Soft Skills Integration in Teaching Professional Training: Novice Teachers’ Perspectives

Abstract

This paper is part of a bigger research project and focuses on issues related to soft skills and teaching professional training. The research project is on developing an integrated soft skills training module for teacher education program in Malaysian Public Universities. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of soft skills that has been integrated in teaching professional training from the novice teachers' perspectives. The issues of unemployment and lack of quality among teachers are associated with the notion that teachers have not adequately acquired employability skills and soft skills during their training in universities. At the preliminary stage, 15 novice teachers who have graduated from five identified public universities for not more than three years were interviewed. There are a total of three focus group interview cycles. The interview protocol consists of seven soft skills are: communication, critical and problem solving, team work, life-long learning and management of information, entrepreneurship, ethics, moral and professional, and leadership. The findings showed that six out of seven soft skills were perceived as important and relevant to their teaching tasks except entrepreneurship skill. However, these novice teachers were concerned about the insufficient soft skills acquired from teaching training in order to support them in their work place. Since soft skills are important prerequisite in shaping an individual's personality, therefore it is recommended that teacher educators should utilize the integrated soft skills training module during teaching professional training.

Lecturers’ Experiences in Teaching Soft Skills in Teacher Profession Education Program (Tpep) in Indonesia

“…Giving self-duty or individual project was a method used by the lecturers to train the attitude of self-reliance and responsibility of TPEP students. This was very reasonable because integrating soft skills into the curriculum did not mean that there was a new topic added in the teaching curriculum, rather the soft skills that would be trained could be embedded in tasks or projects related to existing subject matters (Tang, Yunus, & Hashim, 2015). For a teacher, independence and a sense of responsibility were things that needed to be demonstrated in performing his or her tasks at school.…”

“…The acquisition of soft skills is important for pre-service teachers, especially to make their pedagogical practices effective. However, the facts have shown that soft skills possessed by teachers were still low (Fadli & Irwanto, 2020;Tang, Yunus, & Hashim, 2015). The low proficiency of the teachers' soft skills is often demonstrated by the less effective learning management performed by the teachers.…”

Pre-Service Teacher Preparedness for Fostering Education for Sustainable Development: An Empirical Analysis of Central Dimensions of Teaching Readiness

“…The level of individual achievement is assessed through self-evaluation [45]. The study conducted by Ngang et al (2014) showed that teachers recognise the importance of soft skills in the teaching profession, but at the same time feel insufficiently prepared in this regard [46].…”

Developing Soft Skills in Veterinary Students in the ESP Class: Teaching Approaches and Strategies

“…The universities introduce soft skills components and integrate them into syllabus. In the veterinary carrier, along with specific skills, veterinarians need to have communicative competence, critical thinking, visual thinking, team working, ICT skills, social intelligence, intercultural abilities [1,2]. Stand-alone subjects provide students with opportunities to develop soft skills on a formal base.…”