Identifying, developing and grading 'soft skills' in design and technology education: a methodological approach.

Abstract

Soft skills (Professional skills) complement hard skills to enhance an individual's relationships, job performance and career prospects. Strategically targeting the development of these skills requires the recognition of key qualities, the capacity to discriminate between qualities (Orsmond, Merry, & Reiling, 2000; Sadler, 2009) and a mechanism that will validly and reliability reward acquisition. Educators and learners must take cognisance of the sophisticated relationships between acquiring content knowledge and professional skills through specific ways of working and thinking. This research, which is part of a three year longitudinal project funded by the European Commission, frames the initial challenge of untangling Hard and Soft skills for the purpose of explicit development and assessment.