In education, there is a lot of focus on hard skills and it’s easy to see why. These skills – which are based on the acquiring of skills and knowledge – are easy to test and measure, and are essential to understanding the world around us. However, LinkedIn conducted a Global Talent Trend Report in 2019, which found that 92% of people who work in recruitment believed soft skills to be equally or more important than hard skills.
It’s a good few years before the students we are teaching will be joining the workforce – but it’s good to bear in mind that we need to pay equal attention to developing soft skills.
These include:
- Creativity
- Communication
- Leadership
- Collaboration
- Critical Thinking
- Adaptability
- Crisis management
The great news is that you will already be nurturing a lot of these skills in the classroom through activities like group work and experiential learning (our STEM activity boxes are great resources for this). But here are a few ideas if you need some inspiration:
- Q&A Sessions – schedule time for these at the end of class to promote critical thinking and communication skills.
- Note taking – assign a different child every day to take ‘minutes’ and read out to the class at the end of the lesson. This will give them the opportunity to develop skills in active learning, filtering information and public speaking.
- Problem solving activities – the STEM learning website has some great resources for this. These are a great starting point for crisis management skills.
- Use after school science/STEM Club to specifically focus on different soft skills in turn, as well as the students having fun.