The limit of "21st century skills"

Faced with a changing world, uncertain, volatile, complex, ambiguous everyone seeks reassurance and imagines what the skills of a world that is being built might be. The knowledge economy implies an increasing manipulation, production and dissemination of data.

According to international or local agencies, researchers or consultants, the expressions 21st century skills, transversal skills, soft-skills or capabilities are used to describe this grail of knowledge that could help us transform ourselves along with our environment. But what are we talking about?

Reminder on what a skill is

"Competence is an ability to act based on the effective mobilization and combination of a variety of internal resources (knowledge, cognitive ability, metacognitive ability, relational know-how, procedural know-how, physiological resources, emotional resources, ...) and external resources (networks, software, data banks, documentary resources, members of the collective, means of the professional environment, ...) within a situation in a given context." (Jacques Tardif -2006).

What do we need for the 21st century. What knowledge will be essential?

The skills of the 21st century

In 2013, the UQAM cites compilations by Dutch researchers, Joke Voogt and Nathalie Pareja Roblin, on UNESCO, OECD, and European Union benchmarks, which they compare to other Australian and American benchmarks. They note two types of skills:

In 2015, the refinement continues and Paris Innovation Review based on the work of the OECD, the international expert grouping ATC21S or even the American organization P21, asserts that the expression would bring together three major blocks. Generic learning skills, innovation and creation skills and collaboration skills seem to stand out.

In 2016 Margarida Romero, a researcher in educational technology, meanwhile, identifies 5 compétences clés :

• critical thinking
• collaboration
• creativity " innovative solution design process "
• problem solving
• computational thinking " a set of cognitive and metacognitive strategies related to knowledge modeling "

Relating to the uses of technologies, Margarida Romero and Thérèse Lafferière identify five levels of technology use: passive consumption, interactive consumption, content creation, content co-creation, and, finally, participatory co-creation of shared knowledge within a learning community.

Cross-cutting competencies are another way of describing what can transfer from one situation to another.

The crosscutting skills guide identifies skills that are meant to be usable in all situations :

1. Communicating orally in the professional world
2. Communicating in writing in the professional world
3. Mobilize mathematical reasoning
4. Use digital tools and computing
5. Manage information
6. Organize in one's professional activity
7. Apply social codes inherent to the professional context
8. Work in groups and teams
9. Lifelong learning and training
10. Constructing one's career path
11. Performing one's activity according to established regulatory frameworks
12. Adapting one's action in the face of hazards and emergency situations

The difficulty of all these analyses by competence is precisely the entry by competences as shown by the review Knowledge, as early as 2013, competences do not exist in isolation, only exists " the social judgment of competence ". The entry by competences finally refers to a competitive vision of the world, precisely that which produces social, economic and climatological disorders. So what alternatives?

Behavioral skills (soft-skills)

In addition it is possible to emphasize the behavioral angle, managers and leaders are also interested in what will make the difference. In the book soft-skills, 15 skills are identified.

As the lists vary from author to author as in the " Handbook of leadership theory and practice" co-edited by Kurhana in 2010, there are over 210 traits reviewed to position oneself as a true leader, so much so that the certainty on which trait is the best fit is not very credible. Perhaps if skills and soft-skills are insufficient to describe what is coming is that they do not embrace the complexity of situations.

Three thoughts in counterpoint to the "skill" logic

Description is insufficient to successfully implement in organizations new ways of doing and thinking about action to adapt to the world that is being built. There are alternatives to the way of thinking its action in the world:

• The framework of capabilities is proposed by Amartya Sen. " Sen proposes to see development as an extension of substantive freedoms (or capabilities), in other words, an extension of the possibilities that the individual has to choose the life he or she wants to lead. Actual achievements, the ability to make choices, are essential.
  
  
• The expression identity capital refers to the idea of " accumulating on oneself ways of relating, of entering into relationships, of engaging in reciprocities " it is still a capital of ideas, opinion, knowledge-action that can be mobilized to bounce back, to project oneself whatever the circumstances. This capital is perceptible for all those who find themselves in difficulty in their professional orientation. It is distinct from social capital, which is made up of links and possibilities of action. This framework explains the way in which the individual is actually able to project himself into the world.
  
  
• The triadic causation model devised and methodically researched by psychologist Albert Bandura representing the interactions between behavior, personal factors, and the environment appears to be more robust because it embeds all the components of the interactions, without attempting to reduce the situation to a state at a given time.

These three reflections are important because they remind us of the importance of the reality of situations beyond referentials or descriptions. They suggest that we think about the world without pre-constructed categories and push us to start from the work and what individuals actually experience. The heart remains learning to live together.

Finally, we should also unlearn ! This is perhaps the most difficult " demanaging ", " deprogramming ", " demoralizing ". Revisit our opinions and beliefs!

Sources

2016 Margarida Romero 5 Key Skills for the 21st Century  https://margaridaromero.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/5c21-5-competences-cles-pour-le-21e-siecle/

2015 LAUGHTER - CTREQ 21st Century Skills  Integrating 21st Century Skills into Science and Technology Education  http://rire.ctreq.qc.ca/2015/09/competences-21e-siecle/

2015 Paris Innovation review http://parisinnovationreview.com/article/les-competences-du-xxie-siecle

2015 VTE Education Collaboration with Technology https://www.vteducation.org/fr/articles/collaboration-avec-les-technologies/usages-pedagogiques-des-tic-de-la-consommation-a-la

2013 OECD Competencies that Build Consensus  https://oce.uqam.ca/article/les-competences-qui-font-consensus/

2013 Competence a struggling folk-concept https://www.cairn.info/revue-savoirs-2013-3-page-39.htm

2012 The Cross-Cutting Skills Handbook https://www.cpformation.com/guide-competences-transversales/2010 Handbook of leadership theory and practice  https://hbr.org/product/handbook-of-leadership-theory-and-practice/12326-HBK-ENG

2011 Identity capital  http://4cristol.over-blog.com/article-capital-identitaire-85328179.html

2010 National Vocational Training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vocational_Qualification

2009 21st Century Skills and Competences for New Millennium Learners in OECD Countries    https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/paper/218525261154?site=fr

2004 Bandura : a psychology for the 21st century ? https://www.cairn.info/revue-savoirs-2004-5-page-9.htmP21 http://www.p21.org/index.php

1998 Amartya Sen's Capabilities  http://wp.unil.ch/bases/2013/07/amartya-sen-et-les-capabilites/

Thot Cursus - Training Managers for Uncertainty https://cursus.edu/9819/vuca-former-les-managers-a-lincertitude