Dear all

Thanks very much to Len, Steve and others for your responses to Margaret's question. I'm especially grateful for the Urciuoli reference - that sounds like fascinating work.

I think it's important to challenge uncritical uses of terms such as 'skills' and 'soft skills'. I think the notion of 'soft skills' (usually associated with 'emotional intelligence') is particularly unhelpful and potentially harmful in obscuring or impeding (rendering less likely) discussions around how judgements about particular behaviours are built-in to the language of education and training. I think the key point is that such judgements, which often take no account of social context, become normalised through such shorthand uses. Judgements about tolerance, politeness and 'good' or acceptable behaviour or language use, for example, which do not take into consideration power differences in relationships between those from different social and ethnic groups, or those with widely differing social status; nor the contextual factors of the specific circumstances in which the behaviour occurs, are likely to result in a reinforcement of inequalities by rewarding the powerful or those who accede to their norms. A critical approach to LD work, or to higher education in general, implies finding ways to question taken-for-granted practices with the aim of exploring and improving them in terms of social justice and equity. In parallel to this, such an approach ( i.e. one which involves participants in critique) simultaneously promotes opportunities for students to make meaningful contributions to their classroom activities and their programmes of study - the epitome of 'active learning'.

Happy weekends all

John

-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rooney, Stephen G.
Sent: 25 September 2015 12:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is the term 'soft skills', as used in educational literature, a proper term or just slang and can we pin down its meaning ?

Hello all,

I also tend to agree that a more expansive focus on practices allows, as Len says, for the 'social and normative character' of these practices to be recognised and included within discussions about how such (contested) practices might be developed. Having said that, I also find often that when people refer to 'skills' they mean what I would understand as practices anyway.

I've recently come across the work of Bonnie Urciuoli. See, for example: Urciuoli, B. (2008) Skills and selves in the new workplace, American Ethnologist, 35(2), 211-228.

Urciuoli's work addresses the ways in which 'skills discourses' (including those around so-called 'soft skills') can be implicated within broader processes of instrumentalism and (self)commodification:

'The notion of 'worker-self-as-skills-bundle' (not only is the worker's labour power a commodity, but the worker's very person is also defined by the summation of commodifiable bits) is a social construction cumulatively produced by years of skills discourses in business and education.' (211)

I've found this stuff very challenging and helpful in reflecting on, and trying to think a way towards, a more critical approach to my own work as a learning and (more recently) educational developer.

All best,

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carina Buckley
Sent: 25 September 2015 11:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is the term 'soft skills', as used in educational literature, a proper term or just slang and can we pin down its meaning ?

Thank you Len, that's a really useful and thought-provoking dissection of some problematic terms.

I anticipate dealing with a lot of students this term in relation to their PDPs (another difficult term, subject of another email), and the idea of practices rather than skills is one I think that could be much more beneficial to them, and to me, in getting them to open out their articulation of what they are capable of, and how that is embodied in what they do.

Best wishes,
Carina

Dr Carina Buckley, SFHEA
Learning Skills Tutor | Solent Learning and Teaching Institute, ML002 Southampton Solent University | East Park Terrace | Southampton SO14 0RJ
T: 023 8201 3336 | E: [log in to unmask] www.solent.ac.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leonard Holmes
Sent: 25 September 2015 11:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is the term 'soft skills', as used in educational literature, a proper term or just slang and can we pin down its meaning ?

Dear Margaret

you are quite right to raise problems with the term 'soft skills'. However, I would question the notion that it may be possible, or useful, to 'pin down its meaning'.
Before even considering what might be the meaning, or probably meanings plural, of the two-word term it is necessary to consider what the term 'skills' might refer to and whether there is and can be a singular meaning. This requires the application of conceptual analysis methods, to avoid what Wittgenstein called the 'bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language'.
In my own work I have argued against the mainstream, usually unthinking, use of skills language in terms of a possessive-instrumentalist approach, ie skills as something acquired and possessed, then used in some form of performances. I have suggested that we should use the concept of practices, emphasizing the social and normative character. Skills may thus be thought of as serially-rehearsed practices.

The word 'soft' is also problematic. Its opposite, 'hard', is systematically ambiguous. Both are analogies - whatever skills are, they cannot literally be hard or soft. That then gives rise to possible discursive shifts, which is exactly what we see. 'Hard' can mean 'firm', 'stable', etc, as in 'hard rock', 'hard copy' etc. It can also mean 'difficult', as in 'hard work' etc. Applied to skill, 'hard' vs 'soft' can thus relate to the first meaning, so that 'hard skill' connotes those practices that are clearly definable, standardized, as in the case of the application of mathematical procedures etc; 'soft skill' then connotes those practices that are less well-definable, less easy to spell out in procedural terms, as is the case with the notion of 'interpersonal skills'. (NB Michael Argyle, who more-or-less coined this term, specifically says that he uses the term as an **analogy** with that of 'physical skills').

BUT ... the second meaning then connotes that 'soft skills' are easy, or easier than 'hard skills', thus lowering their status in educational terms. As they are 'easy', then anyone can teach them, they don't much effort to learn, etc. Anyone who has been involved in teaching, training and development work (or 'facilitating', to use another problematic notion) will know that this is the complete opposite of what is really the case. But the discursive, ie ideological shift happens 'behind our backs' as it were.

One standard method in philosophical analysis when analyzing concepts is to ask how we could continue to speak (talk, write) about some aspect of human activity if the problematic term (eg 'skills') and any equally problematic cognate terms were removed from our vocabulary. Let's try dropping the term 'skills' ('hard' and 'soft') from educational discussions and see how we then talk about the issues with which we are engaged.

best wishes

Len


-------------------------

Dr Leonard Holmes
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University of Roehampton | London | SW15 5PJ www.roehampton.ac.uk/staff/LeonardHolmes
Centre for Organizational Research

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________________________________________
From: learning development in higher education network [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of MACDOUGALL Margaret [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 24 September 2015 21:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Is the term 'soft skills', as used in educational literature, a proper term or just slang and can we pin down its meaning ?

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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

Tel:  +44 (0) 131 650 3211
Fax:  +44 (0) 131 650 6909
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