Jonas Neubert

Linking complex problem solving and general mental ability to career advancement: Does a transversal skill reveal incremental predictive validity?

Transversal skills, such as complex problem solving (CPS) are viewed as central twenty-first-century skills. Recent empirical findings have already supported the importance of CPS for early academic advancement. We wanted to determine whether CPS could also contribute to the understanding of career advancement later in life. Towards this end, we conducted a study (n = 245) at a large German automobile company in which we predicted career advancement and related criteria with CPS in addition to general mental ability (GMA). A computer-based assessment served as a measure of CPS. The dependent variables were the participants’ job level in accordance with the international standard classification for occupations (ISCO-08) and the number of professional training days as a proxy for lifelong learning efforts. The data were analysed using a structural equation modelling approach. CPS and GMA showed correlations (from .18 to .26, p < .01) with indicators of career advancement. All regression models showed good fit and indicated that CPS explained incremental variance in one of two indicators (β was .14 for trainings, p < .05). Our findings suggest an increment of CPS for predicting career advancement beyond GMA. Hence, CPS could complement GMA in methodologies for the study of professional development.

Problem solving—facilitating the utilization of a concept towards lifelong education

level, CPS reflects important cognitive prerequisites to deal with developments in the working place as mentioned above. Complementary to CPS, other conceptions of problem solving focus on domain-specific problemsolving skills predominantly involving content-specific strategies and processes in different fields such as at the workplace (i.e. problem solving in everyday working life) or in technology-rich environments (i.e. problem solving in technologyrich environments [PSTRE]). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2014) and the National Research Council (2012) as representatives of institutions with high-strategic impact on a political and a research level, both emphasize the importance of problem-solving skills, which is in line with the view shared by scholars in a number of academic fields such as educational psychology (Mayer & Wittrock, 2006). Consequently, CPS found its way into the allegedly most influential large-scale assessment worldwide, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA; OECD, 2014) and PSTRE, for its part, into the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC; OECD, 2013). Further, CPS is currently included in a number of national school monitorings across Europe and in a FP7 project of the European Union that targets the development of CPS after initial formal education in the context of lifelong education. However, despite these efforts scattered information with regard to CPS and complementary problem-solving skills hampers the utilization and adaptation of resulting conceptual and empirical insights in the broader domain of lifelong education. This Special Issue in the International Journal of Lifelong Education therefore aims at providing researchers and practitioners with a condensed view on current efforts on problem solving relevant for lifelong education. In particular, this Special Issue focuses on CPS as well as on its relation to domain-specific problem-solving skills (i.e. problem solving in everyday working life and PSTRE) in the context of lifelong education. Herewith, it aims at facilitating the transmission and discussion of information with regard to the elucidation and development of problem solving, their rationale and significance for policy, and presents critiques and implications of the concepts. The current Special Issue consists of six contributions all dedicated to CPS and complementary conceptions of problem solving. In the first contribution, Vainikainen, Wüstenberg, Kupiainen, Hotulainen and Hautamäki provide theoretical and empirical connections of CPS to the Finnish learning-to-learn framework, thereby shedding light on the development of transversal skills in primary school pupils. In the second contribution, Mainert, Kretzschmar, Neubert and Greiff extend the focus towards adult learning, by empirically connecting CPS to lifelong learning efforts of individuals via job position and training efforts. Focused on theoretical explorations, in the third contribution, Baggen, Mainert, Lans, Biemans, Greiff and Mulder connect CPS to important considerations in innovation research, highlighting commonalities and differences between CPS and opportunity identification competence as the ability to identify ideas for new products, processes, practices or services. In the fourth contribution, 374 EDITORIAL

Complex Problem-Solving in a Changing World: Bridging Domain-Specific and Transversal Competence Demands in Vocational Education

The general aim of today’s vocational and professional education is the preparation of individuals for the world of work. In this chapter, the following issues are explored: (1) current trends in cognitive skill assessment, (2) benefits of relating them to well-established approaches to learning and instruction in vocational education and (3) recent developments in (large-scale) assessment of competencies in that education sector. More specifically, assessment approaches are studied which originate in cognitive psychology that utilize computer-simulated microworlds for the estimation of skills directed at an individuals’ interaction with complex problem situations (in which complex problem-solving – or CPS – competence is needed). We inquire whether and how vocational and professional education and the accompanying research can utilize some of the underlying principles and problem features from CPS research and vice versa, such as the inclusion of an assessment directed at the procedural aspects of competence, the inclusion of so-called wicked problems in assessment or the role of domain-specific knowledge in solving complex problems. To this end, we present positive examples from different areas of application in vocational education, highlight benefits of an integration of insights for both competence-based vocational and professional education and complex problem-solving research and discuss the potential and need for future research.