Nine Key Competencies Could Decide Whether Vocational Students Thrive in a Sustainable Future

A new study from Thailand has produced one of the most complete measurement systems yet for judging whether vocational students possess the mental and social toolkit needed to drive sustainability transformations, and the results suggest most students sit squarely in the middle of the pack. The research, published in Heliyon by Chaiwichit Chianchana and colleagues, distills dozens of competing international frameworks into nine measurable competencies and then tests more than five hundred students across the country to see where they stand.

The timing matters. The post-COVID-19 new normal era has accelerated digital transformation, hybrid learning, and demands for resilience, and vocational graduates enter a labor market that increasingly rewards adaptability as much as technical skill. Education for sustainable development has long argued that learners need systems thinking, collaboration, and decision-making capacity, but assessment frameworks from UNESCO, the OECD, the Council of Europe, and academic researchers have each proposed different components and classifications. That inconsistency, the authors argue, produces ambiguity and unreliable evaluations, especially when instruments designed for one social context are applied to another. Prior research warns that indicators misaligned with organizational or cultural context can generate erroneous outcomes, and assessments that ignore user feedback compound the problem.

To build their framework, the researchers started from a synthesis of ten major conceptual sources, which together yielded thirty-nine candidate indicators of transformative competency, ranging from critical thinking and conflict resolution to futures-thinking, tolerance of ambiguity, and creative thinking. They surveyed 214 vocational teachers drawn from technical colleges across all five regions of Thailand, each with more than five years of classroom experience, asking them to rate every indicator on a five-point importance scale. The data were then subjected to exploratory factor analysis, a statistical technique that identifies underlying dimensions hiding within correlated survey responses.

The statistical results were striking. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy reached 0.974, far above typical thresholds, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity confirmed the data were highly suitable for factor analysis. More revealing was the structure itself: the first factor alone explained 61.07 percent of the total variance, while the second and third factors explained only 3.81 and 2.72 percent respectively. Following Reckase’s criterion that a first factor explaining at least 20 percent of variance signals essential unidimensionality, the team concluded that transformative competency for sustainability behaves substantially as a single unified construct. Nine indicators with the strongest loadings formed the final assessment framework: strategies-thinking competency, tolerance of ambiguity, futures-thinking competency, integrated problem-solving competency, creating new value, capacity-building competency, systems-thinking competency, ability to communicate, and intrapersonal competency.

With the framework established, the team built two complementary instruments rather than relying on a conventional Likert-scale questionnaire, a deliberate choice reflecting their view that these competencies encompass contextual judgment and behavior, not just attitudes. The first is a 36-question multiple-choice situational judgment test in which students respond to realistic scenarios, such as how to act on critical feedback from a teacher, with answers scored from one to three points depending on the sophistication of the chosen response. The second is a nine-question multiple-response test where students select up to four actions from eight options per question, with only four of the options carrying points. Each of the nine competencies is measured through four situational judgment questions worth up to 12 points plus one multiple-response item worth up to 4 points, producing a combined score range of 4 to 16 per competency.

The psychometric validation was rigorous. Content validity indices assessed by five experts reached 0.96 for the situational judgment version and 1.00 for the multiple-response version after revision. Pilot testing with 120 students at Donmueang Technical College produced reliabilities of 0.81 and 0.71 respectively, both above the conventional 0.70 benchmark. Confirmatory factor analysis then demonstrated excellent model fit for both instruments: the situational judgment version yielded a chi-square of 12.72 with 27 degrees of freedom, a goodness-of-fit index of 0.98, and a root mean square error of approximation of essentially zero, with factor loadings between 0.52 and 0.70. The multiple-response version showed similarly strong fit indices.

Applying the tools to 504 students aged 16 to 20, sampled across Thailand’s five regions, the researchers established norm-referenced criteria by dividing the normal distribution into three bands at one standard deviation above and below the mean. The verdict was consistent across nearly every competency: the majority of students scored at the medium level, with proportions ranging from about 63 percent for integrated problem-solving to 74 percent for communication ability. High-level scores were rare, typically between 13 and 20 percent, and the intrapersonal competency showed the largest low-level group at just over 20 percent. The authors attribute these middling results to a rapidly changing technological environment that students have not yet fully adapted to, and they point to evidence that adaptability and work self-efficacy are crucial determinants of whether young people can close this gap.

Perhaps the most policy-relevant finding emerged from the multivariate comparison across regions. Wilks’ Lambda analysis confirmed that geographic region had a statistically significant effect on all nine competencies, with pairwise comparisons revealing systematic differences, frequently involving the northern and southern regions relative to others. Intrapersonal competency showed the largest regional effect, with a partial eta squared of 0.085. The authors interpret this geographic variability as evidence that social, cultural, and resource differences shape competency development, and they argue that rigid national assessment criteria risk bias unless they can flex to local contexts.

Finally, the entire evaluation system was itself scrutinized through a summative meta-evaluation, in which 16 senior vocational education administrators rated the assessment against the five Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation benchmarks: utility, feasibility, propriety, accuracy, and evaluation accountability. Utility, feasibility, propriety, and accuracy all rated high with high reliability, while accountability reached the highest possible band, though with moderate reliability. This two-layer approach, evaluating the evaluation, remains uncommon in educational competency research and gives the framework unusual credibility.

The practical implications extend well beyond Thailand. The study offers a template for any education system seeking to measure whether students can genuinely navigate sustainability transitions rather than merely recite sustainability concepts. The authors recommend that vocational policymakers adopt the nine-competency framework with regionally sensitive criteria, develop digital assessment tools delivering real-time personalized results, and create training materials, short films, and animations to lift the majority of students out of the middle band. They also acknowledge limitations: self-assessments may reflect socially desirable answers rather than actual behavior, and some items showed weak item-total correlations. Future work should incorporate field observations and longitudinal tracking. Still, as labor markets worldwide demand workers who can think strategically, tolerate ambiguity, and create value under uncertainty, this study provides a rare empirically validated answer to the question of how to measure those capacities at scale.

Subject of Research: Development and validation of an assessment framework for key sustainability transformation competencies among Thai vocational students

Article Title: Evaluation of key competencies for transformation towards sustainability in vocational students’ new normal era

Article References: Chianchana, C., Korakotjintanakarn, P., & Swangjang, S. (2026). Evaluation of key competencies for transformation towards sustainability in vocational students’ new normal era. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45568

Image Credits: AI Generated

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Keywords: vocational education, sustainability transformation, competency assessment, education for sustainable development, psychometrics, factor analysis, situational judgment test, meta-evaluation, Thailand, new normal era, systems thinking, confirmatory factor analysis