Modelling Adult Skills in OECD Countries

Abstract

Research in the social sciences has focused extensively on the relationship between family background, educational attainment and social destination, on the one hand, and on the processes of skills creation and skills use, on the other. This paper brings these two branches of the literature together by examining the correlation between a range of social factors. The methodology we adopt provides a comprehensive approach to the study of the channels through which literacy skills are acquired, taking into account the interrelation of family background, educational attainment, and the use of skills at work and at home. We use the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) dataset and apply a structural equation model (SEM). Our results show that family background and education play an important role in the configuration of adult skills and skill practices. Unequal family access to resources has a strong impact at later stages in life and strongly affects educational attainment and skills outcomes. Additionally, skills use has a positive and direct impact on adult skills.

Twenty-First Century Skills for All: Adults and Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments

“…A multivariate analysis using structural equations modelling (SEM) is performed to determine which factors affect the proficiency score in PS-TRE among the adults. As will be discussed below, this model, including its relevant factors, has been constructed in accordance to previous work by Scandurra and Calero (2017). The results show that, education and skills in all its levels (achieved level of formal education, skills used at home and at work, participation in adult education and training -AET-) decisively influence or mediate between other variables such as gender or age, in obtaining higher proficiency scores in PS-TRE.…”

“…Specifically, it explores the factors that are related to higher PS-TRE proficiency score. Given the absence of available models that analyse this issue, we started from research published by Scandurra and Calero (2017), in which the authors propose a structural equation model (SEM). Their work uses data from OECD's PIAAC to analyze socio-personal and educational variables that could influence adults' literacy level (Figure 2).…”

“…Calero et al 2016), and, specially, on PS-TRE (Hämäläinen et al 2015). This is due to biological reasons, such as aging and cognitive decline, and because of older adults' restricted access to education when they were young (Scandurra & Calero 2017). In relation to Gender, although in the PIAAC survey, men obtained higher scores in the three direct skills measurements (literacy, numeracy and PS-TRE, OECD, 2016), evidences have indicated that, after controlling for age and other social characteristics, the gender gap has a weakened influence on skills attainment (Scandurra & Calero 2017;Christl & Köppl-Turyna 2017).…”

The role of the OECD in the development of global policies for migrant education

“…Jerrim & Moss, 2019), modelling adult skills (i.e. Scandurra & Calero, 2017), building stronger school-family collaborations and many more. Approaching this in Bourdieu's terms, Sellar and Lingard (2014) point out the alignment of policy habitus across the global and national scales of educational governance.…”

Data on adult skills formation

“…The data contain 142 items for a total of 13,825 respondents aged between 26 and 55 years. These data were used in a recent article [1] based on the theoretical model proposed by Desjardins [2] and further developed in a recent paper [3]. The data were extracted from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), released in October 2013 and updated in March 2015.…”