Essential Skills Manual - Automotive Service Technician

SECTION 1 – INTRODUCTION
TECHNICAL SKILLS
INVENTORY (TSI)
Automotive Service
Technician
NOC 7321
Points to Consider
80% of learning in a trade happens in the workplace.
Every workplace in every province and territory has its own unique
learning culture.
Each journeyperson has their individual approach to guiding an
apprentice.
Every apprentice will write the same national exam.
Background
The road to a trade certification has many paths. For an apprentice who has
not taken the pre-apprentice training and Block/Period/Level in-school route,
it can be a difficult road to navigate. The primary focus appears to be
accumulating enough hours for eligibility to challenge the Interprovincial
(Red Seal) Exam.
The one tool that is available, if an apprentice chooses the
Block/Period/Level route, is the Provincial Log Book. This Log Book tracks
the Blocks, Tasks and Sub-tasks that an apprentice has learned in the
workplace. For apprentices who have chosen the route through which 100%
of their learning happens in the workplace, it can be difficult to “know what
you don’t know.” On this path, the apprentices never had a log book, so in
order to challenge, they have their journeyperson sign off on the blocks
when they have accumulated the hours required to challenge the IP
certification exam in their trade.
Provincial/territorial log books are developed from the National Occupational
Analysis (NOA) in a trade. Most apprentices are never introduced to the NOA
of their trade even though it is used to develop trades curriculum,
block/period/level tests and the IP exam.
Technical Skills Inventory (TSI)
The Technical Skills Inventory (TSI) is created from the NOA. It is a selfassessment
tool designed to give apprentices the opportunity to reflect on
their technical skills, identify skills gaps and make a plan to fill those gaps
before they challenge the IP exam.
The TSI also provides information for Essential Skills assessors to create
technical skills learning plans for individual apprentices and Essentials Skills
program instructors. These learning plans are used by the instructor and
the apprentice to select technical skills resources that support Essential
Skills learning programs.
Feature
The TSI “Group Summary” has formulas imbedded so data can be easily
extracted and manipulated for presentation in a pie chart format.
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