The lack of soft skills competence among new university graduates is an issue and also a reason for unsuccessful job applications. University graduates who excel academically and have appropriate soft skills would stand a better chance of being employed. Students in public universities (PUs) need to be guided to acquire the relevant soft skills and need to have role models to be professionally and socially competent. They can actually learn much from their lecturers or educators as role models. In a recent qualitative exploratory study, 18 educators who were purposively selected from five PUs were individually interviewed to capture their understandings and conceptions of soft skills as part of their professional contribution to support the urge to foster and ensure the acquisition of soft skills among university students in Malaysia. This paper discusses and provides a glimpse into three PUs educators' understandings and conceptions of soft skills within their current professional context. Their thoughts on soft skills and their propositions of other possible skills that could be included as soft skills as well as soft skills that PUs' educators ought to possess, could provide early ideas and initiatives towards the construction of a 'soft skills framework' for PUs' educators. This framework could serve as guideline for educators in PUs to develop, facilitate and enhance soft skills among their students.

The use of proper and appropriate technology can help graduate students’ in developmental and constructive writing. The editing and refining processes involved in the writing can either be carried out individually or in small groups. These processes are helpful for novice education researchers to work on and build their research proposals. Their ability to organize information based on their reading of articles, as well as organizing the identified information systematically, is essential for writing a research proposal.A study was conducted to look at the thinking of graduate students on the use of a learning template that was developed by the researchers and used in the Research Methodology classes. This template, called the Organizing Article Review Template (OART), contains elements or focus to organize students' thinking and writing when they are reading research articles. A total of 34Master students, four Research Methodology course instructors, and 16 Master students’ Project Paper supervisors from the Faculty of Education of a public university in the North of Peninsular Malaysia were involved in the study entrenched within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The data for this qualitative study was obtained from semi-structured interviews with all the research participants and from students’ reflective writing. The findings of the study show the positive acceptance of students towards the use of templates to organize their reading of articles. The template trained them to focus on reading and selecting appropriate and relevant information in the articles. The use of technology tools such as computers, smart and android phones, as well as appropriate computer programs (for example Words, Excel, and Google docs) were very helpful in supporting the use of OART,which had contributed and helped them to further strengthened their process of writing the research proposals. Editing the components of the proposals was made more practical when using the OART to compare and contrast the identified information from the articles. This study contributes to the facilitation of Master’s students towards being more systematically organized in their thinking when quoting important information from the articles. The use of the OART had also aided them be more confident and critical in writing their research proposals.

Social workers must be competence with their helping skills and need to be guided to acquire relevant soft skills. Hence, Social Work students need to have significant role models that they can look up to in order to become professionally and socially competent. Within the formal Social Work Education at the higher institutions, they can actually learn much from their lecturers or educators as their role models. This paper discusses conceptualizations of the soft skills which educators, currently as well as in the years to come, would need in order to sustain their competence as educators. In an exploratory study recently carried out, a Social Work expert was asked to describe the experiences of and viewpoints on, soft skills as part of the professional socialization of Social Work educators to become professionally and socially competent. It is important to raise awareness of soft skills competencies among Malaysian Social Work educators to help them in assessing themselves, and identify where and how they could actively improve themselves as educators within the context of their workplace. Embedding the soft skills competencies into their career as social workers is assumed as one of the effective and efficient method of achieving both professional and social competence. The propose soft skills, perhaps, provide early ideas and initiatives towards the construction of a ‘soft skill-framework for Social Work educators’, which can serve as guideline when facilitating and guiding future qualified social workers in Malaysia.

Obesity is a health problem that threatens all aspects of human life. While rising rates of obesity involving adolescents do not show such a drastic increase, this problem should not be underestimated. In addition to grappling with the issue of adolescent development, adolescent obesity is also facing with the problem of physical health, social and psychological caused by obesity. If the issue is not addressed with appropriate intervention, obese adolescent will have the quality of life and well-being of poor and disrupt their functioning in society. Therefore, this paper will try to discuss about the health effects of psychological and social (psychosocial) experienced by obese adolescents based on the literature review and proposed interventions that can be used to help them.

Anxiety can arise due to various causes. Uncertainty and failure to anticipate any tragedy can induce fear differently among people. Flood tragedy may draw worries among those who had experienced it before. Anxiety is related with coping strategies to deal with it. One of the coping strategies is religious practice. This study is aimed to identify the level of religiosity and to explore the signs of anxiety among flood victims in Kubang Pasu district, Kedah. To meet the objectives, a total of 113 residents in Kubang Pasu, Kedah were purposively selected as respondents. The study found the religiosity level of most respondents is high. The study also found that flood victims show several signs of anxiety such as inability to relax, afraid of bad things happening, rapid heart rate, feeling not strong, fear, anxiety, worried and fear of death. They use religious practices such as reciting prayer, performing solat or reading the Qur’an to face the flood. In conclusion, Islamic practices can be used by victims when coping with any disasters, especially floods.