Soft Skills Development in Future Primary School Teacher’s Training

Abstract

The article deals with the importance of having soft skills nowadays. Through the analysis and synthesis of scientific and methodical sources, it was found that soft skills are flexible, sometimes non-special, acme competencies for the successful performance of professional duties. 
 The purpose of the article is to reveal the content and the conditions for soft skill development in the process of training future primary school teachers, in particular, during the Ukrainian language teaching methods.
 To reach the purpose of the article, a set of research methods was used: theoretical: analysis of linguistic, educational, psychological, and methodical literature on the problems; synthesis, generalization, comparison; studying the work experience of higher education institutions teachers, defining the conceptual apparatus of research; empirical: observation and analysis of pedagogical phenomena and processes, collective and individual conversations with the aim of identifying the main contradictions and shortcomings in the content, teaching methods to identify the problems of soft skills formation in the process of learning the Ukrainian language teaching methods.
 Results. It was determined that the term “soft skills” in the context of training a future primary school teacher is considered as a set of personal skills aimed at developing successful, productive learning of primary school pupils, the ability to communicate effectively with direct participants during the educational process (pupils) and indirect participants (colleagues, administration, pupils’ parents).
 It has been proven that the new communicative environment enables the productive organization of the educational process participants, encourages creativity by means of developing the potential of methodological techniques, and operations in the form of various documents (working materials) aimed at obtaining the information with a powerful didactic resource for studying professional courses. The analysis of the professional standard “Teacher of the primary school of a general secondary education institution”, which was developed on the basis of the working functions of a teacher and involves a review of attitudes towards professional qualities and changes in stereotypes of the professional development, made it possible to identify a number of soft skills that must be formed in accordance with teacher’s working functions.
 It has been found that soft skills include leadership qualities and the ability to work in a team, the ability to teach and negotiate, set and complete tasks, time management, purposefulness, effective communication skills, presentation skills, stress resistance, creativity and analytical abilities.
 The attention is focused on the communicative aspect of soft skills. An employee with strong interpersonal communication skills can formulate his needs and expectations from the team and environment and listen carefully to others. She/he should communicate with the participants of the educational process in such a way that everyone has the feeling that he was heard and understood, and even the refusal was done professionally, without leaving a residue of indifference and hostility. The exercises and tasks for forming soft skills during the course of Ukrainian language teaching methods are offered.
 Conclusions. The necessity of updating the content of educational programs and courses of the specialty 013 “Primary education” to further develop future primary school teachers’ soft skills is proven since their professional and personal success depends on soft skills formation.