The skill's issue

Society, as a living organism, is constantly changing and with it its requirements. There are competences which have always met the needs of the society in question, but there are also competences whose need arises as society evolves. The acquisition of competences is an active process, in which the individual is constantly called upon to act in order to evolve through it. The acquisition of competences involves a learning process. Therefore, it starts with practice and is followed by theory (Dewey 1966).

According to Cimatti, competences are divided into personal skills and social skills. Personal skills are mainly cognitive while social skills are more related to the individual's ability to respond to a variety of social circumstances (Cimatti, 2021). The personal ones are mainly addressed to individual benefits, while the social ones to social benefits. Of course, there is a direct link between individual and social benefits, as only if the individual benefits on a personal level will he or she be able to benefit society by extension.

It is important to mention that, precisely because social competence is generated by society and evaluated by it, the self-esteem of the individual in relation to the existence of the competence and the opinion of the social environment are not sufficient. Membership in groups, clubs and organizations gives the individual stimuli and leads him/her to develop and use specific skills (Dewey, 1966).

Of course, the influence that the group has on its members should be considered in terms of the individual's critical faculties, character and values. The individual involved in the competency process is one who is fully aware of his or her responsibility for his or her future. This, after all, is the reason why he tries to acquire competences, so that he can define his own life. The formation of this attitude towards life puts the person at the centre of situations but mainly of his life (Gougoulakis, 2012).

The competences, which are considered necessary by today's society, are also called 21st century competences and are a set of abilities, intentions and knowledge. Several organizations, dealing with the issue, have gathered these necessary competencies. This has resulted in the 'key competences', part of which are 'the ability to use language, symbols and texts interactively' (OECD 2005), 'digital competence' (European Commission 2006), 'critical thinking and problem solving' (P21 2016), 'the ability to relate well to others' (OECD 2005), 'a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship' (European Commission 2006) and 'creativity and innovation' (P21 2016).

According to Cimatti (2021) there are soft skills and hard skills. In this article it is appropriate to study soft skills extensively as they are the ones directly related to the human factor. Soft skills could be considered to be the ability to solve problems, analyse and synthesise information, autonomous - uninfluenced criticism, effective communication, lifelong learning, teamwork, innovation and organisation.

Soft skills are divided into self oriented and other oriented skills. Self oriented, soft skills could be said to match those mentioned above as being related to the personal level, while other oriented skills are more in line with those mentioned above as being related to the social level. Self-oriented competencies require personal effort on the part of the individual to understand and develop, while other-oriented competencies are identified and developed through interpersonal relationships.

A number of European programmes have attempted to define and study the issue of competences . One of them is "Tuning" in which soft skills are divided into three categories: Interpersonal, Instrumental and Systematic. Instrumental competences correspond to cognitive, methodological, technological and linguistic competences.Interpersonal can be divided into two groups: individual and social.Finally, systemic competences are considered organizational, entrepreneurial and leadership competences (Poblete, 2015).