This is an event report following the implementation of the battle-webinar Soft Skills: fad or needs of our time by the Community of Innovative Educators on November 10, 2021.
Brilliant VET experts from various countries took part in a heated debate on November 10 about what Hard and Soft Skills are, whether they should be opposed, why Soft Skills appeared, whether it is possible to teach student persistence and purposefulness. Other participants also joined the discussion, presenting their vision of solving the problem.
To find out the answer to the main question - where and how to teach Soft Skills, you will have to watch the video of the battle webinar. Please write your questions and opinions in the comments.
Below are some selected contributions:
Sergey Polbitsyn: “We do not oppose Hard and Soft Skills. It may be better for us to use the term “professional competence” instead of these words. On the other hand, they are already in the textbooks. When I went to university at a young age, I continued my upbringing, looking and imitating my teachers. They, in turn, adjusted themselves to the head of the department, who directed this scientific school, etc. - this is how the pyramid of education arose. Now this is all confused, since all the teachers are mixed, we see a great turnover of teachers from one university to another, from one college to a neighboring one, and even to other countries. In such conditions, the teacher cannot sustain his upbringing, so everyone switched to teaching professional competencies, not really thinking about the motivation of students and the acquisition of other personality characteristics that are necessary in modern society. It is these special skills that have acquired the term "Soft Skills". Now we have just come up with these new words and say that it can be taught. No, in my opinion, this can be done only by bringing-up an individual. "
Maria Dremina: “You don't need to oppose; you need to integrate. I do not think that parenting and upbringing are exactly Soft Skills. From my point of view, upbringing is within Soft Skills, but it is not a synonym. Of course, a professor teaches his students not only instrumental skills, but also the culture of how to perform work with high quality. From this point of view, it is better to talk not about Soft Skills, but about the whole Soft approach. The teacher should know psychology, be able to divide students according to their characteristics of perception of information and learning in general, and strive to reach everyone with various teaching methods, using various channels of information transfer: sound, visual and even non-verbal. The teacher must understand the individuality of the student and adapt to him, to his thinking, feeling, communicative characteristics, etc. As a result, we do not separate Hard and Soft Skills in teaching, but nevertheless we understand what Soft Skills are. These are skills that allow communication with the student at non-verbal, emotional levels, to make learning understandable, comfortable, personalized, for both sides of the learning process."
Urs Hauenstein: “Let's emphasize that we are talking about the future, about the world after the pandemic. We don't need Hard Skills or Soft Skills approaches. We need a holistic approach, which includes formal, informal and non-formal learning. It's better for us to talk about core competencies. We live in a new time and with new needs, but at the same time we must not forget about the past paradigms of education and about the lessons of the past. Talking about Hard Skills or Soft Skills is not enough. We must talk about the responsibility of fostering a new worldview, including reformatting curricula and plans. "
Julian Stanley: “I see a big problem here. We want to fit too much into curricula and programmes, thereby overloading learning. And we don't remove anything. In addition, we lost a lot of time during the pandemic. We can't just squeeze everything in and we must make some tough decisions to get rid of redundant parts of the curriculum – whether they are hard or soft. We cannot say that Hard Skills are difficult to teach or to learn and that Soft Skills are easy. I think that the boundary is shifting over time. I think that over time we can get better at teaching and learning skills that emerge from society and the economy but then, after a while, further new skills will emerge and we will have to learn how to teach and learn them as well…. "
Vitaly Kopnov summed up briefly: "To reason correctly in this area, we need a competent teacher, the right educational environment and an interesting motivating task for the student".
The answers to the feedback questions are very interesting. It can be seen from the answers that people (approximately 2/3) value having Soft Skills in work and in life, but not all (almost 1/3). Maybe we need to understand better why one third do not – just like we need to understand why some people do want to get vaccinated! This survey, of course, is not statistically significant, since it was conducted only among registered webinar participants.
We should recognise that a significant minority are not persuaded - we need to listen and understand and not just assume that 'we know best'.
So you prefer to combine together Literacy, Competency, and Character Quality under the Umbrella term "Skills21"