durable skills covered in Exploring College and Careers, for example, are listed in the final paragraph.
Tasks encourage students to apply the information in the lesson in ways that demonstrate comprehension, the ability to generalize and apply knowledge, and real-world usage of information.
This task from Exploring College and Careers emphasizes leadership skills, such as directing efforts and delivering results.
This task from Exploring College and Careers emphasizes critical thinking (e.g., setting goals and identifying action steps) and fortitude (e.g., identifying needs and wants).
To help the learner think more deeply about the durable skills relevant to the lesson, the Connect It, or summary, section connects to the identified durable skills competencies and asks reflective questions to help students apply their learning to something relevant to them.
Example taken from Exploring College and Careers.
Finally, discussions incorporate durable skills into questions that encourage students to take a position or have perspective.
In this example from Exploring College and Careers, the first two questions emphasize creativity and communication. The next question emphasizes leadership and fortitude. The final two questions emphasize metacognition and a growth mindset.
Edmentum is committed to connecting more students to bright futures with high-quality career-connected learning programs. Our new middle school electives give students a jump start to a future where they don’t just graduate—they thrive.
Learn more about durable skills and our middle school career and technical education courses.