Developing An Integrated Soft Skills Training Module For Teacher\ud Education Program In Malaysian Public Universities

This study was aimed to create an integrated soft skills teaching professional training module with competencies to\ud manage teaching in the classroom. There are very limited studies which focus on soft skills training in Malaysia. There\ud were four methods of data collection namely quantitative survey design, qualitative focus group interviews, in-depth\ud interviews as well as classroom observation. A total of 250 graduated teacher from 2010-2011 from Four-year Teaching\ud Professional Program were involved in the survey, four cycles of focus group interviews with 45 respondents, six times\ud of in-depth interviews with key informants and five cycles of classroom observations. Findings of this study indicated\ud there is a significant difference between the level of soft skills needed in the work place compared to soft skills gained\ud from the teaching professional program. Furthermore results revealed that there were quite serious identifies critical\ud areas and issues from the gaps which the teaching professional training needs to improve. With the findings obtained,\ud researchers created an integrated soft skills teaching professional training module. This training module has been tried out in the classroom setting however cannot be able to interview the teachers about the effectiveness of the training\ud module due to the constraints of time