“Hard” and “Soft” Effectiveness in Schools
The idea of students learning “hard” and “soft” skills in school has gone viral among educators and policymakers in the past decade (see here and here). “Soft” skills refers to people skills of communication, sensitivity, and social awareness that permits students to collaborate with others and work smoothly inside and outside organizations. Here is one listing of such skills:
- Integrity
- Dependability
- Effective communication
- Open-mindedness
- Teamwork
- Creativity
- Problem-solving
- Critical thinking
- Adaptability
- Organization
- Willingness to learn
- Empathy
Measuring such skills in schoolchildren and youth is tough to do but work proceeds in developing instruments and metrics to do so (see here and here).
“Hard” skills refers to the technical proficiency children and youth acquire and use in different situations such as reading, writing, math, and operating electronic devices learned in and out of school. Measuring such skills has a long history of paper-and-pencil tests and real-life demonstration of skills and are readily available.
Now here is the segue I want to make from “hard” and “soft” skills to a conceptual level of determining school effectiveness by proposing “hard” and “soft” forms. I aim to expand the constricted definition of a “good” school that is judged effective now to one that has more to it than the familiar numbers used today.
“Hard” Effectiveness
This is the easy one to define. What measures policymakers, practitioners, donors, and parents use to judge a school today as “good,” “excellent,” “high performer,” “effective” or similar terms are easy to list: CONTINUE READING: “Hard” and “Soft” Effectiveness in Schools | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
