The development of transversal competencies, in interaction with professional competencies, is essential for individuals to adapt to change and live meaningful and productive lives. The aim of this study was to explore the mutual interaction of six transversal competencies—civic, digital, entrepreneurial, global, innovation, and research, as well as their respective sub-competencies—and propose possible approaches to how this dynamic of interaction can be applied to facilitate the development of transversal competencies. A sample of students (N = 1575) from 21 universities in Latvia completed a self-assessment survey evaluating multiple behavioural indicators for each transversal competence and sub-competence. The results revealed that civic competence was evaluated significantly lower than other competencies, and, for most transversal competencies, sub-competencies associated with active and systematic collaboration and networking received lower evaluations. A network analysis showed that the community involvement sub-competence of the civic competence and the initiative and critical thinking sub-competencies of the innovation competence had the strongest links to the other measured sub-competencies on average. The results suggest that the development of initiative and cooperation-and-collaboration-related and network-building skills are likely to have a systematic positive effect on the development of a wider set of transversal competencies and the professional autonomy of students in the long term.

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society, in turn increasing moralization—that is, the greater tendency to employ or emphasize morality in everyday life—as an attempt to restore order and control. Using longitudinal data from X, formerly known as Twitter, our first study demonstrates that high economic inequality is associated with greater use of moral language online (e.g. the use of words such as “disgust”, “hurt”, and “respect’). Study 2 then examined data from 41 regions around the world, generally showing that higher inequality has a small association with harsher moral judgments of people's everyday actions. Together these findings demonstrate that economic inequality is linked to the tendency to see the world through a moral lens.

Transversal competences have been receiving an increasing attention in educational research and practice over the last decades. As a part of a wider project for assessment of students’ competences in higher education, a group of experts developed a model of transversal competences for students, consisting of civic, digital, entrepreneurial, global, innovation, and research competences (each with corresponding sub-competences and facets), based on the analysis of theory and previous research. In this paper, we present an assessment tool that was developed and tested for measurement of the competences in this model. The final version of the assessment tool is a self-report survey with 292 behavioural indicators that are evaluated on a 7-point Likert-type scale estimating how characteristic each indicator is of the respondent’s typical behaviour. The initial pool of behavioural indicators was created by the same group of experts based on the analysis of previous research and best practice examples in transversal competence assessment. From this pool, an initial version of the survey with 440 indicators was created and administered to 686 respondents from 8 study domains representing all study levels. Factor analysis of responses revealed a six-factor structure corresponding to the initial theoretical competence model. After further psychometric analysis, the final version of the assessment tool was formulated. Each of the six competences is further divided into 3–5 sub-competences, with each sub-competence consisting of 2–5 facets. Each facet is measured with multiple behavioural indicators describing basic, intermediate and advanced level of the respective competence. The results showed good construct validity of the tool, with the expected competence differences appearing between different study levels, and the expected relations emerging between the competence indicators and average grades. Practical applications and possibilities for further development of the assessment tool are discussed.

The aim of this qualitative analysis is to deepen the understanding of the individual cognitions behind trust versus distrust in the context of a post-Soviet society. The data was collected from several universities in a between-groups design, which asked respondents to describe their reasons for their trust or distrust in a political party in an open-ended format. The indicated reasons for both trust and distrust appeared as themes related to the activities and decisions of the party, the perceived characteristics of the party members, party ideology, and specific voter experiences. Reasons for trust (but not distrust) included the perceived newness of the party and its members. Reasons for distrust (but not trust) were related to interethnic relations in the society, the poor public image of the party, arguments related to the Soviet past, as well as a negative moral evaluation of the party. In general, distrust involved more categorical thinking (reasons without elaborated argumentation) and more intergroup-related arguments. There was some evidence suggesting that the roots of political distrust among young people in Latvia go deeper into the Soviet past than the roots of trust.

This study used structural equation modelling to test how political orientations (self-reported placement on socially liberal-conservative and economically left-right continuums) could be predicted from basic worldviews (a generally humanistic vs. normativistic orientation) and basic personal values (concepts pertaining to desirable end states or behaviors) in conjunction with core political values (normative principles about functioning of society) in a population sample from Sweden. In general, political orientation was much more strongly predicted by social-focus values (conservation and self-transcendence), and only weakly predicted by personal-focus values (self-enhancement and openness to change). The results also showed that basic personal values in conjunction with core political values mediated the relationship between basic worldviews and political orientation.