This paper focuses on the training of selected soft skills among higher education students. The call for such focus was guided by the growing Graduate Employability (GE) demands from the 21st century industries and the trending competencies as documented in ‘The Future of Jobs Report 2018’ by World Economic Forum. In the investigation, the students’ perspective became central in interpreting the current instructional practices in the higher education institutes. The training of a selected set of soft skills based on the Critical Thinking Theory namely; analyzing, information seeking, logical reasoning and transforming knowledge, was the scope of the investigation. Central to the scope of the investigation is the respondents’ perceptions of their instructors’ instructional practices. Hence, a quantitative research design was chosen resulting in the administration of a set of questionnaire to 110 students in a selected faculty in one of the public universities in Malaysia. A descriptive statistical analysis was done in analyzing the data. The salient findings include a medium range of mean scores across the instructional practices of the instructors across the training of most of the soft skills as perceived by the respondents. Specifically, the instructors were seen to be average at training logical reasoning (M= 3.48) and transforming knowledge (M= 3.49). The instructors were perceived to be slightly better at training the respondents analyzing (M= 3.66) and information seeking (M= 3.74). Several recommendations were highlighted including the need for the instructors to be more comfortable with scientific data and language in promoting the training of transforming knowledge skill and to encourage research-based activities in promoting the training of logical reasoning. Based on the recommendations, it is expected that the instructors themselves could consider relevant innovations in their instructional practices as an effort to produce graduates with the identified soft skills. Additionally, policy makers and curriculum developers could also benefit from the findings of the present study.
Amiruddin, M. H., Ngadiman, N., Abdul Kadir, R., & Saidy, S. (2016). Review of soft skills of TVET trainees from the Malaysian Advanced Technology Training Center (ADTEC). Journal of Technical Education and Training (JTET), Vol. 8, No.1.
Best, J. W. (1989). Research in Education. 5th edition. Englewood Cliffs. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Bonekamp, L., & Sue, M. (2015). Consequences of Industry 4.0 on Human Labour and Work Organisation. Journal of Business and Media Psychology 6, Issue 1, 33-40. Retrieved from www.journal-bmp.de
Bota, O. A., & Tulbure, C. (2015). Aspects Regarding the Relationship Between Teaching Styles and School Results. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences (pp. 285 – 290). Elsevier Ltd.
Bowles, J. (2014). The Computerisation of European Jobs. Who Will Win and Who Will Lose from the Impact of New Technology onto Old Areas of Employment? Retrieved from http://www.bruegel.org/nc/blog/detail/article/1394-the-computerisation-of-europeanjobs/
Climatti, B. (2016). Definition, development, assessment of soft skills and their role for the quality of organisations and enterprises. International Journal for Quality Research 10(1) 97–130, doi: 10.18421/IJQR10.01-05
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Evaluating teacher effectiveness: How teacher performance assessments can measure and improve teaching. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.
Degang, M. (2010). Motivation toward English Language Learningof the Second Year Undergraduate Thai Students Majoring in Business English at English-Medium University. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Srinakharinwirot University. Retrieved from
http://thesis.swu.ac.th/swuthesis/Bus_Eng_Int_Com/Manusak_D.pdf on 5 Oct, 2019.
DeKay, S. (2012). Interpersonal communication in the workplace: A largely unexplored region. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(4), 449-452, doi:10.1177/1080569912458966.
Ennis, R. (2002). An outline of goals for a critical thinking curriculum and its assessment. Retrieved from http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/rhennis/outlinegoalsctcurasses3.html
Fraenkel, J., Wallen, N., & Hyun, N. (2012). How to design and evaluate research in education. New York: McGraw Hill.
Hasniza, N., & Tengku Faekah, T. A. (2016). Validation of a technological pedagogical content knowledge instrument in a Malaysian secondary school context. Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction, 13, 1–24. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1134505
Hove, G. (2011). Developing critical thinking skills in the high school English classroom. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Stout.
Ibrahim, R., Boerhannoeddin, A., & Bakare, K. K. (2017). The effect of soft skills and training methodology on employee performance. European Journal of Training and Development, doi: 10.1108/EJTD-08-2016-0066.
Ilhaamie, A. G. A., Rosmawani, C. H., & Yusoff, Y. M. (2018). The employability skills of Malaysian university students. International Journal of Modern Trends in Social Sciences, 1(3), 1–14. Retrieved from http://www.ijmtss.com/PDF/IJMTSS-2018-03-09-01.pdf
Junnaina, H. C., & Hazri, J. (2012). Factors Influencing the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) among TVET instructors in Malaysian TVET Institution. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 69, 1539–1547. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.12.096
Mahyuddin, R., Pihie, Z. A. L., Elias, H., & Konting, M. M. (2004). The incorporation of thinking skills in the school curriculum. Kajian Malaysia, XXII,2.
McGuire, L. A. (2010). Improving student critical thinking and perceptions of critical thinking through direct instruction in rhetorical analysis. Doctoral Dissertation, Capella University.
Moore, B., and Parker, R. (2007). Critical Thinking. New York: McGraw Hill.
Nor’ain, M. T., & Zarinawaty, N. A. K. (2014). Technological pedagogical content knowledge and teaching practice of mathematics trainee teachers. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1605, pp. 734–739). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4887681
Filzah, N. Z. (2016). TPACK Development in Teacher Education Programs: Malaysian Context. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 6(12), 237–244. https://doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v6-i12/2490
Parsons, T. L. (2008). Definition: Soft skills. Retrieved from http://searchcio. techtarget.com/definition/soft-skills
Partnership for 21st Century Learning. (P21). (2016). Framework for 21st century learning. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/about-us/p21-framework
Robles, M. (2012). Executive perceptions of the top 10 soft skills needed in today’s workplace. Business Communications Quarterly, 75(4), 453-465, doi:10.1177/ 1080569912460400
Schachter, R. (2012). Brave new world of teacher evaluation. District Administration, 43-47.
Scheffer, B. K., and Rubenfeld, M. G. (2000). A consensus statement on critical thinking in nursing. The Journal of Nursing Education, 39(8), 352-359.
Scot, T. P., Callahan, C. M., & Urquhart, J. (2009). Paint-by-number teachers and cookiecutter students: The unintended effects of high-stakes testing on the education of gifted students. Roeper Review, 31(1), 40-52. doi:10.1080/02783190802527364.
Seetha, N. (2014). Are soft skills important in the workplace? – A preliminary investigation in Malaysia. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, April 2014, Vol. 4, No. 4.
Shim, W. J., and Walczak, K. (2012). The impact of faculty teaching practices on the development of students’ critical thinking skills. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 24(1), 16-30.
Snyder, L. G., and Snyder, M. J. (2008). Teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. The Delta Phi Epsilon Journal. Vol 1 (2). pp 90-99.
Stronge, J. H., Ward, T. J., & Grant, L. W. (2011). What makes good teachers good? A cross-case analysis of the connection between teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(4), 339-355. doi:10.1177/0022487111404241.
Sulaiman, N. L. (2012). Incorporating critical thinking: teaching strategies in Malaysian Technical and Vocational Education Programmes, Doctoral Dissertation, Colarado State University.
Tee, M. Y., Samuel, M., Norjoharuddeen, M. N., Renuka, V. S., & Hutkemri. (2018). Classroom Practice and the Quality of Teaching: Where a Nation is Going? Journal of International and Comparative Education, 7(1), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.14425/jice.2018.7.1.17
Wang , M., Haertel, G., & Walberg , H. (1993). Toward a Knowledge Base for School Learning . Review of Educational Research, 249-294.
World Economic Forum. (2016). Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/reports/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2016-mastering-the-fourth-industrial-revolution
World Economic Forum. (2018). The Future of Jobs. Retrieved from
https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018
In-Text Citation: (Majid et al., 2020)
To Cite this Article: Majid, F. A., Zaini, M. H., Shafie, S., & Shafie, N. H. (2020). Soft Skills Instructional Practices: An Investigation from The Perspective of The Immediate Stakeholders. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 10(14), 44–54.
Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s)
Published by Knowledge Words Publications (www.kwpublications.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
