Dear Colleagues

I would like to open up a discussion concerning the use of the term ‘soft skills’ in educational literature.  I sense that there appears to be both some uncertainty about the  correct meaning of the term and that there is a tendency to assume that it is not a proper educational term, given that, frequently, it is parenthesized with single quotes (as though to indicate it is slang).  

One interpretation of the term is as a synonym for “personality traits” or “character skills” (http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc292b.pdf). Another is as a synonym for non-cognitive traits or non-cognitive skills.

However, Gutman and Schoon (https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/Non-cognitive_skills_literature_review_2.pdf

) provide the following advice:

‘It is important to note that discussion of non-cognitive skills is complicated and contested. There is little agreement even on whether ‘non-cognitive skills’ is the right way to describe the set of issues under discussion, and terms such as ‘character skills’, ‘competencies’, ‘personality traits’, ‘soft skills’ and ‘life skills’ are also widely used. The term ‘non-cognitive’, furthermore, highlights an erroneous distinction between cognitive and noncognitive factors. As Borghans and colleagues note (2008), “few aspects of human behaviour are devoid of cognition” (Borghans, Duckworth, Heckman, & ter Weel, 2008, p. 974). However, in the following report, we use the term “non-cognitive skills” to maintain consistency with previous research.’

My original source for the term ‘soft skills’ was Cole P. 2007. School curriculum for the 21st century: A rough guide to a national curriculum. Curriculum Perspect 27(2):6–11. Cole illustrates the intended meaning of this term by means of the content “such as the ability to synthesise ideas and information to arrive at new conclusions, to generate fresh and original ideas, to identify problems and problem solve, to work in teams, to manage complex projects, to be empathetic and tolerant, and so forth”  From these illustrations, it is clear that ‘soft skills’ can involve cognition and therefore should not be described as non-cognitive.

Two questions remain, therefore. Firstly, is ‘soft skills’, as used in the educational literature, a proper term or just slang and secondly, can we pin down its meaning?

What do you think, colleagues? (It would greatly help this discussion if those who kindly contributed kept strictly to the context of education, as I appreciate that distinctions between hard and soft occur in other disciplines, not to mention among cheeses!)

Best wishes

Margaret

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Dr Margaret MacDougall
Medical Statistician and Researcher in Education
Centre for Population Health Sciences

College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Teviot Place
Edinburgh EH8 9AG

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