IASL's Reviews of Professional Materials

Mueller, Jon. Assessing Critical Skills. Columbus (OH): Linworth Publishing, 2009 132pp. ISBN 1-58683-282-4 USD 44.95

The need to assess critical skills has become an imperative in education today.  The author presents this work on the premise that developing a set of critical skills in students will best prepare them for school, work, and life.  His focus is to define skills that one values, construct an assessment for those skills, develop opportunities for students, help students work through the skills, and provide evidence for each assessment so that they can apply the skills to authentic situations.

The author explains in detail the four critical skills he feels are necessary for students:

Skills related to interacting with others in the world --Communication, Collaborative, Leadership, Interpersonal

Skills related to thinking about the world --Logic/Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, Analytical, Evaluation, Integration

Skills related to adapting to the world
--Self Assessment, Goal Setting, Self Management, Metacognative, Study/Learning

Skills related to solving problems in the world --Problem Solving, Information Literacy, Creative/Innovative, Technical

The author then directs the focus of the rest of the work to the relevance these critical skills have on school work and life.  The work is well developed and written in layman's terms.  It clearly defines concepts and applications.  Diagrams and examples are used throughout the work to clarify the concepts.  The work stresses quality over quantity.

HIGHLY recommended.

Reviewed by Peter Genco, Library Consultant, Erie, PA, USA & Past President of IASL.

Assessing Critical Skills Buy the book today

Check out the comments on LibraryThing

Last updated 3 March 2009 (KSB)