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

Among the much more recent findings is information from Google, which analyzed data on the hiring, career development and dismissal of its employees between 1998 and 2013. The study showed that technical knowledge and skills in the respective field ranked last among the eight most important qualities of the best Google employees. All the seven more important success factors were represented by social skills: being a good mentor; good communication and listening skills; ability to understand others (including recognition of others’ values and perspectives); empathy and support for one’s peers; ability to think critically and solve problems; and ability to establish linkages between complex ideas (Strauss, 2017).

WHAT ARE SOFT SKILLS?

The term "soft skills” lacks a clear definition in Russian or in English language. In fact, even though the term "soft skills" prevails, the concept can be described using different names, such as common skills or core skills. This includes skills, abilities, and personality traits that are important and needed in any profession, as well as generally in every person’s life. Typically, soft skills include critical thinking, problem-solving ability, ability to speak in public, work in a team, be a leader, creative thinking ability, and so on. Soft skills are hard to measure, unlike hard skills, that is, knowledge and skills in specific areas and professions.

James Heckman, Nobel Prize winner in economics, dedicated a lot of time to education research, including that in vocational training. He showed that high IQ level only increases a person’s chances of financial success by 1–2 %. Instead, soft skills like conscientiousness and diligence, perseverance, and self-discipline are more likely to lead to financial success (Faye, 2016).

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: