21ST CENTURY SKILLS AND DIGITAL SKILLS, ARE ONE AND THE SAME THING?

Abstract

The need to prepare the next generation for the labour market and for new social contexts requires that higher education (ES) reorganizes its learning and training offers to reflect this growing demand. In order to do this, higher education institutions (HEIs) must face certain challenges in identifying and understanding the characteristics and needs of the new generation of students. Over the last few decades, reference models on transversal competences (soft skills) have been established, classifying them under these nomenclatures: instrumental, interpersonal and systemic. However, such classifications do not always consider the temporal and socioeconomic contexts of such references. With the aim of designing a more adequate offer of formative education, we have developed a study based on the systematization of the literature encompassing reference models, categorization and terminology of competences skills and aptitudes. Our study intends to analyses to what extent classification systems (at least in some cases) refer to equal, different or complementary competences in each one. An asymmetry remains evident between the needs for skills enabling full participation in the present digital society and the educational development that HEIs offer convergent with these same needs. Such an asymmetry not only exists at the professional level, but also affects the behavioral, emotional, social, and cultural capacities. Moreover, unlike digital skills, 21st century skills are not necessarily underpinned solely by digital technologies. If two decades ago the categorization terminology were limited to instrumental, interpersonal and systemic skills, the research in this area would have developed more detailed frameworks that do not separate 21st century skills from digital skills, but instead a more comprehensive set would have been established: foundational or fundamental, emancipatory and humanistic, social and emotional skills to learn, create and innovate, and artistic skills. In addition, the discussion focuses on students' abilities to acquire and develop these new skills in an academic and professional context while disregarding the teacher's capacities to conduct and integrate those skills in transversal and transdisciplinary approaches in teaching and learning.