This article addresses educational challenges posed by the future of work, examining “21st century skills”, their conception, assessment, and valorization. It focuses in particular on key soft skill competencies known as the “4Cs”: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. In a section on each C, we provide an overview of assessment at the level of individual performance, before focusing on the less common assessment of systemic support for the development of the 4Cs that can be measured at the institutional level (i.e., in schools, universities, professional training programs, etc.). We then present the process of official assessment and certification known as “labelization”, suggesting it as a solution both for establishing a publicly trusted assessment of the 4Cs and for promoting their cultural valorization. Next, two variations of the “International Institute for Competency Development’s 21st Century Skills Framework” are presented. The first of these comprehensive systems allows for the assessment and labelization of the extent to which development of the 4Cs is supported by a formal educational program or institution. The second assesses informal educational or training experiences, such as playing a game. We discuss the overlap between the 4Cs and the challenges of teaching and institutionalizing them, both of which may be assisted by adopting a dynamic interactionist model of the 4Cs—playfully entitled “Crea-Critical-Collab-ication”—for pedagogical and policy-promotion purposes. We conclude by briefly discussing opportunities presented by future research and new technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

This article highlights virtual reality (VR) as perhaps the safest, most fully developed of the emerging technologies of cognitive enhancement and as an underused tool for the enhancement of creativity in particular. We argue that researchers, educators, trainers, designers, managers, and others concerned with innovation should be more informed about virtual reality technologies (VRTs) both because of their widespread and growing accessibility and because of the significant, synergistic contributions they can make to human performance and understanding. We present a brief consultative survey exploring the potential use of virtual worlds (VWs) such as Second Life among a group of professionals (N= 20) working in the area of creativity and innovation training. In addition to providing some useful perspectives and creativity strategies for implementation, results suggest that the possibilities represented by VRTs may not be fully appreciated by those who could make the most use of them. We argue that VRTs offer a cost-effective means of implementing and optimizing nearlyallconventional individual and collaborative creativity enhancement techniques while also offering potent new possibilities and combinations not available by other means. Thus, we outline five ways VR can be used to enhance creativity and problem solving: (a) by changing aspects of the self and self-perception; (b) by optimizing interactions and collaboration with others; (c) by optimizing environmental conditions and influences; (d) by facilitating guidance orgamificationof the problem-solving process; and (e) by offering an arena for the integration of other technologies of creativity enhancement such as pharmacological enhancement, brain stimulation, and neurofeedback. The article ends with a discussion of this technological convergence within the growing sciences of innovation and cognitive enhancement.

This paper is the product of an interdisciplinary, interreligious dialogue aiming to outline some of the possibilities and rational limits of supernatural religious belief, in the light of a critique of David Hume’s familiar sceptical arguments – including a rejection of his famous Maxim on miracles – combined with a range of striking recent empirical research. The Humean nexus leads us to the formulation of a new ‘Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma’ (CCDD), which suggests that the contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with new understandings of the cognitive forces that shape their common features, persuasively challenge the rationality of most kinds of supernatural belief. In support of this conclusion, we survey empirical research concerning intercessory prayer, religious experience, near-death experience, and various cognitive biases (e.g. agency detection, theory of mind, egocentric and confirmation bias). But we then go on to consider evidence that supernaturalism – even when rationally unwarranted – has significant beneficial individual and social effects, despite others (such as tribalism) that are far less desirable. This prompts the formulation of a ‘Normal/Objective Dilemma’ (NOD), identifying important trade-offs to be found in the choice between our humanly evolved ‘normal’ outlook on the world, and one that is more rational and ‘objective’. Can we retain the pragmatic benefits of supernatural belief while avoiding irrationality and intergroup conflict? It may well seem that rationality is incompatible with any wilful sacrifice of objectivity (and we appreciate the force of this austere view). But in a situation of uncertainty, an attractive compromise may be available by moving from the competing factions and mutual contradictions of ‘first-order’ supernaturalism to a more abstract and tolerant ‘second-order’ view, which itself can be given some distinctive (albeit controversial) intellectual support through the increasingly popular Fine Tuning Argument. We end by proposing a ‘Maxim of the Moon’ to express the undogmatic spirit of this second-order religiosity, providing a cautionary metaphor to counter the pervasive bias endemic to the human condition, and offering a more cooperation- and humility-enhancing understanding of religious diversity in a tense and precarious globalised age.