Позитивные изменения. Том 2, № 2 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 2 (2022)

In his works on soft skills, Heckman suggests relying on the taxonomy of personal qualities (character traits) used by psychologists dealing with personality development (Heckman, Kautz, 2012). These are the so-called "Big Five" personality traits include: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Russian translations, definitions, and descriptions of these terms can be found in Table

1. This table contains descriptions and explanations of all terms, because some of them do not have easy and unambiguous equivalents in Russian, and the Russian-language sources on soft skills often distort their meaning or inaccurately convey important nuances.

If the "Big Five" personality traits seem too hard to put into operational context, politicians come to the rescue. In 2016, for example, the World Economic Forum in Davos presented ten flexible skills of the future that professionals in every profession will need by 2020 (Gray, 2016):

1. Ability to solve complex (multi-faceted) problems.

2. Critical thinking.

3. Creativity.

4. Ability to manage people.

5. Ability to coordinate one’s action with other people.

6. Emotional intelligence.

7. Ability to form judgments and make decisions.

8. Service orientation.

9. Negotiating.

10. Cognitive flexibility.

In Russia, an even simpler model called 4C is used. The idea is there are four key competencies starting with «C» that every high school student needs to develop in order to meet the demands of the labor market in the future (Foxford.Media, 2019):

1. critical thinking — the ability to critically evaluate information coming from the outside, to analyze it and to check its validity, to see causal relationships, to discard the unnecessary and highlight the important, to draw conclusions;

2. creativity — the ability to think outside the box, to find spur-of-the-moment solutions to problems, to react flexibly to changes;

3. communication skills — the ability to communicate, convey one’s message, hear the others, negotiate;

4. coordination — the ability to work in a team, to take on both leadership and rank-and-file functions, to delegate tasks and monitor performance.

CAN THESE SKILLS BE TAUGHT AND EVALUATED?

Since soft skills are not purely skills, but also character traits, there is much debate in science and education about the extent to which character traits can be influenced or shaped, and how changes in these skills and personality traits can be measured.

Here we can rely on a specialized analytical report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2015). The report focuses on the role of social and emotional skills and presents the results of large-scale longitudinal studies spanning nine countries.

Here are some key findings of the study:

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.