Over the past two decades, the skills needed to be successful in the workplace have expanded beyond technical skills to include 21st-century soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. A structural equation model of the ATC21S[superscript TM] was used to investigate the relationship between 21st-century…

Adult assessments have evolved to keep pace with the changing nature of adult literacy and learning demands. As the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) continues to grow, measures of ICT literacy skills, digital reading, and problem solving in technology-rich environments (PSTRE) are increasingly important topics for…

Today's workplace is going through tremendous changes and becoming highly complex in terms of technology and tasks. Thus, critical problem-solving skills are key to creating a sustainable career in today's global economy. Indeed, the global COVID-19 epidemic has amplified the need for these skills in almost all occupations. This study examined the…

In the technology solutions column of this special issue of Adult Literacy Education, that focuses on Broadening the Lens on Adult Literacy Education Outcomes, the author wants to challenge the field to expand the view of digital literacy. Of course, basic digital literacy skills must be included, but the field needs to look beyond to the digital…

The purpose of our study is to delve into the education gap between the United States and some countries by examining the literacy and digital problem-solving skills of American educators, and comparing their performance with that of their peers from Canada, Finland, and Japan. We use PIAAC data collected by the Organization for Economic…

The evolving technological landscape in the digital era has a crucial influence on lifelong learning and the demand for problem-solving skills. In this paper, we identify associations between formal, non-formal and informal learning with sufficient problem-solving skills in technology-rich environments (TRE). We focus on adults' problem-solving…

Policymakers are increasingly concerned that employees need both foundational skills, such as numeracy, and soft skills to take better advantage of new technologies and adapt to changing work. In this study, we examined the relationships between the use of soft skills and occupational outcomes among a nationally representative sample of adult…

A skills gap challenges educators and policymakers alike. To help meet the economic and educational needs for the modern workplace, Congress recently reauthorized the Perkins Act. The bill, "Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act," emphasizes an important mission of education in the 21st century, that is,…

This article examines a Confucian conception of competence and its corresponding response to the competencies agenda that underpins international large-scale assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It is argued that standardised transnational assessments are undergirded by a technical rationality that…