Позитивные изменения. Образование. Школа будущего (Тематический выпуск, 2022)/Positive changes. Education. The school of the future (Special issue, 2

Children need a balanced set of cognitive, social, and emotional skills to achieve positive outcomes in life. Cognitive, social and emotional skills all play an important role in improving economic and social outcomes in people’s lives. At the same time, social and emotional skills interact with cognitive skills, mutually enriching each other and thus further increasing the likelihood of the children achieving positive outcomes as adults.

Teachers and parents can help improve children's social and emotional skills by building their relationships with children and using hands-on learning techniques.

Contrary to popular misconception, children are not born with a fixed set of abilities. Teachers and parents can play a role in children’s development. Strong parent-teacher-child relationships and the use of real-life examples and hands-on experiences while learning are some of the most efficient approaches to building the sense of independence, responsibility, teamwork skills, and self-confidence in children.

Since “skills breed skills", early exposure to social and emotional skills may have a greater effect. Social and emotional skills are more flexible between early childhood and adolescence. Early «investment» in the development of the child’s social and emotional skills is especially important because these skills develop gradually based on past «investments» in them. In addition, people with higher levels of social and emotional skills (e.g., self-confidence and perseverance) are likely to benefit more from further investment in cognitive skills (e.g., math and science lessons).

Social and emotional skills can be reliably measured across cultural or linguistic boundaries. Social and emotional skills can be reliably measured for different age groups within cultural and linguistic boundaries. This includes personality self-assessment, behavioral qualities and objective psychological tests. Some of these indicators predict a variety of success factors in education, the labor market, and society as a whole.

SOFT SKILLS IN RUSSIAN EDUCATION: THE BEGINNING OF THE CONVERSATION

Having identified the range of skills and character traits that can be classified as soft skills, and having made sure that the development of these skills in children can be influenced and measured, we offer a brief look at how Russian schools see the teaching of such skills. To begin with, we must say that the Federal State Educational Standards (FGOS) actually take soft skills into account. For example, the FGOS of basic general education (grades 5–9) states that the following must be provided in the course of education:

• development of personal qualities necessary for solving everyday and unconventional tasks in order to adequately orient oneself in the surrounding world;

• shaping a culture of lifelong learning and self-development;

• personal development of the students, including civic, patriotic, spiritual, moral, aesthetic, physical, labor, environmental education, and recognition of the value of scientific knowledge.

However, education experts agree that both the FGOS and schools working under the traditional educational model do not venture beyond simply declaring the importance of teaching the above-mentioned qualities. That is why we invited representatives of alternative schools and experts in alternative education to talk about soft skills.

Yaroslava Kabanova, director of ILI school (St. Petersburg), says the need for soft skills is widely recognized in Russian education today, including in the Ministry of Education; all modern schools are trying to pay attention to these skills. You can hear soft skills being talked about at every education conference: "Everyone talks about it incessantly and implements it as best as they can. Implementation is the biggest issue. Everybody understands how important soft skills are, but few realize how they can be implemented and taught.”

Let’s focus now on a few conceptual issues related to the topic of soft skills reported by experts.

Why is there so much talk about soft skills today?