Study On The Current Situation Of Education And Cultivating Pattern Of Key Skills Of Higher Vocational Students

The21st century is the era of "boundaryless career" and the era of lifelong learning. The formeremphasizes mobility and transferability; the latter emphasizes sustainable developmentthroughout lifetime. The proposal and the development of key skills will undoubtedly become animportant means to meet the requirements mentioned above. Key skills are the strategic choice inthe complicated situation. Based on the status and characteristics of higher vocational colleges,the development of key skills of their students is more important in the current situation.This study presents and analysis the current situation of the level of key skills of the students inhigher vocational colleges and the cultivation of key skills of higher vocational colleges throughmeasurements, questionnaires and interviews; introduce and evaluate the external strategy ofusing ICT to develop key skills; create a new pattern to cultivate key skills adapting to thecurrent situation of development of higher vocational colleges in our country based on theresearch above. The main conclusions and results of the study are as follows:a) The development of different key skills of students in higher vocational colleges is notbalanced and there are significant differences among different key skills, which indescending order of the level of development is Communication, Working with Others,Self-improvement and Self-management, Information Gathering and Processing, ProblemSolving. The overall level of key skills of students in higher vocational colleges hassignificant differences in gender, grade, origin of students, whether single child or not,whether serving as student leaders or not and many other demographic variables. That is tosay indirectly the development of key skills has individual differences.b) Current situation of cultivation through investigation research reveals the existing problems,reflects the underlying trend and contains enlightenment of further development, whichspecifically includes that the relevant government departments lack co-ordination andcooperation, which contributes the lack of uniformity and authority of certification of keyskills; penetrating key skills in specialized courses and general courses is a trend expected byteachers and students and also a trend which should be occurred; practical activity is one ofthe effective ways to enhance key skills. The cultivation of key skills in higher vocationalcolleges have achieved some accomplishments in curriculum, instruction, assessment,practical activities, teacher training, etc., but the depth and intensity in all aspects of theimplementation is still inadequate.c) Using ICT is an important trend and one of the effective strategies in cultivating key skills in foreign countries, which has value and significance for higher vocational colleges in China tolearn from.d) Based on the research results above, this study describes the cultivation system of the linkageof multi-subject of key skills at macroscopic level; constructs a new pattern of cultivatingkey skills for higher vocational colleges aiming at fully embodying flexibility, autonomy andpersonalization at mid-scopic level. That is the pattern which can be described as"dual-platform interacting, comprehensive and hierarchical cultivation", which uses virtualand reality platform as a support; self-selection as mechanism; development of practicalactivities as major task; penetrating learning as potential power; transformation of teachingmethods and evaluation methods as foundation.