› Developing Māori students' soft skills to support improved achievement outcomes

PROJECT

Developing Māori students' soft skills to support improved achievement outcomes

Employability, Supporting learners, Educational outcomes, Māori learner success, Teaching strategies, Vocations and Trades, Bridging and transition Foundation and Bridging Education

Completed

Completed: 31 March 2021

A one-year project undertaken by Matapuna Training Centre to measure and evaluate progress Māori students make over time in the “soft skills” and evidence the correlation between course achievement and students’ soft skills improvement.

Aims:

The main aims of the project were to:

identify and describe a set of soft skill descriptors that Matapuna staff know students need to develop in order to achieve at NZQA level 1 and 2
measure soft skill improvement over time using the descriptors
provide a tool for next step goals to be co-constructed
capture a group of students' development in soft skills over time, and evidence the links between soft skill development and successful student achievement outcomes.

Jodie Cook

Project Leader

Matapuna Training Centre

Simone Poi

Matapuna Training Centre

Karina Terekia

Matapuna Training Centre

Zella Toia-Preston

Matapuna Training Centre

Nigel Thornicroft

Matapuna Training Centre

Completed

$26,750.00 (excl GST)

$13,375.00 Regional Hub Project Fund

$13,375.00 Matapuna Training Centre

Next section: Insights and Impacts

Key Findings

Tutors have reflected on the limited research and current examples and used this, combined with their knowledge of Matapuna’s students, to develop a clear set of Key Competencies and descriptors for use in their classrooms. Tutors have introduced these to students and started to use them in their practice to identify each individual student’s strengths and areas for development. Areas for development have been turned into goals and included in the students’ Individual Education Plans.
A focus on student’s soft skill development at the start of the year required staff to develop clear goals in students' Individual Learning Plans. Staff have engaged more with students to co-construct soft skill development goals.
The Key Competencies are being woven into the centres' values and Tikanga by tutors. Overall, there is more balance between the focus on credit achievement or “academic outputs” versus inputs and pastoral care support. Students are more empowered to take control of their own learning. They have a clear set of descriptors to refer to in relation to their soft skill development.
Learners have been more engaged in the development of their Individual Learning Plan goals. There is clarity around expectations of soft skill development. Tutors are sharing resources as they review and develop their templates for use with students to track and monitor the soft skill development.

Key Recommendations

Guidance is provided to tutors on how to teach, and embed, the soft skills that students need to develop to support academic achievement.
Students are provided with a documented definition of the soft skills that successful learners develop over time.
Tutors work together to devise a process of documenting the soft skills development of foundation students, recording these, and sharing these with the students.
Resources are developed to assist tutors and students to co-construct their soft skill goals for inclusion in the students’ Individual Learning Plans. This assists the tutor with “knowing their learner”.

Next section: Outputs