A competency map for circular economy education

The advance of the twin transition (i.e., digital and green) has led to an ever-increasing need for qualified labour that could integrate knowledge about digital technologies with sustainable applications. In this context, competences related to the Circular Economy (CE) are crucial for the achievement of global environmental goals and need to be reinforced by the support of digital competences. Many European institutions are addressing this need by defining the skills needed to cope with this transition, both at the Higher Education (HE) and Vocational Education and Training (VET) levels. Due to a lack of a structured list of competences that can serve as a reference point for the development of educational programmes at both HE and VET levels, this work aims at proposing a map guiding the development of courses considering the twin transition and offering direction for individual career advancement. To achieve this, the European reference documents regulating the certification of competences and the main competence frameworks available were analysed. The definition of specific levels of competences to be guaranteed at both HE and VET levels and the focus on CE-related skills allowed the development of a framework composed of four main areas of skills (i.e., resilience & soft, entrepreneurship, green transition, digital). Based on a critical analysis of this framework and on the T-shaped learning approach, a competency map was obtained. The resulting map developed identifies four main core courses, corresponding to the main areas of skills defined in the reference framework, to be flanked by additional specialized ones needed to address boundary-crossing CE-related competences. The results provide a flexible foundation for the design of training courses in the CE domain.