An exploration on how to assess soft skills and development of a framework of rubric for pre-service teachers in teacher education program.\ud

Education process is about adding values that are critical and demanding to the human capital. Since soft skills are one of the value to be added through educational process, studies on soft skills are crucial and necessity. The key challenge of the teacher education today is building knowledge-based and skilled workforce for the future. Soft outcomes are outcomes from training, support or guidance interventions after individuals undergoing educational and occupational training. Soft outcomes have been seen as difficult to measure (Butcher and Marsden, 2004). Unlike hard outcomes, soft outcomes cannot be measured directly or tangibly.In addition, there is no studies have been carried out on how to assess soft skills. Currently, a framework of rubrics is urgently needed to measure the soft skills of pre-service teachers so that they will be well equipped before entering in to teaching profession. A better understanding on assessing soft skills is required by educators as well as the soft skills acquired at teaching education is therefore useful. Hence, the purpose of this study is to develop a framework of rubrics to measure three major soft skills namely communication skills, critical thinking and problem solving skills. An exploratory research design by utilizing mixed mode\ud method to a total of 100 Bachelor of Art with Education students of 2014/15 academic session as research sample will be employed. The developed rubrics will provide educators to assess the mastery level 01 communication, critical thinking and problem solving skills throughout the teacher education training program so that teacher educators will find ways of solution to improve those skills during their teaching training program. In order to ensure knowledgeable teachers who possessed soft skills, higher education institution need to develop a framework of rubric specifically on communication, critical thinking and problem solving skills to produce a holistic human capital.\ud \u