Background

Teaching 21st-century skills is widely recognized as an important task of higher education. However, an overview of which skills students need to obtain a sustainable career is missing. Using the Framework for 21st Century Learning (P21, 2019a) and the model of sustainable careers (de Vos et al., 2020), we aimed to take stock of current knowledge on which 21st-century skills are considered important for social sciences students’ sustainable career development and how these skills contribute to their career sustainability.

Methods

For this systematic review, we searched EconLit, ERIC, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), PsycINFO, Scopus, Sociological Abstracts, and Web of Science on May 28, 2021. We selected peer-reviewed empirical articles that were published between 2003 and 2019 and addressed graduates' and employers' perspectives on the skills needed for social sciences graduates’ career sustainability. Twelve articles met all our selection criteria and were included for a thematic analysis after quality appraisal.

Results

The included articles operationalized the career sustainability of social sciences graduates mostly in terms of finding a job and maintaining employment, to a lesser extent as high job performance, job satisfaction, and work engagement. Communication and problem solving skills were most frequently reported by both social sciences graduates and employers as crucial for a sustainable career. In addition, critical thinking, initiative and self-direction, and social and cross-cultural skills were also reported as important skills. None of the studies investigated mechanisms that would explain how these skills would exactly contribute to social science graduates’ career sustainability.

Discussion

The results of this review showed that studies to date have addressed only a limited number of career sustainability indicators. Moreover, explanatory mechanisms have largely been ignored. This is an important gap in the literature that future studies would need to address by building on the existing sustainable career development models.

中文翻译：

---

揭示社会科学毕业生可持续职业发展的重要 21 世纪技能：系统回顾

背景

教授 21 世纪技能被广泛认为是高等教育的一项重要任务。但是，缺少关于学生需要哪些技能才能获得可持续职业的概述。使用 21 世纪学习框架（P21，2019a）和可持续职业模型（de Vos 等人，2020），我们旨在评估当前知识，哪些 21 世纪技能被认为对社会科学专业的学生很重要可持续的职业发展以及这些技能如何有助于他们的职业可持续性。

方法

对于本系统综述，我们于 2021 年 5 月 28 日检索了 EconLit、ERIC、国际社会科学书目 (IBSS)、PsycINFO、Scopus、社会学文摘和科学网。我们选择了 2003 年之间发表的经过同行评审的实证文章和 2019 年，并讨论了毕业生和雇主对社会科学毕业生职业可持续性所需技能的看法。十二篇文章符合我们所有的选择标准，并在质量评估后被纳入主题分析。

结果

收录的文章主要在找工作和保持就业方面对社会科学专业毕业生的职业可持续性进行了操作，其次是高工作绩效、工作满意度和工作投入度。沟通和解决问题的技能最常被社会科学专业的毕业生和雇主报告为可持续职业的关键。此外，批判性思维、主动性和自我导向以及社交和跨文化技能也被报告为重要技能。没有一项研究调查可以解释这些技能如何准确地促进社会科学毕业生职业可持续性的机制。

讨论

本次审查的结果表明，迄今为止的研究仅涉及数量有限的职业可持续性指标。此外，解释机制在很大程度上被忽略了。这是文献中的一个重要空白，未来的研究需要通过建立现有的可持续职业发展模型来解决。