Rethinking Skill Certification

There are endless ways to develop skills, through formal education, work experience, volunteering, advice from mentors, or self-directed professional development.

The most valuable skills don’t result from just one of these experiences — it’s about how they work together.

The challenge is skill certification is often integrated with skill development. Consider the structure of accredited learning. An instructor designs and teaches a course, and upon completion of the course individual’s are assessed whether they meet the learning outcomes of the course. The integrated model of skill development and certification constrains both the capacity and innovation of skill development.

To overcome this, a second model of skill certification has emerged. In this model, skill development and skill certification are decoupled. An example of decoupled certification is a driver’s license. Certifying an individual’s skill to drive a car is fully decoupled from how they developed the skill to drive. As a result, the government solely focuses on defining and testing whether a candidate possess the skill to be certified to drive a car. In contrast, people have an unlimited number of pathways to develop their skill, from family and friends to professional instruction.

Today, this decoupled skills certification model has been adopted by a range of professional fields and skilled trades. One of the benefits of decoupling skill development from skill certification is the potential to unlock both diverse forms of skill development, including certified, non-certified and informal, and innovative approaches to skill development.

The Trusted Skills professional certification model adopts decoupled skill certification, designed to unlock the potential of Calgary’s vast skill development system.