What are skills?
A basic primer.
Note: Unconstrained Kids unpacks, translates, and integrates academic research and data about skill type and the science of skill building to support the improvement of PK-12 reading, writing, and mathematics. Despite important differences, all reading, writing, and math skills can be boiled down to two types–constrained and unconstrained. This post is a basic primer about skills. Like everything on this Substack, this post is a work-in-progress. I will make updates as needed. Citations are included at the end. Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome.
First posted: March 7, 2025
Last updated: April 21, 2026
Three Big Ideas
The limitations of the human brain create a biological imperative to act with limited effort. In other words, we must develop highly efficient, automatic skills.
Skill is the capacity to think and act in an organized way in a specific context. When we change the context, we change the skill.
Skills are gradually built and mastered through repeated practice in real activities across a variety of contexts. Skill building takes time, effort, and support.
We have a biological need for skill
It might surprise you to learn that the primary job of our brains is not thinking. It’s anticipating and adjusting energy use for our bodies (Barrett, 2020).1 Although adult human brains make up only about two percent of our body weight, they use about 20% of our energy. For a newborn it’s at least 65%, which explains why they sleep all the time (Bryson, 2019). Unlike other organs, our brain burns calories at a steady rate no matter what the rest of our body is doing. We have a strong biological incentive to efficiently use precious resources. This requires the ability to act with limited effort. In other words, we must develop skills.
Skill is essential for goal-oriented behavior
The human brain has limited capacity for actively holding information. A key aspect of skill development is automaticity. Highly developed, automatic skills enable us to take actions without the conscious awareness of the steps or control involved (Afflerbach et al., 2008). We use automatic actions all the time – from simple tasks like tying our shoes or chopping a vegetable to more complex activities like playing a musical instrument or driving a car. The development and refinement of automatic skills to support goal-oriented action is an essential part of human life.
Skill building takes time and effort
Skill is the capacity to think and act in an organized way in a specific context (Immordino-Yang & Fischer, 2010). This definition comes from developmental psychologists. It might be useful to think about skill as a rope.2
What we commonly refer to as “skill” generally is a collection of “mini-skills” (Khaneman, 2011). In other words, individual strands in a skill rope. For example, a basketball player has to successfully coordinate and integrate discrete running, jumping, and visual-motor skills to be successful on the court. As you read the written text in this paragraph, you are coordinating an array of skills all at once: basic executive function skills, word reading skills, language-based skills, and high-level thinking skills life inference and reasoning.
The initial phases of skill development involve active control, focus on achieving a goal, and explicit awareness of our actions. Simpler skills like learning the alphabet support the learning and development of more sophisticated and complex ones like word reading (Bailey et al., 2017). In other words, “skills beget skills” (Cunha & Heckman, 2007; Heckman, 2008).
Skills are hierarchical (they build on each other), interactive (they work together), and dynamic (they are used differently in various situations) (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Kim, 2020). Skill building is a cycle of learning, forgetting, re-learning, consolidation, and re-consolidation (Fischer & Bidell, 2006).
Skill building requires support
Skill ropes don’t weave themselves. Skill building is an active process. And skill building doesn’t happen alone. Children and youth need help to build skill ropes. Each of the strands needs to be woven by hand. Skill building happens best in stable, predictable environments. And because skill building is messy (building, collapse, rebuilding), kids need opportunity to weave tight, strong skill ropes through repeated practice (Khaneman, 2011).
Skills develop from the interactions between children’s personal characteristics (skills, interests, motivation, etc.), their environment, and the people and organizations they interact with (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Academic achievement is shaped by the opportunities children and youth have to develop skills within their personal systems of support (Byrnes & Miller, 2007). This at once describes the opportunity and challenge of helping children and youth develop skills to support reading, writing, and math achievement.
Context matters for skill building
Skill is the capacity to think and act in an organized way in a specific context. We don’t build general, abstract skills. We build skills in specific contexts. “Context” means many things at once: the physical environment, emotional state, social support, domain or subject area, and the specific task involved (Fischer & Immordino-Yang, 2002).
When we change the context, we change the skill.
Take running for example. From a skill perspective, there is no such thing as running. There is running on a treadmill, on a track, cross-country, or running on sand. These are not the same exact activity. Running up a hill is not the same as running down a hill. Running in bare feet is different from running in running shoes which is different yet from running in cleats (Mascolo, 2022).
A general skill for running “emerges” from learning to run in specific contexts. This means some aspects of running are transferable across contexts. But different contexts require developing specific abilities to be successful. A successful basketball player may draw upon skills that are used in other sports, but that does not mean they would be successful in football, soccer, or tennis.
When we change the context, we change the skill.
Children and youth develop proficiency in skills in specific contexts and mastery of skills across contexts. Developing complex skills that can be used across a variety of contexts requires time and effort (Fischer & Bidell, 2006). This means lots of practice. In a wide variety of settings. Children who have the opportunity to build, practice, and reinforce skills in a variety of contexts have an advantage over those who do not.
Skinny and fat skill ropes
The fibers in our skill ropes are not all the same. Some strands are easier to weave. Others are harder to handle and take more time and effort to twist together. For some skills, we all work with the same materials. These fibers of our skill rope are largely woven in school. These parts of our skill rope look most similar to other people’s ropes. But some strands are more special. We don’t all work with the same materials. These strands are woven from individual experiences and opportunities inside and outside of school settings.
This difference in access and opportunity means that our skill ropes look different. Some children and youth have skinny skill ropes. Others get to work with additional skill fibers and the supports to weave them. These kids get the chance to build strong, fat skill ropes.
A child or youth with a fatter skill rope is able to engage in deeper, more complex levels of reading comprehension without “breaking.” Conversely, a child with a skinny skill rope can only bear so much weight. If we want to help children and youth be successful in school and in life, we have to intentionally help them build thick, fat skill ropes. This is more likely to come from experiences inside and outside of school.
Check out the 14 Principles of Skill Building for even more about skill building:
14 principles of skill building
Note: Unconstrained Kids unpacks, translates, and integrates academic research and data about constrained and unconstrained skills for people that run, fund, and assist organizations that teach and serve kids. This post is part of a series that describes 14 key principles of skill building I identified from the
But wait, there’s more
If you’d like to learn more about constrained and unconstrained skills, check out these other posts:
Works cited
Afflerbach, P., Pearson, P. D., & Paris, S. G. (2008). Clarifying differences between reading skills and reading strategies. The Reading Teacher, 61(5), 364-373.
Bailey, D., Duncan, G. J., Odgers, C. L., & Yu, W. (2017). Persistence and fadeout in the impacts of child and adolescent interventions. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 10(1), 7-39.
Barrett, L. F. (2020). Seven and a half lessons about the brain. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (2006). The bioecological model of human development. In R. M. Lerner & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 793–828). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Bryson, B. (2019). The body: a guide for occupants. New York, Anchor Books.
Byrnes, J. P., & Miller, D. C. (2007). The relative importance of predictors of math and science achievement: An opportunity–propensity analysis. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32(4), 599-629.
Cantor, P., Osher, D., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2021). Malleability, plasticity, and individuality: How children learn and develop in context. In P. Cantor & D. Osher (Eds.), The science of learning and development: Enhancing the lives of all young people (pp. 3-54). New York: Routledge.
Cunha, F., & Heckman, J. (2007). The technology of skill formation. American Economic Review, 97(2), 31-47.
Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (2006). Dynamic Development of Action and Thought. In R. M. Lerner & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (pp. 313–399). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Fischer, K.W. & Immordino-Yang, M.H. (2002). Cognitive development and education: From dynamic general structure to specific learning and teaching. In E. Lagemann (Ed.), Traditions of scholarship in education. Chicago: Spencer Foundation.
Heckman, J. J. (2008). Schools, skills, and synapses. Economic Inquiry, 46(3), 289-324.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Fischer, K. W. (2010). Neuroscience bases of learning. In V. G. Aukrust (Ed.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd Edition, pp. 310–316). Elsevier.
Khaneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kim, Y. S. G. (2020). Hierarchical and dynamic relations of language and cognitive skills to reading comprehension: Testing the direct and indirect effects model of reading (DIER). Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(4), 667.
Mascolo, M. (2022, July 20). Dynamic skill theory and Piaget's theory: Some basics [Video]. YouTube. Video link.
This job has a name – allostasis.
This masterful metaphor comes from the FrameWorks Institute.