Assessing the soft skills needs of teacher education students

Abstract

The current study was undertaken to assess the soft skills needs of student teachers at Kuwait University, which led to the authors developing a two-part Likert-type questionnaire. The first part covered 49 soft skills categorized into five skills dimensions: employability, study, social, self-control, and problem-solving. The second part included five different approaches to acquiring soft skills. The results reveal that the medium-high level of need among the respondents for all 49 soft skills and their preference for all 5 acquisition approaches. These findings in the Kuwaiti context correspond to those of similar studies conducted in different locations, which indicates geographical consistency in the soft skills needs of college students. It is thus recommended that future research should focus on investigating the most effective approaches to acquiring soft skills.