Proceedings of The 6th International Conference on Research in Teaching and Education
Year: 2022
DOI:
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Exploring Non-Cognitive Skills: Teachers’ Perspective
Pavithra Muniandy, Nurwina Anuar
ABSTRACT:
Non-cognitive skills are a set of attitudes, behaviors, and strategies that are thought to underpin academic and professional success. In explaining academic outcomes, non-cognitive skills are increasingly thought to be as important as, if not more important than, cognitive skills or IQ. This paper is to investigate teachers’ perceptions of teaching non-cognitive skills and to explore teachers’ readiness and challenges in teaching non-cognitive skills. A focus group discussion was conducted to investigate teachers’ perception and their readiness in teaching non-cognitive skills. There are 30 school teachers participated in this study which includes various types of schools all over Malaysia. The responses from the teachers were subjected to inductive theme analysis. From the analysis, six (6) themes emerged as the most important non-cognitive skills that teachers should possess which were as follows; self-perceptions, motivation, perseverance, self-control, resilience, and coping skills that were perceived as teachers should possess for effective academic achievements. The findings from this study conclude the importance of teaching non-cognitive skills to school students and the need to upskill for betterment. Recommendations were made for the educational system and also implications for teacher training programs in Malaysia.
keywords: coping skills, educational success, motivation, perception, resilience