This research uses the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method and bibliometric analysis in VOSviewer to analyze the literature on digital skills in vocational education. The PRISMA 2020 guidelines required us to develop a complete search strategy, which we used for transparency and reproducibility purposes. The search terms, combinations, Boolean operators, and database filters used in Scopus are fully reported below ( Table 1). The document shows all search strings that were used to search through the title, abstract, and keywords fields, together with their respective date range, 2021 to 2025, and language restrictions.

This process is reflected in the following PRISMA flowchart in Figure 1.

The systematic literature review method is demonstrated through the PRISMA Flow Diagram, which is presented in Figure 1. The Scopus database search produced 768 records during its initial search. The screening process began after the team eliminated five duplicate records from the database. The database filtering criteria, which the team established before testing, excluded 224 records because they restricted access to publications between 2021 and 2025 that had to be peer-reviewed, available in English, and accessible through open access. The process of screening titles and abstracts began with 539 records, which remained after the initial screening process. The study objectives determined the screening process, which used specific criteria to include or exclude participants. The analysis of eligible studies revealed three research trends that researchers used to study digital fashion skills development through vocational education and the Green TVET framework.

The screening process retained 539 records after all duplicate records and database entries were removed. The researchers conducted title and abstract screening of these records according to their established inclusion and exclusion rules.

The study excluded 204 records because of these specific reasons: 1.

118 records did not relate to digital fashion or vocational education, which was the study’s main focus.

The researchers requested complete text access for 335 reports after they finished their previous work.

The researchers requested 335 reports but could only locate 128 documents because 207 reports were lost due to inaccessible full-text content and restricted access. Researchers conducted eligibility testing on 128 available full-text articles.

The full-text assessment phase resulted in 66 article rejections according to documented reasons, which showed three major reasons for rejection. The explicit reasons are documented as follows: 1.

lack of direct alignment with the specific research objectives (n = 40), and

The research team conducted an extensive eligibility evaluation, which resulted in 62 research studies being selected for inclusion in the systematic review analysis.

The 62 included studies underwent systematic data abstraction using a structured extraction form. The researchers gathered essential data, which included the year of publication, research methodology, study location, research topic, and research methods.

Thematic analysis was used to discover digital skills development patterns that exist in vocational education and the Green TVET framework. This process enabled the synthesis of qualitative insights across studies.

The researchers performed a descriptive quantitative study to analyze how research topics, research methods, and publication patterns changed during the past five years. This complementary analysis provided a broader overview of evolving research priorities and their implications for vocational education policy and practice.

The team executed their coding work through a repeated process for all 62 studies that met their eligibility requirements. The team established thematic codes through a process that involved systematic identification of relevant text portions.

The team reviewed their coding decisions throughout the process to establish consistent standards for all coding categories. The team used existing codes to verify their new codes with the analytical framework that they had created to ensure conceptual harmony with their research goals.

The team used an iterative coding method to improve their analytical accuracy while safeguarding their study results from interpretive errors.

According to the research made from the Scopus and Eric databases, the publication frequency in the past five years, from 2021 to 2025, has an increasing trend, as shown in Figure 2. This kind of change reveals different forms of publication output from the years of study in question. A trend in the publication of research associated with digital fashion skills in TVET indicates an annual increase in the number of publications.

The trends of publication among the five most influential Scopus-indexed sources in Digital Fashion Skills and Green TVET are shown in Figure 3, and the trends are from the year 2021 to 2025. The visualization illustrates a lively scholarly output pattern where sources like Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics and Sustainability Switzerland have kept on releasing high amounts of publications, which is a sign of the increasing academic interest in the areas of digital technologies, sustainability, and education through vocational training. The peaks in the years 2023 and 2025 signal the integration of digital fashion tools like 3D design, virtual prototyping, and AI-driven fashion analytics, etc., into vocational teacher competency frameworks, and thus, teachers’ professional development will be one of the main areas of focus. Besides, the trends also imply that the research works are going to be about the changes in the modes of pedagogical practices towards the use of tech in schools; thus, through the Green TVET ecosystems, the development of educators who are skilled in both sustainability and digital fashion will be possible.

The graph in Figure 4 shows the distribution of the top ten countries that are the most significant contributors to the worldwide research on Digital Fashion Skills within the discourse of Green TVET from 2021 to 2025. The United States, China, and India rank the highest in terms of contribution and indicate the presence of strong research ecosystems in the areas of digital technology, AI integration, and sustainable innovation. The United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Spain are among the European countries that produce significant research outputs, which are an indication of their proactive participation in the digital transformation movement in vocational education, especially by means of virtual fashion design, Industry 4.0 tools, and sustainability-based curricula. South Korea is recognized as a major Asian innovator in the area of digital fashion simulation and virtual garment technologies, among others. The case of Indonesia is particularly interesting as it gradually shows a growing presence that portrays increased academic interest in the field of digital fashion competencies and the development of eco-friendly TVET practices. These countries together lead the world in the areas of digital fashion education, sustainability, and vocational teacher competency development.

A bibliometric mapping derived from co-occurrence keywords produced by VOSviewer is shown in Figure 5. It provides a visual perspective on the research terrain related to digital fashion skills in the Green TVET context.

This bibliometric in Figure 5 reveals the presence of various significant thematic clusters including: (1) a red cluster consisting of the dimensions of mental health, digital literacy, and user behavior; (2) a green cluster consisting of the dimensions of digital transformation, education-based skills, and teacher professional development; (3) a blue cluster consisting of the dimensions of digital literacy, education, and cross-sectional studies; and (4) the yellow and purple clusters consisting of 3D design, the textile sector, fashion design, and higher education. The relationship among the clusters suggests that the development of digital skills in fashion is increasingly associated with AI, curriculum, and students’ digital literacy. In conclusion, these findings attest that research concerning digital fashion skills is evolving in a multidisciplinary way, involving technology, vocational education, and sustainable design innovation that underpins the Green TVET competence framework.

Mapping 62 studies provides a comprehensive overview of digital fashion skills, which are gradually integrating sustainability aspects into vocational education (Green TVET) as a core characteristic. These studies can be divided into three interrelated competency clusters: technical–production, sustainability–governance, and pedagogy–industry. The technical–production cluster, encompassing Digital Design, Digital Patterning, and Digital Production skills, is the most prominent, perhaps reflecting the field’s focus on 2D/3D fashion CAD, CLO3D simulation, AR/VR-based prototyping, automated digital grading, and AI-assisted garment production. ^{9, 30– 32} These skills are closely related to sustainability in Fashion 4.0, as they result in waste reduction through virtual prototyping, rapid design cycles, and a reduced need for physical samples. ² The same applies to Digital Pattern Skills, specifically zero-waste digital pattern design and virtual fit assessment, among other skills, which have been identified as crucial capabilities that directly integrate environmental friendliness into the design and production process. ^{14, 33}

The sustainability and governance cluster has given rise to Digital Sustainability Skills and Digital Ethics & Data Security. These skills are increasingly recognized but remain underrepresented compared to technical skills. Studies continue to integrate zero-waste patterns, eco-friendly prototyping, sustainable material simulation, and digital carbon tracking as necessary skills for fashion model development in TVET. ³⁴ Ethical digital practices, copyright literacy, data protection, and secure digital portfolio management are increasingly recognized as essential, given the proliferation of digital assets, AI-based design tools, and online learning platforms. ³⁵ However, mapping shows that despite the near-universal acceptance of ethical awareness, there are still few explicit teaching methods for developing these skills in vocational teacher training.

The pedagogy-industry cluster includes Digital Learning & Pedagogy, Digital Communication & Marketing, and Digital Entrepreneurship, which, together with Emerging Technologies and Societies, form the entire spectrum of innovative pedagogy. The most challenging challenge is finding skilled teachers in vocational institutions who are not only able to operate new technologies but also able to create VR-based courses, design digital assessments, and teach CLO3D. ^{31, 32} At the same time, competencies in e-commerce, social media storytelling, and fashion data analytics are indicators of industry demand for graduates who are proficient in digital technologies and also able to operate in omni-channel markets and sustainability-oriented branding. ^{2, 8, 36} Digital Entrepreneurship, although the least discussed aspect, still shows the trend direction in the fashion industry regarding virtual showrooms, AI-based decision-making, and green business models as core components of future environmentally friendly TVET curricula. ^{7, 37}

Mapping across all areas reveals a strong but uneven integration of digitalization and sustainability. Technical expertise has been identified as one of the implicit associations that generate positive environmental impacts, for example, through virtual sampling to reduce waste. However, there are very few or no frameworks that address this link, which is reflected in the disparate competencies of teachers in the TVET sector. ^{6, 28, 38} This analysis argues that a robust competency framework for Green TVET educators must integrally combine fluency in advanced digital tools (DDS, DPS, DPrS) with sustainability-oriented digital practices (DSS) and the pedagogical capabilities necessary to create authentic, ethically grounded, and industry-relevant learning experiences (DLPS, DES, DCMS, DEntS). Thus, these results echo international recommendations that vocational teachers should be prepared to combine digital transformation and sustainable development into a future-oriented teaching practice. ^{39– 41}

The following is the Digital Fashion Skills Framework, synthesized from a Systematic Literature Review, presented in Table 2.

The thematic analysis results derived from 62 articles indicate that the digital skills map in the sustainability tracker-oriented fashion area, under the context of Green TVET, contains a different yet closely connected competency system. Digital Design Skills was the most important domain, which highlighted the importance of the role of 2D/3D CAD, AR/VR garment simulation, and virtual visualization as the technical capabilities foundation of a highly advanced digital fashion ecosystem in the digital fashion world. Digital Sustainability Skills and Digital Communication & Marketing Skills were the other two highlighted domains portraying the research trend toward zero-waste pattern making, sustainable material simulation, and digital communication literacy, and the analytics of data as the green fashion industry’s main demand. At the same time, domains like Digital Pattern Skills and Digital Learning & Pedagogy Skills brought attention to the requirement for pattern automation and the incorporation of VR, CLO3D, and digital assessment into the methodology of vocational education. Digital Production Skills, Digital Entrepreneurship Skills, and especially Digital Ethics & Data Security Skills were seen to get relatively less attention, and this has revealed that issues of AI-based manufacturing, digital entrepreneurship, and legal and data security are still not fully addressed in research. All in all, these findings validate the unevenness in research priorities while at the same time highlighting the necessity of creating a digital fashion competency framework that is wider, sustainability-driven, and more aligned with the needs of future vocational educators in the Green TVET environment.

The following is a mapping of digital fashion skills in Green TVET for prospective vocational education teachers based on coding analysis using NVIVO, which is presented in Figure 6.

The mapping of digital fashion skills depicted in Figure 6 portrays an intricate and multidimensional competency ecosystem that perfectly synchronizes with the ongoing revolutionary changes in sustainable and technology-driven fashion education. The framework classifies “Digital Skills in Fashion” as the main competency, surrounded by eight skill clusters that are closely tied to the key domains of Green TVET and future-oriented fashion pedagogy. The Digital Design Skills, Digital Pattern Skills, and Digital Production Skills form the core technological circle of digital fashion competence, including the use of 2D/3D fashion software, CLO3D garment visualization, smart textile integration, automated pattern grading, and AI-supported production workflows. These skills act as a support to the conversion of traditional physical prototyping to totally virtualized, resource-efficient, designer-friendly, and sustainable processes. Apart from the technical skills, the Digital Sustainability Skills also incorporate with eco-responsibility principles via zero-waste digital pattern making, simulating sustainable materials, and tracking digital carbon the very critical elements for instilling environmental consciousness into the fashion workflow.

In addition to technical and sustainability skills, the mapping reveals the professional domains that are crucial for vocational teachers across the board: Digital Learning & Pedagogy Skills and Digital Ethics & Data Security Skills. The demand for teachers to develop e-learning content, conduct VR-based fashion training, protect digital portfolios, and practice ethical digital habits such as copyright protection and data security has been recognized by the winning of these clusters. Besides, the mounting of Digital Communication & Marketing Skills and Digital Entrepreneurship Skills shows that digital business literacy has become the fashion industry’s need. Social media campaigning, e-commerce operations, fashion data analytics, virtual showrooms, and AI-driven innovation are some of the competencies that will prepare future designers and educators for the global digital market. This mapping, therefore, emphasizes that digital fashion skills require software proficiency and support the tech-savvy, sustainable thinking, pedagogy readiness, and entrepreneurship skills fusion that underpins a Green TVET-oriented vocational teacher competency framework’s robust development.

The combination of mapped digital fashion skills with the thematic categorization of sustainability-oriented competencies led to the establishment of a Competency Matrix that encapsulates the major capability demands for the future vocational fashion teachers in the Green TVET ecosystem. The results point out that the competencies of teachers should not only include technical digital proficiency but should also incorporate a blend of pedagogical, technological, sustainability-driven, and entrepreneurial capabilities. The competency matrix is organized along eight domains—Digital Design, Digital Patternmaking, Digital Production, Digital Sustainability, Digital Ethics & Data Security, Digital Learning & Pedagogy, Digital Communication & Marketing, and Digital Entrepreneurship, each described through the levels of mastery from Beginner to Expert. This organization corresponds to the increasing complexity of skills required for the design of immersive digital fashion learning environments, the integration of AI-based garment technologies, the execution of sustainable virtual workflows, and the assurance of ethical and secure digital practices. Among these are sustainability-oriented competencies like zero-waste digital patterning, material lifecycle simulation, and digital carbon tracking, which are classified as the leading cross-cutting domains necessary for the incorporation of Green TVET principles in teaching practice and the curriculum. The matrix indicates that the expert-level vocational teachers are supposed to perform not only with advanced digital instruments like CLO3D, VR/AR simulation, AI-based production systems, and fashion data analytics, but also to create learning experiences that nurture students’ ecological awareness, digital innovation, and future-oriented industry preparedness. The matrix of competencies gives a systematic, evidence-based framework that can direct the design of curricula, the implementation of professional development programs, and the setting of policy directions aimed at enhancing digital and green skills in fashion vocational education.

The following Competency Matrix for vocational teachers in the fashion field in the context of Green TVET and Digital Fashion is presented in Table 3.

The competency matrix from Table 3 created for this research study illustrates the basic areas that the vocational fashion teachers should be skilled to work in a digitally driven and sustainability-oriented Green TVET environment. The domains include many core competencies, particular sub-skills, and performance indicators that can be measured, which are in line with the increasing use of advanced technologies in fashion education. The matrix reveals that teachers are required to be skilled not only in technical areas like digital design, patternmaking, production automation, and sustainability simulation but also in ethical data handling, digital teaching methods, communication, and entrepreneurship. The domains together point out a holistic capability profile in which teachers are anticipated to create interactive digital garments, carry out zero-waste workflows, incorporate AI-enhanced production, and maintain secure digital ecosystems, facilitate VR/AR learning experiences, and mentor students in digital branding and business innovation. Hence, this well-structured framework acts as a comprehensive entrance for upskilling vocational teachers with respect to the industry requirements and sustainability priorities that are global and environmental in the fashion sector.

The eight-domain digital fashion competency framework, which we developed, shows the complete understanding of existing knowledge that connects digital transformation with fashion innovation and Green TVET. The framework exists as a theoretical model that emerged from systematic literature mapping and bibliometric clustering, not from established standards that have received empirical validation. The assessment identifies multiple competency patterns, which include technological proficiency, digital creativity, sustainable design integration, pedagogical adaptability, and industry alignment. These competencies demonstrate how vocational fashion educators will develop new professional capabilities in their future work.

The study establishes a fundamental framework that supports curriculum development and professional training through its organization of various training domains into a competency matrix system. The framework exists as a theoretical model that needs empirical testing to determine its ability to function in different contexts and maintain its essential elements and operational capabilities through various educational environments. Its main value provides a comprehensive framework that researchers can use to develop their theories, policy discussions, and practical evaluations of digital fashion skills within new Green TVET educational frameworks.

The review used a systematic and transparent methodological framework, but it contains several limitations that require thorough examination because they affect both knowledge production and field representation. The review depends exclusively on the Scopus database, which provides interdisciplinary indexing and quality control, yet this choice limits the review to a specific citation system used within the database. The reliance on indexing systems for academic visibility creates an advantage for particular geographic areas, publication practices, and knowledge systems, which results in the underrepresentation of local research and emerging academic work that does not meet the standards of mainstream indexing systems. Future reviews would benefit from triangulating multiple databases and repositories to mitigate structural indexing bias and enhance epistemic inclusivity.

The practice of limiting publications to open-access format improves three aspects of research, which include transparency and accessibility, and reproducibility, but it creates a problem because it leads to biased selection of research materials. Different academic fields, funding systems, and worldwide locations show different patterns of open-access publishing. The evidence bases that results from this study shows publishing patterns that limit access to academic work about digital fashion skills and Green TVET, instead of showing all research results. The study shows multiple research problems, which demonstrate how accessibility standards control the main research areas that research studies will show through their systematic reviews.

The period which restricted published works to 2021 until 2025 established modernity for the research findings, yet it restricted the historical development of theoretical frameworks. Vocational education digital transformation exists as a current phenomenon that builds upon past technological advancements and educational practices. The exclusion of earlier foundational works restricts our ability to track how concepts have developed and how theoretical ideas have stayed consistent throughout the discipline.

The researchers used thematic analysis methods, which they applied repeatedly to examine their research results while maintaining both internal consistency and analytical strength. The researchers developed their themes through analytical methods that do not depend on objective methods to collect data. Future research could extend this work through complementary methodological strategies, including bibliometric network analysis, meta-synthesis, or theory-building approaches that critically interrogate how digital and green competencies are conceptualized across educational paradigms. Researchers need to conduct empirical validation studies, which will help them assess digital fashion skill frameworks by evaluating their practical implementation and institutional viability, and their alignment with policies across various economic and international settings. The proposed extensions will enable researchers to develop an understanding of digital transformation, which connects theoretical concepts with actual developments that happen in modern TVET systems worldwide. Future research should validate the proposed framework through empirical testing based on multi-phase expert review, Delphi studies, and pilot implementation studies across various vocational education settings.