In a technology-driven world, the value of human connection cannot be overstated. While acquiring technical skills is essential, students also need to develop soft skills such as communication, collaboration, and critical thinking to thrive beyond the classroom. But with increasing pressure to deliver future-proof curricula, how can educators ensure that students develop these important life skills alongside technical expertise? Or?
To explore the role of soft skills in student success and how schools can foster them, EdSurge spoke with: Patrick KeeneySenior Director of Product Management and Partnerships for Career and Technical Education (CTE) McGraw Hill School. Mr Keeney argues that as the workforce continues to change, it is more important than ever to equip students with soft skills that can be applied to any career path.
EdSurge: How do you define soft skills? Are there established standards for soft skills in education?
Keeney: People take pride in their technical skills and like to showcase them as a competitive differentiator in their careers. In contrast, soft skills are less specialized. These are everyday skills we need to succeed and contribute to our communities, such as communication, problem solving, collaboration, and empathy, all of which are important.
Soft skills are also mentioned in national and state standards related to career education and in typical school district policies. For example, students are expected to attend on time and behave appropriately. These are soft skills.
Although soft skills are treated at a cursory level, they are not emphasized as being critical to students’ future roles and identities, especially compared to technical skills. Social and emotional learning is more like a soft skill, and while important, it’s not necessarily career-related. The two skill sets intersect, but they are not identical.
As a result, there is a wide gap between students’ achievement of soft skills upon graduation from high school and what they need to succeed as happy contributors to society.
Why are career and technical education particularly suitable for developing soft skills?
In the United States, it is important to address socio-economic challenges, and one of the most valuable solutions is to ensure that all high school graduates are aware of their next steps, such as college, the workforce, or military service. That’s it. Millions of middle- and high-paying jobs remain unfilled due to a lack of workers with the right skills, while people living in poverty may fill these roles. Increasing emphasis on and funding for career education to address these challenges is perhaps the most important academic movement we can undertake.
Career education is a place to acquire soft skills substantially important. Punctuality is very important in a career setting, as is how you present yourself. Students are generally unfamiliar with the concept of personal branding, and their online presence may not align with their future goals. These skills are not inherently known, but they can be taught, practiced, and mastered.
What are effective strategies for incorporating soft skills into curriculum and instruction?
If you keep the end in mind and imagine what your students should be like as high school students, college graduates, or their third year in the profession after high school, you can begin to imagine how your curriculum might need to change. can. Focus groups with teachers revealed that having separate soft skills classes is not the answer. Instead, we approach CTE soft skills by incorporating practice into daily, weekly, and monthly student activities. For example, in a middle school program, career exploration incorporates real-world, industry-specific soft skills exercises such as applied mathematics, graphics literacy, and reading comprehension.
Career technical student group (CTSO) like FFA, NTHS, hosa, skills usa and big Hundreds of thousands of students participate each year. National conferences and competitions, such as the SkillsUSA event in Atlanta, where 10,000 students compete in approximately 100 different disciplines, provide concrete examples of what students with well-developed soft skills look like. Masu. These events repeat several times a year in different organizations. With the end goal in mind, these organizations and the students they benefit serve as models for the goals we seek to achieve.
How does project-based learning support the development of soft skills?
Project-based learning (PBL) inherently infuses soft skills into its DNA and can be an effective methodology for teachers and students in any classroom, not just career education. PBL can be viewed as a learning-related project or a way for students to solve real-world problems. In both cases, students must use soft skills such as communication, collaboration, and presentation. Not all students are good at all soft skills, so collaboration is key.
Compared to individual multiple-choice tests, project-based learning provides authentic opportunities that reflect real-life experiences. Answers common student questions: “Where do I use this?” By demonstrating practical application of knowledge.
What resources and support do teachers need to effectively incorporate soft skills instruction into their classrooms?
For project-based learning, a small but important adjustment is to provide teachers with a rubric that evaluates not only the performance of the project, but also the quality of student interactions during the project. Furthermore, it is very important to build a curriculum that includes significant reflection and feedback, as this is fertile ground for developing soft skills. You can support this process by providing role models, examples, and simulations.
Evaluation can take many forms. [evaluations in] Project-based learning, simulation, and scenario-based testing. At McGraw Hill, our team members are dedicated to incorporating soft skills activities into career education courses and providing powerful support materials to CTE educators from unique and diverse backgrounds. For example, the following digital teaching guide career exploration It features presentation materials, discussion prompts, pre-written assessments, question banks, and project-based learning resources for teachers to deliver content in a pedagogically relevant way.
As curriculum providers, we need to do more to support teachers with soft skills. In an ideal world, we would have a technological environment with a standard hierarchy that reflects skills. My hope is that one day there will be a system that allows all teachers, everywhere, to measure and track student growth in these areas and act on that data with appropriate support.
