Digital disruption, the complicated geopolitical situation, the challenges of sustainability and the environment, among other factors, make up a changing and complex reality that demands profound transformations in economies, societies, politics and education; all of them guided by structural, systemic and enabling approaches (Scoones et al., 2020). This brings new challenges to the already difficult situation in the labor market, among which is the constant need to update and master transversal competencies to adapt to changing demands. At the national and European level, they echo this new reality and, from the political and social level, there is an increasing commitment to create a Vocational and Educational Training (VET) system tailored to the needs of the productive system (Echeverría y Martínez-Clares, 2021; Romero-Díaz de la Guardia et al., 2024). 

Although VET has traditionally been considered as a second option for those who could not access university studies in Spain, nowadays, the regulations are encouraging and pose important challenges and demands, as well as an important framework of opportunity with the approval of a Spanish law called Ley Orgánica 3/2022, de 31 de marzo, de ordenación e integración de la Formación Profesional and, most recently,  el Real Decreto 659/2023, de 18 de julio, por el que se desarrolla la ordenación del Sistema de Formación Profesional. As highlighted by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (2020), the focus should be on modern vocational training that prioritizes transversal skills such as creativity, innovation, critical thinking and entrepreneurship. 

In the last decade, research on the development and ability of transversal competencies among university students has multiplied (Fuentes et al., 2021; Llorens et al., 2024). However, these studies have not been as extensive and pluralistic in the field of vocational training, despite the fact that recent European recommendations such as the European Skills Agenda for Sustainable Competitiveness, Social Fairness and Resilience (European Commission, 2020a) or the Osnabrück Declaration on Vocational Education and Training as an Enabler of Recovery and Fair Transitions to Digital and Green Economies (European Commission, 2020b) advocate expanding the knowledge and development of this type of competencies in order to lay the foundations for proactive, flexible and quality VET degree programmes, considering this kind of training as a driving force for innovation, economic growth and for entering the workforce. These competencies, as indicated by CEDEFOP (2023), do not always have a widespread consensus at the conceptual level, much less on how to formulate concrete and reliable criteria to assess them in vocational and educational training. 

In Spain, there is currently no unified document or tool that makes or provides explicit  criteria to be followed by teachers and educational centers for the incorporation of transversal competencies in vocational modules or to develop them both in the classroom and during apprenticeships. Faced with this lack of scientific evidence, the research project financed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain (PID2023-149224NA-I00) aims, among other objectives, to draw up a map of transversal competencies for Vocational and Educational Training in Spain, through the analysis of the current Spanish VET system regarding transversal competencies. Within this objective, current research is focused on the preliminary analysis of the presence of transversal competences in the official curricula of VET system in Spain. 

The current system of Vocational Education and Training in Spain includes 157 training programmes (65 of intermediate VET and 92 of Higher VET) grouped in 16 professional sectors. This study analyzes the competencies present in the regulations governing each of VET degrees under a qualitative procedure based on reduction of information, transformation of data, and obtaining conclusions. The first phase consists of dividing the competencies into units of meaning. Once the units have been analyzed, the next step is to identify the transversal contents immersed in the writing. Competency categories are established inductively through constant comparison between units of meaning in search of similarities and differences between them. The list of categories is finalized when all VET degrees have been reviewed and the information has been theoretically saturated, i.e. no new categories emerge. Once these categories have been established, a procedure for transforming this data into competencies is chosen. In this research we chose to carry out a discussion group with experts and researchers linked to the analysis and evaluation of competencies. From the interpretation of this discussion group, a list of competencies is drawn up. Finally, the verification of these results is carried out by exchanging or comparing the results with other studies and collecting the opinion of instructors and employers linked to Vocational and Educational Training. For the purposes of this paper, the results obtained in the first phase of the procedure are presented.

On several occasions it has been argued that there are many ways of referring to competencies, especially for generic or transversal competencies (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2020). In Spain, the regulations governing each of the vocational training diploma programme group the competencies into two categories: 1) Generic competencies and 2) Professional, personal and social competencies. From a theoretical approach, both typologies would integrate transversal knowledge, skills and attitudes. However, after carrying out the content analysis, it was noted that these sections allude to specific competencies. The content of the “Generic competencies” brings together theoretical and practical (methodological) knowledge specific to the professional sector to which the training belongs, while the section entitled “Professional, personal and social competencies” brings together, once again, competencies that move away from the fundamental characteristic of transversality. Therefore, there is a need to configure a framework that integrates a conceptual clarification in pedagogical terms that guarantees the shared understanding of the concept of transversal competencies by educational policy managers and the educational community itself, as well as a redefinition of these competencies that avoids terminological ambiguities and allows the identification of those of a transversal nature in accordance with the VET degree programmes. On the other hand, once the qualitative analysis of both types of competencies in each of the training programme has been carried out, 24 competency categories have been identified (such as "Adapting to new situations and flexibility", "Lifelong learning", "Digital skills", "Problem solving ", "Autonomy", "Teamwork", "Creativity and innovation" or "Leadership", among others), which could well be a preliminary result to begin to clarify and discuss the theoretical inclusion of these competencies in this educational stage.

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