This contribution presents the first findings of a narrative review (Baumeister & Leary 1997; Bourhis, 2017) about the development of competences and soft skills for youth participation, in outside school contexts. Competences and soft skills have come into wide use in various fields of knowledge in recent decades and have been used with different and peculiar nuances depending on the context of reference. The aim of the review is to trace the origins and the development of the term “competence”, dwelling on its temporal and spatial origin along with its areas of application, and to unearth the relationship between the discourse of competences and their implications for youth participation in outside school contexts. 

Exploring the meanings of the term within the outside school contexts becomes crucial and challenging in our modern world, due to the fact that a lot has been written about competences to be developed within school contexts as well as in the labour market, and a gap in outside school contexts is clearly present. 

In recent decades, the interest in the concept of “competence” has intensely grown in various and heterogeneous fields, from economics to business management, from psychology to training, from education to politics, producing an ongoing debate on the topic. Simultaneously, it underwent an interesting development over time, so that we can now recognize a number of definitions that scholars have come up with in the last years (McClelland, 1993; Spencer & Spencer, 1993; Le Boter, 1994, 2000; OCDE, 1996; Levati & Saraò, 1998).

Bearing in mind that different schools of thought have defined the term with meanings not always aligned, the focus will be on how they have been defined specifically in the fields of youth education. Since the mid-1990s of the twentieth century, the EU has also been increasingly interested in competences, considering them as central to education, lifelong learning and work, in the perspective of enhancing "human capital" as a primary factor of development (Conclusions of the Lisbon European Council 23-24 March 2000; Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council, 2006; European Qualifications Framework 2008; 2017; Council Recommendation, 2018). 

In this framework, my contribution occurs in a special year for soft skills and competences, since 2023 has been named the European year of Skills, right after the 2022 European Year of Youth which sought to empower, support and engage with young people, including those with fewer opportunities. There is a clear relevance given to the topic as the EU is promoting concrete initiatives to support skills development, such as a European skills Agenda planned to promote lifelong learning, to foster economic growth and employment by enhancing training, accompanying society and businesses towards ecological and digital transitions (Employment and Social Policy Council proposal, 12 October 2022). 

One of the most relevant EU objectives is directly related to youth political participation by focusing on the engagment of more young people who are not working and not in education or training.  To this end, initiatives such as the Skills Agenda for Europe, the new European Innovation Agenda, and the European Universities Strategy are already in place to achieve these goals, founded by the European Social Fund Plus, the Digital Europe program, the Horizon Europe program, and Erasmus+.

Once more, to foster the importance given to “competence”, we clearly understand that the EU is championing skills policies and investments globally (Global Gateway strategy and the Youth Action Plan, 2002) to prioritise investments in quality education systems in partner countries. 

At last, shifting to the international level, the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015) needs to be mentioned in relation to this topic.

The narrative literature review (Bourhis, 2017) is organized according to thematic criteria emerging from the research questions concerning first of all the development of competences through youth participation processes in outside school contexts. The review is being carried out using the most well-known electronic databases in the human sciences, such as EBSCO, Scopus, Eric and Web of Science. Some of the key-words used for the research are: soft skills and competences; youth participation; outside school contexts; political engagement and youth. Official and milestone publications on this topic and peer-reviewed articles from European and international journals are being analysed, with a specific focus on the last ten years.

From the review of the existing literature, it emerges that school learning based on mere and procedural knowledge achieved through repetitive application and exercises does not guarantee the formation of attitudes and skills functional to the demands of life and work, particularly with regard to the skills of problem solving, of taking flexible autonomous initiatives, and of mobilizing knowledge to handle complex situations as well as deal with everyday issues (Perrenoud, 1997; Rey, 1996; Pellerey, 2004). This contribution aims at presenting the first findings from the literature review, at the end of which it is envisaged to have a better and more systematic understanding of the concept of competence in youth participation, in extra-school contexts. This review is intended to be the first stepping stone on which to build the theoretical and methodological framework of my doctoral research. Major debates on the issue will then be identified, as well as research conducted in the field, paying attention to how policies can be interrelated with examples of experienced practices. To conclude, the overall aim of my research is to explore connections around the theme of youth political participation, understood in terms of building a personal life project, thus fostering the potential that outside school contexts may offer.

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