Soft skills, non-cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, life skills, are amongst some of the iterations of current efforts globally to shift the focus in our education systems to the development of these skills,... [ view full abstract ]
Soft skills, non-cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, life skills, are amongst some of the iterations of current efforts globally to shift the focus in our education systems to the development of these skills, especially amongst the most disadvantaged. Cognitive skills and cognitive development is no longer enough for sustainable development. Even the famous OECD’s PISA is about to launch its first report in April 2017 on non-cognitive skills. Most schools in the developed world have already shifted to a focus on the non-cognitive, however, developing countries still have a long way to go, and this includes, the largest developing country in the world, China. Among the most disadvantaged in China are those children and adolescents who have dropped out of school, and especially the many rural youth in China who move to cities to work with insufficient preparation or skills to enable them to successfully navigate a completely alien environment. For sustainable development, we must enable all our young people to develop these skills. This paper will focus on a large case study of an adolescent project for 30,000 out-of-school adolescents, facing multiple disadvantages, which sought to develop their life-skills. The project was implemented by China Association of Science and Technology, affiliated with MoE, China, with support by UNICEF
Key to the implementation of this project was the focus on professional development of the teachers. This paper will use the case study, conducted over five years from 2011-2015, and the literature on change theories and on-site and mentoring approaches to professional development, to explore efforts made to enable the teachers of the out-of-school adolescents to develop life skills. Firstly, focusing on the major task of changing teachers’ mindsets on the need for life-skills, secondly, developing their understanding of the rationale for using a variety of teaching strategies to develop their students’ life-skills, and thirdly, the different approaches used to develop the teachers’ expertise in using these strategies.
