The Perception of Teacher Educators on Developing Soft Skills among Prospective Teachers

Soft skills are personal traits that enhance a person’s job performance, and career viewpoints. Soft skills are considered to boost competency and consequently upsurge one’s ability to subsidize communal progression and transformation. (Chondekar, 2019). Developing soft skills has become as necessary as hard skills for 21st-century prospective teachers. Soft skills cover proficiencies such as communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, life-long learning and management of information, teamwork, leadership, ethics morals, and professionalism. The main objective of this study is to examine the perception of teacher educators regarding the development of soft skills in pre-service teacher education. This study was carried out through a survey research design. A total number of 212 teacher educators were taken as the sample through stratified random sampling. In line with the research objective, the data gathered through the questionnaire was based on soft skill classification: Personal skills, Management skills, and Social skills. The participant responses to the five-point items were quantitatively analyzed. The findings of this study revealed that more than 60% of teacher educators strongly agree with the notion that more attention should be paid to the development of soft skills for prospective teacher training in the 21st century. Further, 57% of the sample strongly agreed that soft skills directly influence the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process, while 40% responded with their agreement with that idea. 90% mentioned that a teacher’s soft skills have a direct bearing on her personality traits. Further, 52.8% strongly agreed with the statement that the development of soft skills of interns helps them solve problems they face at school. Besides, the study revealed that 93.8% of respondents had shown positive responses saying that there should be more weightage for soft skills in the code of ethics of teachers. When inquiring about the teacher educators’ perception of the importance of soft skills, there was a significant difference among them in terms of the National Colleges of Education they serve. Suggestions were made based on the findings to pay more attention to soft skills in the process of prospective teacher training, which should be appropriate for the 21st century, and to integrate soft skills into the NCoE curriculum.