Developing a Career Skills Framework for the Science University Curriculum Using Network Analysis

To be successful in their careers, science students need to manage not only their disciplinary learning, but also skills that are referred to as career, employability, transferable, generic or soft skills. The growing literature on the subject has resulted in several frameworks and lists of relevant skills. However, existing frameworks present unique terminologies and structures and do not comprise a coherent map of career skills that could be seamlessly integrated into the university curriculum. Educators are therefore faced with a continuing deficit of key skills that could enable students to develop more productive careers.

In this pre-print, we present the initial findings from our project to design of a Science Career Skills Framework. We begin with a preliminary review of literature and a harmonisation of extracted skills. We then apply network analysis to define the structure of a new Career Skills Framework. Finally, we present a draft version of the new framework.

This pre-print is currently being submitted for publication as a (1) scoping review and (2) a discourse analysis paper.