Quality Teaching: Relationship to Soft Skills Acquisition

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between soft skills acquired by teachers towards their quality teaching. Teacher quality has a direct impact in influencing students' interest, commitment and achievement. A total of 190 teachers from three High Performing Primary Schools in Penang, Malaysia were selected as research respondents. This study employs the quantitative method to collect data by using a research instrument which is a questionnaire consisted of 76 items. The results showed that High Performing School teachers possessed these four components of soft skills, namely teamwork/collective work skills (mean = 3.42, SD = 0.39), communication skills (mean = 3.29, SD = 0.39), critical thinking and problem solving skills (mean = 3.21, SD = 0.37) and leadership skills (mean = 3.20, SD = 0.45). Furthermore, overall soft skills (mean = 3.28, SD = 0.36) as well as quality teaching (mean = 3.22, SD = 0.35) are at high level. Pearson correlation analysis indicated that soft skills acquired (r = 0.61, p<.01) and the other three components, namely critical thinking and problem solving skills (r = 0.64, p<.01), teamwork/collective work skills (r = 0.60, p<.01) and leadership skills (r = 0.51, p<.01) are significantly and positively associated with quality teaching. Findings also revealed that critical thinking and problem solving skills, teamwork/collective work skills are significant predictors which contributed 40.3 percent and 3.5 percent of variances on quality teaching respectively. In conclusion, soft skills must be imparted to the teachers in order to create quality and effective teaching practice. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.