IO 1 – Soft Skills Evaluation Report

The Soft Skills Evaluation Report is the resulting output of an extensive exploratory research involving all partners to the Playing 4 Soft Skills project. This research aims, on the one hand, at mapping out needs and perceptions in terms of transversal skills among students and teachers and, on the other, to identify the transversal skills that are most expected by employers and organisations. By comparing the outcomes of research from both these sampling populations, this process aims to identify the most relevant transversal skills perceived as needed by these target groups and generate a set of indicators in relation to each soft skill providing with an evaluating framework in order to assess participants progress.

The target groups of this research therefore involve:

• Students (aged 14-19) currently enrolled in vocational education and training (VET).
• Teachers currently working in the context of vocational education and training (VET).
• Employers and organisations representatives of the services sector.

Overall, the Soft Skills Evaluation Report will support the project in fulfilling the following objectives:

1. Identify the most relevant transversal skills perceived as needed by target groups and targeted by project activities.
2. Provide with a set of parameters in order to assess results of project outputs and activities in relation to each transversal skills identified.
3. Orientate the development process of the other project outputs (Soft Skills Game Manual, Training Notebook, Training App) in order to make them effective in addressing the soft skills identified and more suitable to meet needs and expectations of the project target groups.

The Soft Skills Evaluation Report aims to provide employers, teachers and other interested stakeholders with a guiding and informative tool in order to understand the relevance of transversal skills development and provide with a potential framework for evaluation, including relevant parameters and indicators. Considering soft skills’ cross-cutting nature and relevance in relation to any human activity, the findings of this Evaluation Report shall be relevant to anyone belonging to either a learning or professional context.