As trends such as globalization and advances in artificial intelligence change the demands of the labor market and transform societies and everyday life, people need to rely even more on their uniquely (so far) human capacity for creativity, responsibility, and the ability to “learn to learn” throughout their lives. Social and emotional skills, such as empathy, self-awareness, respect for others, and the ability to communicate, are becoming more important as our lives become more ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse. This chapter summarizes the skills models provided by the NextSkills study and shows how the categories for Future Skills developed in the study can be used to compare other Future Skill approaches. It gives an overview of 13 Future Skills studies and analyses the role digital literacies play within these studies.

1 Introduction: Future Skills as Guiding Principles for Future Higher Education

With the increasing flexibility of biographies, the responsibility of individuals to develop individual competence strategies for their own lives is growing. Professional and private spheres of life are becoming increasingly blurred and intertwined. In terms of education, we can diagnose a real “drift to self-organization” (Ehlers, 2020, p. 122). This is characterized by a de-standardization of educational pathways, in which the fit between informal and formal educational opportunities and professional and private requirements must more and more be prioritized by the students themselves and translated into individual learning and action strategies that are increasingly aimed at acquiring “Future Skills”. Higher Education Institutions across the globe are faced with the challenge of responding to this.

Future Skills are competences of a specific nature (Agentur Q, 2021; Ehlers, 2020). For example, if the task is to develop a solution to a new problem, often the ability to approach the problem from different perspectives, the flexibility and openness to accept several pathways to a solution, and interdisciplinarity are important. In a major study conducted between 2017 and 2020, called the NextSkills study (Ehlers, 2020), we decided to introduce labels for these competence areas and combine several competences into one “Future Skill” profile—in this case with the label “design-thinking competence” (Ehlers, 2020). If, for example, another area involves dealing with increasingly networked, often multiple, unclear, and complex organizational roles and contexts at work—or also privately when, e.g. operating in very widely differentiated patchwork and elective family constellations—skills such as dealing with ambiguity, acting in uncertain situations, and dealing with heterogeneity are important. These skills are also combined into one label in the NextSkills study, called “ambiguity competence”. We termed these labels Future Skills Profiles in the NextSkills study (Ehlers, 2020); the study lists 17 such Future Skills Profiles.

In the last five years—since 2017 with the publication of the first (explicit) Future Skills study—the interest in Future Skills for the field of academic education has multiplied and is reshaping the discussion about key competences.

The reasons are diverse and predominantly lie in societal megatrends such as digitalization, demographic change, and the development of an educational society (Ehlers, 2020). They lead to an increasing importance of Future Skills as precisely those abilities that allow individuals either to shape or to regain the ability to shape their own lives and individual social contexts in a world of constant change and in future emergent—i.e., unpredictable—and rapidly changing situations. “Future Skills” are therefore about those competencies that are of particular importance for the ability to act in such future situations, which, due to their rapid changes, repeatedly produce new, complex problem situations, for which preparation through education and training in a traditional sense (knowledge transfer in a preparational mode) is no longer effective. Numerous Future Skills studies are now available.Footnote 1 However, they are very heterogeneous both in their understanding of what Future Skills are and in the methodological design used to identify them. One example is the formulation of “virtual leadership” as well as “leadership skills” in one and the same study (Dettmers & Jochmann, 2021) and “adapting leadership culture” (Hays & ibe, 2017) as well as “leadership skills” (Agentur Q, 2021) in other studies—it remains unclear whether these are referring to the same meaning or in what way, if any, they are nuanced differently. Also, the approaches and the terms used are often not based in education theory and thus are not easily transferable to any learning design.

Another challenge is that so far, there is no conceptual framework for Future Skills available. Therefore, the different approaches cannot be compared easily. This refers both to the terminology used for individual Future Skills as well as to a comparative presentation of the scope of the respective approaches. The result is a design vacuum regarding support processes and the associated changes in learning culture, both in universities and other educational settings or places of learning, such as the workplace or for continuing education. Where can teachers and learners find orientation and how can they be supported in understanding how the terms and concepts of one approach relate to those of another?

This describes the problem addressed in this article: the variety of approaches and concepts currently available is not easily comparable. The scope of approaches and studies is not transparent and thus not accessible for orientation in the field of higher education. Therefore, we develop a conceptual framework which allows a comparison of Future Skills approaches and test it with the Future Skills approaches available in the German-speaking area since 2016. We will base the conceptual framework on the NextSkills study which will be explained and will use its categories to classify the Future Skills listed in the selected approaches.

The chapter is making five steps: first, a brief overview of the conceptual genesis of the term Future Skills is provided (Sect. 2.2). This is followed by a brief summary of the state of research on Future Skills with regard to its implementation in higher education (Sect. 2.3). In Sect. 2.4, the research design used to identify the 17 Future Skills profiles of the NextSkills study is described. In addition, the understanding of competences and the internal structure of the NextSkills model are presented. In a final section—Sect. 2.5—the Future Skills lists of the 12 existing Future Skills studies in German-speaking countries since 2016 are analyzed and matched according to the 17 profiles.

2 State of Play for Future Skills in Higher Education: A Term with a Short History but an Enormous Career

Research and practice on Future Skills for higher education are booming. The different conceptualizations and understandings that are emerging in the related discussion can be roughly divided into two discussion streams. On the one hand, there is a general discussion of, first, vocational and then, later on, also specific higher education-related concepts set in a field of tension between a primarily “mimetic” (based on learning as imitation) and a “transformative” (based on learning as transformation and change) paradigm. The latter, which in Germany found its origin in 1974 with Dieter Mertens and his concept of key qualifications (“Schlüsselqualifikationen”), today is still followed internationally with continuing intensity in research works on graduate attributes. On the other hand—emerging since the 2000s—there is the discussion on the topic of Future Skills or 21st Century Skills.

The increasing relevance is reflected in the sharp rise in the number of publications on the topic over the last 15 years (see Fig. 2.1 and Ehlers, 2020 for more details).

Fig. 2.1
A line graph of frequency of search term from January 2009 till January 2023. Key competencies curve moves horizontally at approximately 10. Future skills and digital skills overlap and have an increasing trend. Twenty first century skills has a mild increase towards the end. All lines fluctuate.

Search term frequency in comparison (Google trends search from January 2023)

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In the background of the debate on Future Skills there is an ongoing discourse about employability, which has put the discussion about the educational function of higher education on the agenda of higher education policy, especially since the Bologna reform in Europe in the mid-nineties of last century.Footnote 2 While popular with policy, employability as a concept is discussed quite controversially amongst educational professionals. Alesi and Teichler (2013, p. 35) conclude that the term “employability” is unfortunate in several respects, as it primarily addresses the “exchange dimension” (income, position, etc.), whereas the Bologna Process is primarily concerned with the “use dimension” of higher education (autonomy, etc.) and the dimension of employment would be only a supplement (Schubarth & Speck, 2014). After its introduction in 1974 through Mertens, the term “key competences” has established itself as main concept since the 1990s (Enderle et al., 2021). Conceptually, Future Skills is based on a broad understanding of competences and often relates to a specific selection of competences, usually summarized in frameworks, many of them analyzed in this chapter.

2.1 Concept

From a conceptual point of view, Future Skills represent a selection of action competences that are important for the future (Ehlers, 2020). These, in turn, are defined as “dispositions for action” that are based on knowledge, enabled by abilities, and are motivated by values and attitudes (Heyse & Erpenbeck, 2009). Following these theoretical foundations, Future Skills can be defined as competences that enable individuals to solve complex problems in a self-organized manner in highly demanding contexts (see Sect. 2.3 for a more detailed definition). The starting point for the enormous career of the concept of Future Skills is the diagnosis that current concepts of higher education do not confront the pressing challenges of our societies with convincing concepts for the future (Hippler, 2016; Kummert, 2017)—neither the sustainable design of our environment nor the related social or economic challenges.

2.2 Research

The importance of Future Skills can be stated in Germany specifically for the field of university graduates (Ehlers, 2020; Enderle et al., 2021; Huber, 2016, p. 106, 2019, p. 157; Wild et al., 2018, p. 274) as well as for professional development (Agentur Q, 2021; Dettmers & Jochmann, 2021; Stifterverband & McKinsey, 2018), also internationally (Ashoka Deutschland & McKinsey, 2018; McKinsey Global Institute, 2017; OECD, 2018; World Economic Forum, 2020). Currently, there are 13 Future Skills studies for the German-speaking area since 2016 and at least 37 international studies. As a more general trend, Future Skills concepts include digital competences but place a stronger emphasis on more transversal competences. There are only few and non-systematic data on the current state of implementation of Future Skills in higher education. The reasons for lack of implementation data can be attributed to the complex nature of measuring Future Skills (e.g., creativity or ethical competence) and to the low level of maturity of the young and still developing empirical research in the field.

Despite insufficient measurement methods, the international research literature describes in detail, and with only a few discrepancies, that universities are not sufficiently geared to Future Skills. In the U.S. literature, the gap between skills demanded by the labor market and those taught in higher education institutions is supported by a number of empirical studies (Aasheim et al., 2009; Cox et al., 2013; Daud et al., 2011; Finch et al., 2013; Koppi et al., 2009) which identified that employers placed the most importance on “soft skills”—academic reputation was ranked as least important. Rigby et al. (2009, p. 8) also speak of an “implementation gap” in this context, while Osmani et al. (2015, p. 367) refer to it as a “broad mismatch”. According to Tran (2015), university graduates are poorly prepared for “Life Skills” because curricula are often outdated or irrelevant. Accordingly, it can be stated that there is a general deficit in the curricula of universities to align them with the promotion of competences that are particularly relevant to Future Skills.

2.3 Meaning

The terminology for Future Skills has been subject to a conceptually differentiated development within the last 20 years. In Germany, they have developed from “key qualifications” in the field of vocational training (Mertens, 1974) to “key competencies” also for higher education. This took place through an intensive debate within the 1990s to further concepts around core and key skills, which Echterhoff (2014) traces in detail. In an international research review, Treleaven and Voola (2008) list eleven different terms and approaches from different authors: key skills, key competences, transferable skills, graduate attributes, employability skills (Curtis & McKenzie, 2001), soft skills (Freeman et al., 2008; Precision Consultancy, 2007); graduate capabilities (Bowden et al., 2000); generic graduate attributes (Bowden et al., 2000; Ginns & Barrie, 2004); professional skills, personal transferable skills (Drummond et al., 1998); generic competences (Treleaven & Voola, 2008; Tuning Project, 2008). Rigby et al. (2009) summarize these synonymously used terms under the umbrella term “graduate skills”. They define these as skills that are not only relevant for professional development, but above all focus on personal development and the holistic education of the individual to become an engaged member of society (Rigby et al., 2009, p. 4).

A meta-analysis of more than 50 existing approaches to Future Skills by Ehlers (2020) shows that they usually consist of skills lists which are evaluated as important and meaningful. However, the approaches are mostly not based on sound competence-theoretical approaches (Clanchy & Ballard, 1995; Ehlers, 2020; Ginns & Barrie, 2004; Sin & Reid, 2005). Moreover, there is no empirical or conceptual modeling that would allow to critically classify the models in terms of their substance and scope. From the perspective of educational science, the character of arbitrariness can be stated for many of the approaches.

This paper aims at closing this currently existing orientation gap. For this purpose, a categorical framework is constructed, by means of which existing approaches can be divided into larger and well-defined fields of competence.

3 Which Future Skills Are Relevant for Future Higher Education: the NextSkills Study

The state of play shows that Future Skills are highly relevant for the future of higher education institutions, both curricular-wise and strategically for enabling them to shape attractive programs for students. In order to find a starting point for curricular integration and for strategic initiatives, institutions and educational professionals need to answer the question: which is a suitable Future Skills framework for their purposes? However, currently there is no universal framework to compare Future Skills studies and the skills listed in them.

The NextSkills study (Ehlers, 2020; Ehlers & Kellermann, 2019) provides Future Skills profiles which can serve as a categorical framework for the first time. It was developed from an extensive inventory of future relevant skills, which were collected from in-depth interviews and grouped into thematic fields, so-called Future Skills profiles. The Future Skills profiles contain a number of so-called “reference competences”. The profiles serve as a reference framework which enables comparing the skill lists of existing Future Skills approaches. The following section will describe the methodological design used to develop the 17 Future Skills profiles, elaborate on the underlying theoretical foundation used, and describe each Future Skills profile in detail.

Research Methodology of the NextSkills Study

The research study NextSkills was conducted between 2017 and 2020. It aimed to analyze which skills are needed for a productive and proactive design of future life and work from the perspective of organizations and their members. In addition, the study analyzes requirements for higher education institutions. To this end, Future Skills profiles were identified in a multi-step research process using a multi-method design. In a first step, so-called Future Organizations were identified through a criteria-led landscape analysis which served as the empirical field. The selection process took place in 2015 as part of a competition in which over 8,500 partner organizations were contacted and given the opportunity to submit their HR development concepts. 124 organizations took part in the competition and were evaluated in a criteria-supported expert rating by 15 experts. 17 organizations were finally included in an in-depth interview study between December 2016 and June 2017. Participants in the interviews were the staff responsible for the Future Organizations. 20 participants took part in 17 in-depth interviews, resulting in approximately 700 min of qualitative interview material. An inventory of Future Skill descriptions was extracted from the material, as well as skill constructs and clusters. In order to further refine and validate the qualitatively acquired results, a Delphi study was conducted with an international panel of experts. The Delphi study included two rounds of consensual expert participation. Fifty-three international experts from different organizations and institutions were invited to participate in the study. The studies resulted in 17 Future Skills profiles.

Based on the in-depth interviews and the consultation of experts in a Delphi study (Ehlers & Kellermann, 2019), 17 skill profiles representing competences were constructed. Each profile contains a few sub-competences—so-called “reference competences”. The fact that Future Skills can be defined, described, and differentiated into a system of profiles and reference competences evokes the question of a systems change in higher education in which the focus is no longer on a system of preparation through knowledge transfer, but rather on viewing education as a process of supporting development of dispositions for action and readiness to deal with complex, unknown future problem situations through reflection, values, and attitudes. This in turn leads to rethinking curricula to focus on support of learner agency and learning assessment; to move from a view of “assessment of learning” to understanding “assessment as learning” (Ehlers et al., 2022). In a foundational publication on Future Skills, we define Future Skills as follows:

Definition: Future Skills are competences that allow individuals to solve complex problems in contexts characterized through a high degree of emergence in a self-organized way and enable them to act (successfully). They are based on cognitive, motivational, volitional, and social resources, are value-based, and can be acquired in a learning process (Ehlers, 2020, p. 53).

Competence theory focusses on the way individuals are able to act and thus go beyond what they know. The ability and disposition to act successfully in an unknown future situation is at the center of competence research. Future Skills are such competences which are needed to enable successful action in specific circumstances and contexts of action, which we refer to as “emergent contexts”. The ability to act or, as competence theory frames it, to “perform”, is generally based on three decisive components, described in Fig. 2.2:

Fig. 2.2
A diagram of the future skills concept. Competencies of knowledge, skills, capacity to act, personality traits of values, attitudes, motives, temperament, and habitus, routines, with disposition and readiness to act, contribute to future skills, and along with context, and demand lead to performance.

The Future Skills concept within an action competence framework (Ehlers, 2020, p. 54)

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  1. 1.

    Knowledge, as an enabler for action,

  2. 2.

    Skills, building the capacity to act and

  3. 3.

    Values, motives, and habitus, forming the disposition to act.

Capacity and disposition then lead to any action performed by an individual. In cases where individuals act without the security of prior experience because of a permanently shifting environment, which makes it difficult to rely on prior experiences, Future Skills are in demand. We base the characterization of such contexts on the concept of autopoiesis from Maturana & Varela (1980), later on adapted by Luhmann (1976) to organizational theory, and thus speak of contexts and systems as emergent.

Future Skills, therefore, are not just any competences. Future Skills can be distinguished from those competences that are not particularly future-oriented. The concept of emergence—explained before and in more detail in Ehlers (2020)—serves as a differentiating dimension between any standard competences and those competences that are particularly relevant to the future. Those contexts of action that exhibit highly emergent developments in life, work, organizational, and business processes require Future Skills to cope with the requirements. Emergence thus defines the dividing line that separates traditional and future work areas. Since this boundary is not clearly schematic, but rather fluid, and many organizations are in transformation processes in which work environments evolve into highly emergent work contexts quickly, the need for Future Skills is also an evolving area and not a binary state of either/or.

Emergence versus submergence is thus an important basic distinction for explaining the meaning of Future Skills (Ehlers, 2020). Future Skills profiles can be divided into three fields, which are shown in Fig. 2.3 as three subway lines of the Future Skills Map. This division follows the so-called “Triple Helix Model” by Ehlers (2020). It is based on the insight that the skills required to cope with the demands of action can be structured according to three interacting dimensions:

Fig. 2.3
A future skill map is classified into inter-connected development, co-creation, and learning. It includes design thinking, innovation, systems, future and design competencies, communication, cooperation, sense making, self-efficacy, learning literacy, self-determination, reflective, ethical, and ambiguity.

Future Skill-Profiles Overview (Ehlers, 2020)

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  1. 1.

    Competences for learning and personal development: Individual development-related Future Skills that relate to the ability to develop oneself as a person, referred to here as individual development-related competences

  2. 2.

    Future Skills that relate to the creative development of solutions and the handling of subjects and work objects, work tasks and problems, referred to as individual object-related competences

  3. 3.

    Future Skills that relate to the social, organizational, and institutional environment in the sense of co-creation (Scharmer, 2009), referred to here as individual organization-related competences.

The individual Future Skills named by the respondents can be conceptually located within this three-dimensional action space (Fig. 2.3).

Table 2.1 provides an overview of the individual Future Skills profiles, the associated reference competences, and the descriptions of the competency fields.

Table 2.1 Future Skills competence fields and profiles in overview (Ehlers, 2020)
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In the next section we are going to analyze further Future Skills studies and then compare them. For the comparative analysis we will use the 17 Future Skills profiles as analytical categories. In a qualitative analysis approach, we will attempt to categorize all skills listed in the approaches examined and summarize them within the 17 Future Skills profiles.

4 Comparing Different Future Skills Approaches: Insights from a Future Skills Landscape Study

4.1 Comparison of Future Skills Research Methods

The following sections provides insights into, and analysis of research methods of 13 different Future Skills studies which were conducted between 2016 and 2022. They differ in focus, methodology, and orientation. For example, studies such as the D21 Digital Index (Initiative D21 e.V., 2021) are more focused on digitization, digital and media competences, or digital skills. A Stifterverband and McKinsey (2018) study also focused on digital skills, but included transversal Future Skills and, in an updated version of its framework (Stifterverband & McKinsey, 2021), so-called transformative skills as well.

In terms of methodology, Future Skills studies usually employ forecasting methods to determine Future Skills requirements (Wagemann et al., 2021). In earlier writings, we have analyzed comprehensively the methods used to study skill demands (Ehlers & Bonaudo, 2021). Table 2.2 provides an overview of the research methods used. Most of the approaches use several methods, however only three of the studies use qualitative methods. Due to the possibility of approaching open research questions in open analysis processes of qualitative material, specifically inductive qualitative analysis is suitable for modeling future unknown competence requirements. Often, exploratory qualitative interviews, Delphi surveys, or focus group methods are used. All other studies use rather confirmatory quantitative approaches, which are based on already existing hypotheses and operationalize already known competence descriptions from, e.g., job advertisements. The example of the study by Agentur Q (2021) shows particularly well how a big data and machine learning-based analysis of current job advertisements is used to identify those competences that are currently particularly important in certain industries. While these methods can be empirically quite easily operationalized—and large amounts of data can be processed, especially with the help of machine learning methods—they tend to limit the research field to already known skills requirements that carry relevance already today and extrapolate them into the future. If, on the other hand, the objective is to go beyond the requirements already known today and already defined in job advertisements to determine what the contours of future forms of life and work and their competence requirements might look like, this can be done better by means of open and qualitative procedures such as expert, learner, or employee interviews or other qualitative methods such as data collection via focus groups or Delphi studies and subsequent inductive construct-forming data evaluation procedures. This is especially true for assessments of scenarios that lie in a more distant future.

Table 2.2 Methods in Future Skills Studies (Ehlers, 2022)
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A dimension of analysis which has not been considered in the comparative analysis of research methodologies is that of competence understandings and educational theoretical foundations underlying the approaches. They vary from modelling competences as a list of terms found in job portals (Agentur Q, 2021) to approaches grounded in competence theory (Ehlers, 2020). While all of the studies refer to Future Skills, their heterogeneity and different focus results into very different concepts and terms for the phenomenon of Future Skills. Differently named Future Skills therefore often refer to actually similar competences. For example, the Future Skill “ability to change perspective” is also referred to as “flexibility and openness” or labelled as “design-thinking competence”—as is the case in the NextSkills study. The “ability to deal with increasingly networked, often unclear and complex organizational roles” is also included in some of the studies, labelled differently. In the NextSkills study, this competence is summarized with the label “ambiguity competence”.

4.2 Meta-Analysis and Comparison of Skills

In this section we present a meta-analysis of different Future Skills studies. The meta-analysis is based on the method of qualitative meta-analysis of Schnepf and Groeben (2019). Here, we view qualitative meta-analysis as a systematic summary of empirical studies using qualitative content analysis. We view this approach as superior to presenting a ‘narrative overview article’, or conducting a meta-synthesis—especially in a field of research like Future Skills, because approaches are diverse and often not well operationalized.

The meta-analysis categorizes a body of 252 skills derived from 12 Future Skills studies by means of a categorial framework built from the NextSkills study. This framework contains the 17 different Future Skills profiles. In order to create a possibility to compare the lists of skills contained in each of the 17 approaches, such a framework was necessary. In the first step we created a long inventory listing all 252 skills from the 12 Future Skills approaches in question. We then assessed the suitability to use the 17 Future Skills profiles from the NextSkills study as comparison categories. In order to assess their suitability, we performed a structured qualitative analysis of the body of skills attempting to allocate them into one of the 17 categories of the framework.

It became clear that the framework had to be broad enough to summarize as many differently nuanced skills labels as possible, and at the same time needed to be differentiated enough to adequately discriminate different competence clusters from one another. Analyzing and allocating the skills listed in the 12 Future Skills approaches was an act of qualitative content analysis leading to the final result that all 252 skills contained in the 12 reference studies have been analytically allocated into one of the 17 Future Skills categories. It proved helpful that each of the 17 analysis categories of the NextSkills study was explicitly defined (see Tab. 1.1 and Ehlers, 2020 for more detail). The analysis was performed by a team of two researchers using communicative validation to increase intercoder reliability (Mayring, 2008). Figure 2.4 illustrates the process of qualitative mapping of terms.

Fig. 2.4
A chart. Digital competence includes digital communication, digital and data literacy, and digital learning. System competence includes problem-solving skills, process understanding, and willingness to change. Initiative and performance competence include perseverance, motivation, and personal initiative.

Illustration of qualitative analysis and mapping of terms (Ehlers, 2022)

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From the body of 13 studies, a skill inventory has been created. In a series of steps, the skills from the different approaches which were included into the qualitative meta-analysis were analyzed. Duplications have been omitted and multi-dimensional formulations expanded (skill items which contained two or more skills in one skill formulation).

The result presented in Table 2.3 shows how the 252 competences were allocated to the 17 analysis profiles. Apart from the numbers of items allocated to the analysis categories, Table 2.3 also shows the so-called “allocation quota”. The “allocation quota” states the ratio of skills which, during the research process, we were able to actually allocate to the comparison categories (see Table 2.3). The analysis reveals that for all skill sets analyzed, the “allocation quota” was 100%, which means that we were able to allocate all Future Skills items from the inventory of Future Skills. In conclusion, the skill profiles of the NextSkills study are able to serve as a general framework model—at least for the approaches investigated in this meta-analysis. They are sufficiently precise and, on the other hand, are broad enough to cover all the areas addressed in the Future Skills approaches examined.

Table 2.3 Comparative analysis of existing Future Skills models (translated from Ehlers, 2022)
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An analysis of the frequency of skills within the respective Future Skills profiles reveals an accumulation in the following areasFootnote 3:

  1. 1.

    self-competence (10 mentions) and learning literacy (8 mentions) in the subject development-related dimension.

  2. 2.

    digital literacy (9 mentions) and design-thinking competence (8 mentions) in the object-related dimension

  3. 3.

    cooperation competence (12 mentions) and communication competence (9 mentions) in the organization-related dimension.

The Future Skills profiles self-determination (1) and ethical competence (3) are those with the fewest mentions among the approaches examined.

4.3 Analyzing “the Digital Dimension” within Future Skills

In this section, we are going to analyze what we call “the digital dimension” within Future Skills approaches. Because of the huge impact digital transformation has on our lives and work environments, digital literacy is often used synonymously with Future Skills. Our analysis shows that this general impression can be indeed found in research in the fact that from a quantitative point of view, digital-related skills play an important role within Future Skills approaches: 95 of 252 skills listed in our inventory are digital skills. However, a closer look into them also shows that there is a bias within the digital skills explored in the Future Skills approaches. Mostly, they relate to knowledge about “the digital” or usage of digital tools; creativity-related and reflexive analytical skills are underrepresented.

In five of the 12 studies examined, digital Future Skills form a strong focal point. All 95 skills which were found within the analyzed Future Skills approaches were in a first step allocated into one category—the analysis category called “digital literacy”. However, since digital competences are of particular importance in many approaches, an additional, qualitative analysis has been conducted for these competences. The aim was to find out what they are focusing on. As an analysis framework, a well introduced and simple model for media literacy by Dieter Baacke et al. (1991) was employed. It contains four dimensions to characterize different aspects of digital action and capacity: media analysis, media knowledge, media usage, and media design (Baacke et al., 1991). The approach differentiates between dimensions of capabilities such as using media and digital tools for different purposes, expressing oneself by creating content in digital environments, and developing own digital environments, but also goes beyond usage and content creation into more analytical and creative dimensions. “Media analysis” is thus referring to analytical-reflexive and critical ways to think about, analyze, and use digital technology. The dimension “media design” means to go beyond the currently existing and invent, create, and design media and digital technology, respectively using digital technology to invent and create solutions. The four competence dimensions are also briefly described in Table 2.4.

Table 2.4 Media Competence Dimensions according to Baacke et al. (1991)
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For the analysis process of the 12 studies examined, a basic inventory was drawn up containing all 95 digital skills that had been summarized in the category of “digital literacy” in the first step of the analysis described above. It must be noted that in most of the digital competences included in the studies currently available, it is noticeable that no clear definition is given for the digital skills listed (e.g., “cyber security” as a Future Skill is not further defined). For this reason, a multi-step approach was used for the analysis: In a first step, those competences were assigned to the four dimensions and sub-dimensions of the media competence model that could be clearly allocated in terms of content. In the second step, those competences were assigned for which there were no direct equivalents in the media competence dimensions. This was the case, for example, because they do not relate to a skill but in their formulation rather describe a thematic field which for example was the case for “cybersecurity”. It remains unclear if, with this wording of the skill, capacity for development of cybersecurity solutions are referred to, or management, or maybe architecture skills to design a system. We therefore had to take a decision to frame them into an action-related skill concept. This was done through an application perspective. These respective skill concepts were framed as “application and implementation of concepts in the respective subject area”. The thematic keyword “cybersecurity” therefore was interpreted as “application and implementation of concepts in the topic area of cybersecurity” and therefore assigned to category C1 (media use, receptive).

This analysis process finally made it possible to allocate all 95 digital Future Skills to the four dimension and subdimensions.

Table 2.5 shows the result.

Table 2.5 Comparative Overview of Digital Future Skills (Ehlers, 2022)
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The analysis shows a clear bias. “The digital” dimension in the Future Skills approaches analyzed is leaning heavily toward using digital media and knowledge about digital technologies. We found an over-proportionally strong occupation of the media use dimension within the digitally related Future Skills. Almost half of these skills fall into this area (42 out of 95). The dimension of media literacy is also strong, with a total of 23 out of 95 mentions. The focus here is on instrumental skills (18 mentions). Thus, in the present Future Skills approaches, digital competences which refer to receptive and interactive usage competences as well as knowledge about media (informative subdimension) and instrumental-qualificatory usage are most pronounced.

In contrast, reflexive-ethical aspects, and the ability to analyze the social consequences of digital transformation, which are contained in the dimension of media criticism, are underrepresented. In total, only 15 of the 95 items fall into the three subdimensions of media criticism: ethical (4), reflexive (3) and analytical (8). This paints a picture of skills approaches that are primarily focused on use and application and implementation (dimensions B & C), while a more reflexive view on digital capabilities is rather weakly contained in the Future Skills approaches analyzed. Only Stifterverband (2021), Ehlers (2020) and Agentur Q (2021) explicitly mention ethical digital skills at all.

Finally, the fourth dimension, creative media design, turned out to be most weakly represented. The skills contained here are those which represent the capacity to invent and create, design innovative digital solutions, think beyond the existing state of the art, and go beyond what is currently thinkable. It is also about employing digitally suggested concepts in order to be able to innovatively develop new creative solutions to previously unknown problems. This dimension also covers the field of creation in an aesthetical sense. The sub-dimension creative media design (D2) is the most weakly represented of all, with only two mentions. Innovative media design (D1) is slightly more pronounced, with a total of 11 mentions.

Overall, it is quite astonishing that this dimension is only weakly represented in the Future Skills studies. It is this capacity which is needed in emergent life and work environments which are impregnated and influenced through digital developments, tools, and frameworks. In such environments, the ability to find new ways to sustain procedures and structure how we live and work together seems indispensable. Thus, the lack of elaboration of this dimension within existing approaches to the future of skills can be understood as a desiderate and gap which needs future work to close it.

A conclusion can therefore not neglect the fact that contemporary Future Skills approaches are treating digital literacies in a biased way. With the exceptions mentioned, we conclude that skills which relate to creative, socially reflective, and ethically sound approaches to an uncertain digital future are underrepresented in Future Skills approaches. Those relating to use and application of existing digital concepts and tools on the other hand are strongly elaborated. Further development of digitally related Future Skills within the existing Future Skills approaches is therefore necessary, both structurally (to which dimensions of competence do the competences belong?) and in terms of content (to which dispositions for action are the competences directed?).

5 Conclusion

Current Future Skills studies and concepts can be described with the NextSkills model, which contains 17 profiles that form a framework concept for Future Skills. By dividing Future Skills into three dimensions of action—subjective, individual development-related skills; objective, task- and topic-related skills; social, world/organization-related skills—the NextSkills approach also goes beyond a static model of pure skills enumeration and definition.

The contribution takes place at the transition point of a concept change. Previous concepts such as 21st Century Skills or Sustainability Competences, which were used to describe key competences or transversal skills, are replaced by the concept of Future Skills. However, this term is not a conceptually rigid and unambiguously dimensioned term, but rather a collective category of such key competences, which are compiled as lists of different types and now stand for future competency concepts, or “Future Skills”.

The article presents the studies on this topic published in German-speaking countries within the last five years and analyzes them in their respective conceptual depth and definitional strength. In addition, a framework model is proposed, which can be used to classify all existing approaches. The classification into the categories or profiles of the NextSkills approach used for this purpose allows a complete assignment of all 252 Future Skills.

The meta-analysis makes it possible to draw the following conclusions about the status of current Future Skills research:

  1. 1.

    Heterogeneous and evolving field: The term used in all the approaches under review is “Future Skill”. However, it does not denote a clearly delineated and well-defined concept of skills, but rather describes a variety of key points and ideas about what skills people would need to possess in order to positively shape the future of their respective organizations or lives. In some cases, the respective approaches only mention topics or topic words instead of competences.

  2. 2.

    Many approaches without a clear theoretical foundation for action: Future Skills is an “emerging concept” for which there are only a few approaches to date with a theoretical foundation for action. The NextSkills study proposes such an action-theoretical foundation. The approach of action competence, which makes it possible to describe Future Skills as a set of selected action competences, is a path that can be consolidated in the future. Some of the concepts mentioned contain references or descriptions of the understanding of action competence in their respective publications. Overall, it could be cautiously formulated that Future Skills each represent a specific selection of action competences.

  3. 3.

    Harmonization of the available approaches is possible via a category model: The framework model presented here for Future Skills with 17 profiles is suitable for assigning the large number of different Future Skills and thus making them comparable. An analysis of the frequency of mentions within the respective Future Skills profiles reveals a clustering in the following areas:

    • self-competence (10 mentions) and learning literacy (8 mentions) in the subject developent-related dimension.

    • digital literacy (9 mentions) and design-thinking competence (8 mentions) in the object-related dimension

    • cooperation competence (12 mentions) and communication competence (9 mentions) in the organization-related dimension.

    • The Future Skills Profiles self-determination (1) and ethical competence (3) are those with the fewest mentions within the approaches examined.

  4. 4.

    Ideas about digitally related competences within Future Skills concepts are diverse: The analysis paid particular attention to digitally related Future Skills. Digital or technical skills will undoubtedly be an important Future Skills ingredient, but many of the Future Skills approaches examined lag behind existing comprehensive digital skills models in terms of concept breadth and depth. The analysis shows a wide range of more than 93 digital skill mentions, which are predominantly located in the area of use and conceptual knowledge about digitization, but not to the same extent in the critical reflection of the consequences of digitization or the creative redevelopment of digital work and life ecosystems.

  5. 5.

    Education as a point of reference: Almost all contributions on the topic of Future Skills lack a clear (educational) theoretical foundation of what constitutes competence or competence acquisition, which makes its use for educational processes difficult, arbitrary, or impossible. At present, only the approach we have developed (Ehlers, 2020) has an explicit theoretical foundation. Many of the topics or competences listed as Future Skills are identified without underlying personality and learning theories and refer exclusively to the cognitive domain.

All in all, Future Skills are a very dynamically developing concept that is suitable for promoting a new negotiation about future educational goals between universities, the labor market and society. The NextSkills framework can serve as a frame of reference.