The Role of Soft Skills in the Professional Careers of Future Teachers: Perspectives from Germany and Türkiye

Acquiring 21st-century-zeitgeist-relevant skills has become the last trump card for job sustainability and resilience in the face of technological advances. The only way to raise individuals with the needed soft skills is for those who educate them to have this skill set. For this reason, pre-service teachers prepared to be future teachers should be taught how to develop these skills. The current study was designed to explore thoughts and awareness of future teachers about soft skills through semi-structured in-depth interviews with seven students from Türkiye and twelve students from Germany. According to our findings, participants associate soft skills with effective teamwork, maintaining harmonious relationships, and the capacity to communicate ideas. Self-confidence, organizational ability, adaptability, and stress management are seen as fundamental for both professional and social contexts. There is an emphasis on the inclusion of soft skills in the curriculum, not only as an adjunct to technical education but as central to the professional identity and competence of educators. Soft skills are perceived as an important tool to ensure long-term professional success and are seen as the core of their pedagogical practice and career development. German participants emphasized stress management, soft skills, and equality, but noted that their participation in extracurricular activities was limited. In contrast, participants from Turkey highlighted drama classes and actively participated in extracurricular activities to support their development. These findings underline the importance of integrating more extra-curricular practice-oriented experiences into teacher education frameworks as complementary ways to enhance soft skills.