Why is non-formal learning an interesting issue?
In an educational culture where everybody is being measured on his or her knowledge, skills and competencies, it can be challenging to accentuate soft skills.
As an introduction to the project, it was described how young people in Europe are having hard time entering the labor market. In relation to that, it is necessary to ask how can it be such a challenge for these young people? Are they missing some key competences that are neglected by educational institutions? In a report mapping which skills the labor market finds most attractive, the following top four competencies are shown (Ballisager, 2015):
1. Flexibility (64%).
2. Understanding the business (50%).
3. Ability to create relationships (42%).
4. Self-management (40%).
This list confirms that students need more than specific knowledge about their discipline. Generally, students are expected to master skills directly to the specific discipline, e.g. mathematics skills, science skills or technical skills. Of course, these skills are needed as well, but maybe there is an unequally distributed attention to these hard skills. Especially the global labor market we are facing demands more competences with regard to soft skills. And maybe our educational institutions neglect this fact (Padhi, 2014). But, what are the reasons for the educational institutions’ strong attention on hard skills? Maybe, the educational institutions have a strong tradition for focusing on formal education and the hard skills? Or maybe the European educational culture more often supports the skills that originate from a specific discipline to a higher extend? Or maybe, it is simply just the fact that these hard skills are measured and assessed more easily than the soft skills (Padhi, 2014)? In an educational culture where everybody is being measured on his or her knowledge, skills and competencies, it can be challenging to accentuate the soft skills and the non-formal learning activities in advantage to the formal education and hard skills. However, no matter the reason why, it seems that the educational institutions neglect the soft skills – it is a fact that these competencies are at least just as important and useful as the hard skills to get in contact with the labor market. And that is exactly the reason why non-formal learning is an interesting issue, because through non-formal learning activities young people can obtain various soft skills and competencies.
References:
Ballisager: https://ballisager.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Rekrutteringsanalysen-2015_web.pdf
Padhi, P. K. (2014): Soft skills: Education beyond Academics. IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science. Volume 19, Issue 5. May 2014. PP 1-3
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