ASTD Working to Promote International Standards for Education and Training

ASTD has joined with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to form a U.S. Technical Advisory Group (US/TAG) to coordinate U.S. input to a newly formed International Organization for Standardization (ISO) technical committee (ISO/TC 232) on Educational Services. The new ISO committee met for the first time on March 26-27, 2007, in Berlin, Germany, and discussed needs for global standardization in the fields of learning, education (particularly vocational education) and training.

Representatives from ASTD, ANSI, and other organizations participating on the newly formed US/TAG attended the ISO meeting. U.S. participation in the activity is viewed as extremely important. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. is the largest exporter of educational services in the world, and educational services make up the United States' fifth largest service export. Doug Lynch, Head of the U.S. delegation to the ISO meeting, stated, "As a delegation we were really successful in guiding everyone to consensus and are now well-positioned for the next round."

The US/TAG is responsible for coordinating development of consensus U.S. positions regarding all technical matters under consideration within the new ISO Technical Committee. Members are expected to come to agreement on topics such as the methods and criteria for monitoring training or education programs; standards for quality testing; curriculum requirements; teacher and instructor requirements; standards related to knowledge acquisition and communication methods and techniques; and methods and criteria by which to measure customer satisfaction with learning programs.

In today's knowledge economy, having the right set of skills and training is an economic and competitive necessity. Now more than ever, a key factor in the competitiveness of an organization is whether its workforce has embraced lifelong learning and vocational training, so that it can compete in a rapidly changing environment. The work of ISO/TC 232 is intended to help organizations, individuals, and countries determine the most suitable training and development programs for their workforce; which programs are the most effective; how to accurately measure learning results; and how to standardize the quality of programs. Through Technical Committees organized to develop standards for each field, ISO publishes international standards for each profession, with the goal of benefiting both organizations and society. Its goal is to promote the development of standards for industries to foster cooperation and trade among participating countries (currently at 157).

Consensus on standards within ISO/TC 232 is expected to be finalized by 2010.