How are adult skills acquired? Three comparative essays based on PIAAC

This thesis deals with how adult skills are acquired. The proxies of adult skills used throughout the thesis are extracted from the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Skills (PIAAC), a survey coordinated by the OECD. The thesis is composed of three chapters. The first research study is,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Scandurra, Rosario Ivano
Tipo de recurso: tesis doctoral
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:CBUC, CESCA
Repositorio:TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red
OAI Identifier:oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/398151
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10803/398151
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Competències professionals
Cualificaciones profesionales
Vocational qualifications
Educació
Educación
Education
Igualtat d'oportunitats educatives
Igualdad de oportunidades en la enseñanza
Educational equalization
Models d'equacions estructurals
Modelos de ecuaciones estructurales
Structural equation modeling
Ciències Jurídiques, Econòmiques i Socials
316
Descripción
Sumario:This thesis deals with how adult skills are acquired. The proxies of adult skills used throughout the thesis are extracted from the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Skills (PIAAC), a survey coordinated by the OECD. The thesis is composed of three chapters. The first research study is, “A comparative analysis of skills formation.” It aims at providing an overview of how OECD countries differ in the configuration of skills. It explores whether there are any similarities or divergences between OECD countries and how life course factors contribute to the diverging education and training models. A decomposition analysis using Shapley rule was applied and then, the results were clustered. Findings show diverging models of skills formation which are compatible with the literature of education and training models. The second research study, “An integral model of adult skills in OECD countries” examines whether it is possible to identify a model of adult skills acquisition which is common for the OECD countries. Additionally, it estimates how diverse life course factors intervene in the formation of adult skills. Results provide an overall model of configuration of skills acquisition and show how unequal access to education affects skills at a later stage in life. Moreover, skills practices in the workplace and in daily life have a consistent impact on skills. The third study, “How different education and training systems configure adult skills? A comparative analysis of five OECD countries using structural equation modelling” analyses whether there are differences between diverse education and training models in the acquisition of adult skills. Based on the framework of the second study, this work delves deeper into the differences between some country specific models’, which are defined in the comparative education literature as a diverging type of skills formation. These three pieces of research are closely connected and might be considered in aggregate terms as they provide an overall picture of the research objective. The points of connections are basically three: a) the analysis of a common measure of educational outcomes; b) an assessment of a group of countries (e.g. OECD); c) a special attention to intergenerational inequality transmission and to diverse sources of inequality; d) the identification of the internal consistencies and divergences between the group of countries analysed in the first and third studies. The implications of this research are two-fold. First, it illustrates with different statistical techniques the configuration of adult skills by using a newly implemented dataset. Second, it proposes a comprehensive theoretical model of adult skills acquisition, providing evidence on the impact of diverse life-course factors.