Bridging Science and Practice: Toward a Standard, Evidence-Based Framework of 21st Century Skills

In the past few years, the term “21st century skills†has gained increasing popularity in educational research and business practice. Neubert, Mainert, Kretzschmar, and Greiff (2015) advocated for the utility of assessing 21st century skills in industrial–organizational psychology (I-O psychology) and its superiority over assessing basic psychological constructs, using application-oriented constructs, or conducting job analysis to determine relevant skills for individual work settings. We argue, however, that the issues identified and discussed in the focal article are rather threefold and that, to integrate 21st century skills into I-O psychology and to bridge organizational science and practice, we need to have (a) a standard framework of clearly defined constructs, (b) innovative assessments, and (c) evidence for validity generalization. We elaborate below.