TVET STUDENT TEACHERS’ SOFT SKILL PROFILE OF COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN (CAD) COURSES AT MALAYSIAN TEACHER EDUCATION INSTITUTE

Abstract

Soft skills are very much needed and have to be mastered in improving the self-performance of all graduates. The imbalance between academic curriculum and soft skills can also affect the quality of student teachers. A pilot study was also conducted to identify the level of mastery of soft skills (critical thinking and problem solving skills) of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) student teachers through learning Computer Aided Design (CAD) course using a self-developed profile. Thus, the aim of this study was to validate the developed profile. A quantitative method was employed where questionnaires were distributed for data collection. 37 TVET student teachers were involved in this study. Descriptive statistics using statistical packages for the social science version 25.0 (SPSS version 25.0) were adopted for data analyses. The value of cronbach alpha obtained for the instrument used was 0.974 which was considered high. In addition, the Kappa value obtained was 0.972, indicating a very good agreement from the 3 experts. The findings revealed that participants’ mean scores for critical thinking and problem solving skills were 3.439 and 3.437 respectively which revealed that the student teachers were having moderate levels of soft skills. Hence, this study is important and relevant in helping to validate the instrument developed that can be utilised by the lecturers to gain  feedback on the mastery level of soft skills among TVET student teachers. Besides, the findings of this study can be implemented for TVET student teachers at other Teachers Training Institute or other institutions.