Why educators have a role to play in developing learner soft skills
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Jason Gregory, International Director, UK BTEC & Apprenticeships at Pearson, says that educators need to provide the framework for learners to hone their soft skills on the go, as industry requirements are changing rapidly in the modern world of work. This is a challenge for the teaching of technical, hard skills because they tend to have a shorter shelf life in today’s climate. Whereas soft skills – i.e. people skills, collaboration skills, attitudes and attributes – are evergreen and work to serve current and future workers well in the pursuit of professional progression.
Jason notes that employers expect learners to demonstrate proficiency in the aforementioned three key areas; however, as Jason notes, the reality is these skills are missing from the talent pool.
“We're increasing now in our own research and really seeing that virtually every job role now has some form of digital skills requirements, some information technology (IT) skills, as well. So, it’s about ensuring that we understand what the future, digital skills required for each of those job roles are to ensure the pedagogy is cutting-through.
“Employers are asking for these skills and are saying they’re missing from people coming out of education institutions. We need to have a well-rounded future skills package that covers the technical, digital, data and people skills elements.”
Jason says that in order to assist learners in developing learner knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values as it pertains to future skills is clear: adopt some more applied experiential learning methodologies and pedagogy. He adds that integrated learning is extremely valuable here, too, and it’s an initiative that Pearson assumes with its education partners.
“If you have a problem-solving task at hand, how you best learn to develop and hone the skills and attitude required to handle that task, is to apply that learned behaviour to a real-life scenario and task. For example, if you’re an engineer, you should be applying problem-solving skills to a particular task that you would do as an engineer in your real-life workplace environment.
“This really is what we do to help train teachers to adopt this experiential applied learning approach and problem-solving pedagogy, and then we create assignments and scenarios in our courseware that helps enable the application of those attitudes. I think that’s a real key aspect which sits within our BTEC methodology of teaching and learning, as well. It’s moving away from that didactic to more academic teaching and applied learning.”
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Future skills are important to career progression for learners and educators
There needs to be a focus on making sure that the future skills taught in education institutions are relevant to the workplace, which Jason notes is a critical proposition for established economies, but it’s even more critical for emerging economies, such as Thailand and Vietnam, as we enter the fourth industrial revolution. He adds that educators should also adopt the ‘always learning’ mindset he urges learners to embody, as to ensure their future skills are up to date, too.
“It’s important for learners in fast moving economies, like Thailand and Vietnam, because industries are evolving so fast and a lot of those industries are manufacturing and electronics. In these sectors, there is an increasing amount of automation, so to enter a role and to progress your career in these types of industries requires up-to-date future skills. Educators have an important role to play here.”
In his work partnering with industry to understand their workforce requirements, Jason says that there are correlations with Pearson’s research around the importance of flexibility and adaptability and what industry is experiencing.
“In the experience I have visiting manufacturing plants in Thailand, it's clear that the owners felt it was a challenge because their workers were great at operating certain machinery, but if that machinery went wrong, they didn't know what to do to fix it, so the problem-solving skill is critical here. It’s about having those adaptable skills, as well, which enables a much more flexible workforce.”
Do-it-yourself (DIY) learning is becoming a global trend and educators need to empower learners to take learning outside of the classroom’s four walls
For Jason, educators need to think beyond the traditional, physical classroom arena and discover ways to provide access to learning opportunities. In other words, the key point is here is to leverage digital to increase the access to learning for all demographics.
“Blended learning and teaching works to provide access to a wider proportion of the population, and that has a positive impact on the traditional classroom to be a more interactive space, too. And the other variable here is for educators to adopt a more learner-centric approach to their pedagogy. So, this is to really get students to take ownership of their learning, which is integral to the notion of DIY learning.”
Jason says that even if educators provide sufficient access to learning but if their cohort’s mindset isn’t aligned to the philosophy, then there remains work to be done to articulate the value of taking ownership of their learning journey.
"An example is that here at Pearson, particularly with our BTEC qualifications, we’re facilitating that independent study approach and ownership of your learning journey, which is quite different to academic learning. The core part of the philosophy is to adopt a more learner-centric teaching approach. With that, we’re seeing learners adopt that mindset of taking ownership of their learning journey and ultimately succeed as part of a wider do-it-yourself education strategy.”
