Aligning Models of Competency-based Education with Skills for the Future

Essential competencies such as collaboration and critical thinking, integral to long-term success, have been notably absent from traditional curricula, as the current instructional materials largely focus on disciplinary domains. Previous research, as highlighted by Liu, Kell, Ling et al. (2023), established a compelling link between these competencies and success across educational, occupational, civic, and health and wellbeing outcomes. The Skills for the Future, a joint initiative by ETS and Carnegie Foundation, presents a comprehensive approach to transform skills identification, demonstration, and verification. The initiative aims to create an ecosystem for skills consisting of a skills framework, assessment, extraction, and insight, skill-based credentialing, an integrated data warehouse, professional learning communities, and a supportive network of partnerships within a community of practice. To illustrate the practical implementation of the skills ecosystem's features, this paper presents five unique school and program models that have organically leveraged components of the proposed skills ecosystem in delivering competency-based education to support students and educators while fostering meaningful connections more optimally within the school community.