What are the most important skills for students to have before entering the workforce? It’s not necessarily factoring polynomials.
Put this question to a group of people working in K-12 education and they’re more likely to name a number of soft skills, such as adaptability and critical thinking.
That’s according to the responses Education Week received on social media when it posed that question. An informal LinkedIn poll conducted by Education Week found that among participants, nearly three-quarters listed adaptability as the most important skill graduates need. Around 15 percent selected “ability to focus,” and 9 percent said “empathy.”
Survey participants also listed additional skills in the comments section, such as resilience, punctuality, critical thinking, self-regulation, and a strong work ethic. All told, around 1,900 people participated in the LinkedIn poll.
This LinkedIn poll is not a nationally representative, scientific survey, but it does provide a snapshot of what people who work in K-12-related fields are thinking at a time when many are reevaluating what skills students need to function in a labor market where artificial intelligence and economic shifts are already changing many jobs.
Below is a sample of how some educators responded to Education Week’s query on LinkedIn and Facebook. To see more responses, go here.
- “Industriousness and the ability to learn from mistakes” will be essential skills for students entering the workforce, said an Ohio-based teacher on LinkedIn.
- “Listening, asking clarifying questions, and following directions,” said an educator on Facebook where EdWeek posted the same question.
- “Communication skills: written and oral,” said another teacher on Facebook from Tennessee.
- “As a former HS teacher, I’d say reliability and ability to stay off their phones is what they need most,” said a former teacher on LinkedIn from Nevada.
- “Perseverance and integrity,” said an educator on Facebook.
But those responses don’t necessarily mean technical know-how isn’t important. As one educator said on Facebook, students will need “creativity that knows no bounds and okay with criticism, but can also make nice with AI.”
American company executives and educators agree on many of the skills students need
Many of these responses align with what senior executives at major companies say they want to see in their future employees.
Education Week reached out to some of the nation’s biggest employers late last year to ask what social-emotional skills they view as essential for successful employees. Among them: relationship skills, self-control, curiosity, communication, teamwork, reliability, and problem-solving.
“The world of work is being fundamentally changed by AI,” Microsoft’s vice president of education, Paige Johnson, told Education Week. “However, the top skills required to navigate complexity and change remain uniquely human with emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility, and communication referenced as top skills leaders believe will be essential for employees in an AI-powered future.”
But when the EdWeek Research Center has surveyed educators about the quality of students’ soft skills, they have reported declines in some areas.
For example, 78 percent of educators said in a nationally representative February survey that their students’ ability to be independent—by directing their own learning and advocating for themselves—was lower than it was 10 years ago. And in another EdWeek Research Center survey last summer, 62 percent of teachers, principals, and district leaders said students’ ability to make and maintain appropriate eye-contact was worse than it was a decade ago.
How can schools address these workforce skills gaps? Some have found success using social-emotional learning to bolster students’ soft skills, although high schools can struggle to find ways to make it relevant to older students.
A majority of teachers, principals, and district leaders think social-emotional learning has some impact on their students’ development of soft skills, such the ability to communicate and think critically, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey from December.
Fifty-five percent said SEL had a somewhat positive effect on students’ soft skills, while 21 percent said it had a very positive effect.
But even as business leaders and educators say many of the skills taught through social-emotional learning programming are important to students’ success in the workforce, making it work at the high school level, when students are preparing to move into the world of jobs and careers, has proven difficult. There are fewer SEL curricula designed specifically for the developmental needs of middle and high school students, and with the demands of academics, high schools struggle to carve out time to devote to SEL.
“We do not have any more time in our schedule to add another thing to the plate of the teachers,” one educator told the EdWeek Research Center in its December survey. “Yes, SEL is important, especially because our students are not getting a lot of this at home. But we are also understaffed and we are overworked.”
