Future Skills in Software Engineering and Health Care – Similar but Different

Abstract

In order to cope with current disruptive technical and societal transformations, e.g. through digitalization or AI, new competences, commonly called future skills, are indispensable for everyday as well as for professional life. Many organizations, large and small, work on defining a set of future skills. This might imply that future skills are generic and identical across all professions. In contrast, it is a consensus in pedagogical research that generic competences are specifically shaped by the professional environment. Clearly, these two positions contradict each other. But what does this contradiction mean for future skills?
This research rests on the assumption that these context-sensitive generic competences including future skills are developed differently for each occupational field. In order to be able to offer target- and competence-oriented teaching, target competences must be known in the first place, taking into account the specific professional characteristics, currently and in the future.
This paper provides evidence that the initial assumption of context-specific competences is true by collecting and comparing qualitative research data. To do so, qualitative data was collected for different occupations, in particular software engineering and health care.
Our research shows that in fact each profession expresses competences specifically, and this applies to technical as well as non-technical competences. The details of relevant competences need to be identified and characterized as a prerequisite for being able to devise and offer competence-oriented learning approaches.

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