Higher Education and Non-Cognitive Skill Development: Why, What and How?

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Background

As society is becoming more dynamic and unpredictable, preparing graduates for the workplace is today a challenge to higher education. It is widely acknowledged that students will need to acquire more than knowledge to navigate this complex world. In this regard, international organizations, such as the OECD or the European Union, highlight the need to promote certain skills and behaviors through educational models based on the development of competencies. It is argued that, besides subject-specific knowledge, students will need critical thinking, creativity, innovation, and resilience, together with empathy, a sense of responsibility, and the ability to collaborate with others. Accordingly, higher education institutions across the world may need to incorporate these non-cognitive skills into existing curricula and pedagogy.

Although the evidence seems to indicate that higher education has the potential to promote such skills among students, there is a scarce critical reflection on what these competency-based educational models entail and little consensus on what should be measured and how. Furthermore, few studies elaborate specifically on which specific learning environments shape such skills.

The goals of this research topic are diverse:

1) We aim to collect theoretical and empirical perspectives on why non-cognitive skills are relevant nowadays, and on the different strategies that can be carried out for measuring these skills.

2) Collect evidence on higher educational contexts where these skills are effectively promoted, and of the kind of balances that can be reached between student cognitive and non-cognitive development.

3) The analysis of non-cognitive skill development, especially in relation to creativity and innovation, has so far been particularly focused on STEM education, and we aim to disseminate research about student non-cognitive development in other disciplines of studies, such as social sciences and humanities.

4) Finally, we welcome studies that adopt an intersectional approach contemplating students’ sexual orientation, ethnic culture, and socioeconomic variables to analyze competency-based models in the higher education context.

We expect forward-looking proposals meant to reflect upon the current challenges of competence-based models in higher education. Empirical contributions, systematic literature reviews, and meta-analyses are welcome, as well as multidisciplinary and translational research.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Critical reflections on competency-based models in higher education. 
• Empirical evidence of the impact of different pedagogical practices on the non-cognitive development of higher education students; a combination of results from different sources of data are particularly welcome, such as mixed methods merging quantitative approaches with qualitative approaches.
• Evidence on the impact of competency-based models on the graduate personal and professional development.
• Exploration of needs in terms of university teacher training.

This Research Topic would not have been possible without Paula Alvarez Huerta, who was instrumental in the development of this Research Topic.

Keywords: Higher education, cognitive skill development

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