EDUCATION FOR LIFE AND WORK - Hewlett Foundation

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century
30 EDUCATION FOR LIFE AND WORK
• Extroversion (warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement
seeking, positive emotions)
• Openness to experience (fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas,
values)
To the facets of the neuroticism/emotional stability factor proposed
by Costa and McCrae (1992) we added “core self-evaluation,” based on a
proposal by Judge and Bono (2001). This additional proposed construct is
based on empirical findings of correlations between measures of self-esteem,
generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, 3 and emotional stability. Almlund
et al. (2011) also found that self-esteem and locus of control are related to
emotional stability.
The five major factors provided a small number of research-based constructs
onto which various terms for 21st century skills could be mapped.
The facets helped to define the range of skills and behaviors encompassed
within each major factor to serve as a point of comparison with the various
21st century skills.
Formative Latent Variables: Occupational Skills and Other Examples
Unlike reflective latent variables that are discovered, formative latent
variables are constructed. Relationships between variables do not constrain
the development of formative latent variables; rather, formative latent variables
can be whatever a person or community defines them to be. Classic
examples appear in economics, such as the consumer price index; in health,
such as the stress index; and in business research, such as leadership or positive
experience with a product (Jarvis, Mackenzie, and Podsakoff, 2003).
One set of formative latent variables that may be particularly relevant
for defining 21st century competencies was identified through expert consensus
in the O*NET project (Peterson et al., 1999). O*NET is a large
database of information on 965 occupations that is organized around a
“content model,” which describes occupations along several dimensions,
including worker characteristics (abilities, interests, work values, and work
styles) and requirements (skills, knowledge, and education). The skills included
in the O*NET content model are similar to those in current lists of
21st century lists, as shown in Table 2-1.
3
In differential psychology, locus of control refers to the extent to which individuals believe
that they can control their own lives (an internal locus of control) or that outside influences
control what happens (an external locus of control), as measured by the Rotter scale (Rotter,
1990). The “locus of control” construct has been criticized as being too general, and most
researchers currently differentiate beliefs about causality as delineated in attribution theory.
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