Teaching “soft skills” to university students in China: the feasibility of an Australian approach

Abstract

Globally, universities are increasingly seeking to equip their graduates with specific “soft” skills to complement traditional “hard” skills so they can function in a rapidly changing and dynamic world. While hard skills are relatively straightforward to define and foster the same cannot be said for soft skills, despite the latter being increasingly acknowledged as equally, if not more, important. This paper assesses the feasibility of an Australian wellbeing course in the context of explicit soft skills training at one Chinese university in a pilot with 29 second-year students. Using an exploratory mixed-methods design, quantitative impact measures were collected before and after the intervention to complement qualitative workshop evaluations. Results clearly show that participants found both the content of the training as well as the participatory social learning approach relevant and acceptable. The training had a statistically significant positive impact on the assessed human qualities soft skills outcomes. Implications of the findings for the current interest in training Chinese university students in the spirit of innovation and enterprise are highlighted.

Keywords:

• Sustainable development challenges
• soft skills
• human qualities
• well-being
• leadership
• innovation and entrepreneurial training

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the following for their support: the study participants, Wang Xiaosen, Katrina Keith, Marion Heyeres and ‘High End Foreign Expert of State Administration Award’, Liaoning Province Government and Shenyang University of Chemical Technology to support Komla Tsey as visiting scholar in China.