Soft skills centrality in graduate studies offerings

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4097124
AutoresMaria Del Pilar Garcia-Chitiva (0000-0001-6776-3422, Institute for the Future of Education, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, MEXICO, autor correspondente), Javier Correa Correa (0000-0002-0301-5641, School of Business Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, México)
Ano2024
Volume49
Fascículo6
Páginas956-980
Data de publicação2024-06-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoStudies in Higher Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0307-5079 • E-ISSN: 1470-174X
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03075079.2023.2254799
OpenAlexW4387186819
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas66

Is it possible to measure how critical soft skills like leadership or teamwork are from the viewpoint of graduate studies offerings?This paper provides a conceptual and methodological framework that introduces the concept of a bipartite network as a practical way to estimate the importance of soft skills as socio-emotional abilities trained in graduate studies.We examined 230 graduate programs offered by 49 higher education institutions in Colombia to estimate the empirical importance of soft skills from the viewpoint of graduate studies offerings.The results show that: (a) graduate programs in Colombia share 31 soft skills in their intended learning outcomes; (b) the centrality of these skills varies as a function of the graduate pro-gram, although this variation was not statistically significant; and (c) while most central soft skills tend to be those related to creativity (i.e.creation or generation of ideas or projects), leadership (to lead or teamwork), and analytical orientation (e.g.evaluating situations and solving problems), less central were those related to empathy (i.e.understanding others and acknowledgment of others), ethical thinking, and critical thinking, posing the question if too much emphasis on most visible skills might imply an unbalance in the opportunities to enhancing other soft skills such as ethical thinking

Analytical skill · Centrality · Creativity · Critical thinking · Empathy · Higher education · Management · Mathematics education · Medical education · Political science · Soft skills · Teamwork · E-Learning and Knowledge Management · Innovation, Sustainability, Human-Machine Systems · Psychology · Social Psychology