POWER OF NON-COGNITIVE ABILITIES

 

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Teachers are usually committed professionals whose challenge is to plan learning process so that it makes the biggest possible difference to students’ learning and progress. There are numerous issues that have to be taken into consideration, like structure of the course, goals to achieve, scientific content, assessment or the planned workload. However, success in the world of employment is strongly connected with so called soft skills, by which we understand social and emotional abilities. Unfortunately, they are often forgotten in syllabuses and curriculums. In fact, the sooner they are presented and trained, the more profitable it will be for our students. Soft skills will help to open mind, become ready to adapt to new environments and overcome obstacles.

One of the first people dealing with soft skills was Dale Carnegie in 1930’s in his book How to win friends and influence people? (Carnegie,1936). It was a self-help book which became a bestseller with over 30 million copies sold all over the world. In spite of the fact that the rules mentioned by Carnegie have been known and applied by human resource managers for years, very few formal courses embrace them in education programmes.

It is not enough to design class activities so that some interpersonal training would be there. Soft skills should also be included in any curriculum. Syllabus is one of the first means of written contact between educators and students. It is especially important in on-line courses where a syllabus is a part of introduction and it informs what is required in a course. Placing interpersonal abilities among objectives to be achieved can become a motivating factor to obtain skills so important in students’ future life and career aspirations. There numerous non-cognitive skills that should be involved in teaching programmes.

The first one is active listening. Giving attention to what other people say, not asking questions at inappropriate times, taking time to understand the points being made are needed in the world visually polluted by screens surrounding us everywhere. Research shows that students using laptops have a worse understanding than those taking hand-written notes. (The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking, Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer)

Critical thinking can be defined as evaluating the validity and relevance of information. It improves other important abilities like problem solving and decision making. There is a range of strategies for promoting critical thinking, including case study, cooperative learning, written assessments and others. Each should be designed to force students to think about the particular situation and later present a critical report.

According to the World Health Organization, depression is the main cause of health problems. It is linked to stress and researchers claim that personal resilience is crucial to diminish the suffering from conditions like anxiety and depression (The psychobiology of depression and resilience to stress, Steven M Southwick, M Vythilingham, D Charney). Emphasizing the importance of mistakes in achieving success and dividing big tasks into manageable steps can be helpful. High resilience not only helps in social and emotional contacts but it also improves academic performance.

I have mentioned only three important skills which should appear in plan of any course. There are many others: self-monitoring and self-improvement, ability of cooperation, leadership skills or ethics. All of them are useless without practice, and they cannot be developed unless we learn to collaborate with each other every single day. That is why it should be highly recommended to include them in any syllabus or curriculum.