green skills

Background Despite the substantial growth of research on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in higher education, the field remains characterized by geographic concentration, methodological constraints, and conceptual fragmentation between established competence frameworks and emerging demands such as climate literacy and green skills. No prior review has simultaneously mapped the bibliometric architecture and conducted an artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted inductive thematic synthesis of this domain. Methods A dual-method design integrated bibliometric network analysis—co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and keyword co-occurrence—with AI-assisted inductive thematic synthesis. A total of 442 peer-reviewed documents were retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and ERIC (2015–2026) through systematic multi-database search, deduplication, and PICO-adapted relevance screening evaluated by a specialized multi-rater panel (Fleiss’ κ=0.55 – 0.69 , 98.4% unanimous agreement on the retained corpus). Thematic extraction was performed using two complementary large language model architectures (Qwen3-235B and DeepSeek V3.2), governed by a stringent verification protocol achieving a 92.0% alignment score; 37 hallucination flags were audited and corrected via human expert review. Results The corpus exhibits substantial and accelerated scientific expansion since 2019 ( R2=0.91 for exponential fit; compound annual growth rate of 18.4%), with Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany accounting for over one-third of output. Five thematic clusters emerged: curriculum integration, transformative pedagogies, institutional and faculty roles, sustainability literacy and behavioral outcomes, and digital innovation. Surveys and case studies dominate research designs (37.7%), while experimental approaches represent only 4.0% of the corpus. Green skills and climate literacy remain conceptually peripheral despite their policy urgency, institutional collaboration is fragmented (20.3% of institutions isolated), and faculty populations are understudied (7.0%) relative to students (32.7%). Fifty-six knowledge gaps were identified across structural, declared, and emergent categories, with methods-by-concepts coverage reaching 64.0%. Conclusions The field would benefit from a methodological transition toward longitudinal and experimental designs, enhanced visibility of Global South scholarship (contextualizing database indexing constraints), systematic pedagogical theorization of simulation-based approaches, and deliberate cross-institutional consortia to transition from conceptual proliferation to evidence-based pedagogical science.

This paper presents an educational framework developed to promote the values and skills that business students require to successfully navigate the ethical and environmental challenges in the current digital era. The work focuses on the development of green skills and responsible digital behaviour in business students through innovative and interdisciplinary learning that integrates sustainability principles with digital citizenship. Drawing on a narrative exploration of the literature on digital citizenship, sustainability education, and gamified learning, the paper proposes three educational activities based on playful learning, gamification, business games, and project-based learning. Each activity is based on instructional techniques that promote civic engagement, critical thinking, and reflection about the future social and environmental responsibilities of business managers. By placing business education within the framework of sustainability and digital citizenship, this paper offers teachers and instructors a hands-on approach for developing future graduates who are socially conscious of the impact of their decisions. Rather than presenting empirical findings, the paper provides a conceptual and practice-oriented framework for designing sustainability-oriented and digitally responsible learning experiences in business education.

Vocational education has a strategic role in preparing competent graduates according to the needs of the world of work. As the green economy develops and the Society 5.0 era, graduates are not only required to have technical competencies, but also green skills as a provision to face the transformation of the world of work. Green skills are one of the 21st century skills needed to adjust products, services, and processes to be environmentally friendly. There is a need for an improvement in education and a change in mindset or a more advanced mindset in terms of environmental awareness. Teaching modules play an important role in learning independence, the latest in this research is in modules that are environmentally oriented explicitly in non-science materials. These findings indicate that the application of e-modules in other fields such as learning in office management is still relatively limited, so it is a research opportunity that needs to be developed. This research uses a Research and Development (R&D) approach to produce environmentally friendly e-modules in correspondence materials. Product development follows the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) model. The product trial uses a quasi-experimental design with a nonequivalent control group design, which involves an experimental group and a control group that are given a pretest and posttest, respectively. The results of the study show that the feasibility level based on material experts is 85% and media experts 93% with an overall average in the category of suitable for use. The response from students obtained an average percentage of 87% with the category of very good. It can be concluded that the environmentally friendly e-module in the correspondence material was declared effective in improving green skills at SMKN 1 Wonomerto. ABSTRAK Pendidikan vokasi memiliki peran strategis dalam menyiapkan lulusan yang kompeten sesuai kebutuhan dunia kerja. Seiring berkembangnya green economy dan era Society 5.0, lulusan tidak hanya dituntut memiliki kompetensi teknis, tetapi juga green skills sebagai bekal menghadapi transformasi dunia kerja. Green skills merupakan salah satu keterampilan abad ke 21 yang dibutuhkan untuk menyesuaikan produk, layanan, dan proses agar ramah lingkungan. Diperlukan adanya peningkatan pendidikan dan perubahan mindset atau pola pikir yang lebih maju dalam hal kesadaran akan lingkungan. Modul ajar berperan penting dalam kemandirian belajar, Temuan ini mengindikasikan bahwa penerapan e-modul pada bidang lain seperti pembelajaran di manajemen perkantoran masih relatif terbatas sehingga menjadi peluang penelitian yang perlu dikembangkan. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan Research and Development (R&D) untuk menghasilkan e-modul berwawasan lingkungan pada materi korespondensi. Pengembangan produk mengikuti model ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation). Uji coba produk menggunakan quasi-experimental design dengan bentuk nonequivalent control group design, yang melibatkan kelompok eksperimen dan kelompok kontrol yang masing-masing diberi pretest dan posttest. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tingkat kelayakan berdasarkan ahli materi 85% dan ahli media 93% dengan rata-rata keseluruhan berada dikategori layak digunakan. Respons dari peserta didik memperoleh rata-rata presentase 87% dengan kategori sangat baik. Produk yang dihasilkan tidak sekadar menyisipkan wacana lingkungan sebagai pelengkap, melainkan mengubah kebiasaan korespondensi berbasis kertas menjadi serba digital melalui email. Peningkatan green skills dapat disimpulkan bahwa e-modul berwawasan lingkungan pada materi korespondensi dinyatakan efektif digunakan dalam meningkatkan green skills di SMKN 1 Wonomerto.