BEYOND COMPETENCE TAXONOMIES: SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING, LIFE SKILLS, AND DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP IN HIGHER EDUCATION EVIDENCE FROM INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

The progressive shift in international educational policy from knowledge-transmission models to competence-based frameworks has generated a growing theoretical and empirical interest in the construct of social-emotional learning (SEL) and its intersection with the World Health Organization's life skills paradigm. This article examines, through a systematic review of international experimental and quasi-experimental studies, the mechanisms by which structured SEL interventions at higher education level produce measurable outcomes in democratic citizenship competencies — including critical thinking, empathy, civic engagement, and self-regulatory capacity. Drawing on the CASEL meta-analytic corpus (Durlak et al., 2011; Taylor et al., 2017), the DeSeCo Project framework (Rychen & Salganik, 2003), and UNESCO's Education 2030 agenda, the article proposes an integrative theoretical model articulating three interdependent dimensions of competence — cognitive, affective-relational, and civic-performative — whose co-development constitutes the condition for genuine democratic participation. The empirical section analyses findings from four international experimental studies conducted between 2010 and 2022 in university contexts across Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Results consistently indicate that SEL-based pedagogical interventions, when sustained over at least one academic semester, produce statistically significant improvements in self-efficacy (d = 0.57–0.82), interpersonal problem-solving (d = 0.48–0.71), and civic participation intention (d = 0.39–0.64). Implications for higher education curriculum design, teacher professional development, and transnational educational policy are discussed.