Pedagogical Strategies for the Development of Soft Skills of Schoolchildren in After Class Education

The study presents the set of pedagogical strategies for the soft skills development and the results of the model implementation of the profiled pedagogical class within the framework of after class education model as a part of the experiment of professional pedagogical education enhancement within the strategic mission of continuous teacher education in the Kaliningrad region. The curriculum for profiled classes, and the description of the implemented approaches, methods and techniques are proposed. Recommendations on how to integrate soft skills into the curriculum, how to develop them using the appropriate pedagogical strategies of orientation, interaction and support, and finally, how to evaluate them are given. Three main components in the development of soft skills among students of the pedagogical class are distinguished, being the blocks of the development of cognitive abilities, the development of activity abilities, and the development of personal abilities. The assessment of the results of the project is conducted after the implementation of the two-year programme. The results are obtained with a set of the diagnostic tools, being a sociability assessment method, expert assessment of the cohesion of the study group, a technique for diagnosing an interactive personality orientation, a method for diagnosing motivational orientation in interpersonal communications, an adapted questionnaire on the styles of thinking, and a technique for diagnosing personal creativity. The results make it possible to conclude that the proposed model can be successfully replicated and implemented in the context of pedagogically oriented education for schoolchildren