Conceptualisation of University Students’ Civic Transversal Competence

Abstract

Education plays a key role in promoting fundamental values, citizens’ rights and responsibilities as well as social inclusion, in particularly so by reducing hostility towards vulnerable social groups. Therefore, all stages of education, including higher education, are important in the development of civic transversal competence. To ensure sustainable, qualitative, modern, and competitive higher education, the education facilitating the productive involvement of students in civil society and, consequently, their competitiveness in the labour market is a topical issue in the context of Latvia too. In keeping with this rationale, in January 2020, the University of Latvia started the implementation of the first round of the research “Assessment of Competences of Higher Education Students and Dynamics of Their Development in the Study Period” with the study of students’ civic transversal competence as its part. The paper aims to conceptualize students’ civic transversal competence, to determine its criteria and their indicators at different levels of higher education. Using the qualitative data processing program NVivo 12.0, there was carried out an analysis of 20 recent studies and higher education documents (2014-2020), as well as examples of good practice. The result is a descriptive matrix for civic transversal competence assessment, which can be used as a basis for the development of assessment tools.