Socioemotional skills are key to jobs of the future

Many of these jobs do not even exist, but the question has mobilized experts in education and the labor market – looking for improvements in current education systems. “With the abundant access to content, what one needs is to know how to choose, separating fact from opinion, knowing navigating through the many unfiltered information,” explains Denis Mizne, executive director of the Educational Foundation Lemann. “Hence the importance of critical thinking. Resilience and has to do with a less predictable world.“

Youth need to create not only interact with technology, says expert

But how to teach skills of this kind , without neglecting the school curriculum ? And how many of them have been little exercised by younger generations ? To Professor Carmen Migueles , expert education and organizational development EBAPE – FGV , part of the new generations – grown on the Internet – ” lost touch with the sacrifice and the ability to overcome obstacles .” ” But success is something that is achieved in the midst of difficulties . “ According to her , these social-emotional skills – also called ” soft skills ” or non-cognitive skills – were mentioned by all companies when asked about what they wanted in their staff , on research by MBA from FGV in Rio

” It is a cultivation of virtues such as patience , solidarity and understanding differences in a multicultural society,”  she says . ” This helps , for example , to deal with the clash of cultures when a company is bought by a foreigner. “ The skills of future generations were recently discussed in national and international events: the seminary  To Educate 21st Century Skills, in March, in Brazil, and the Private Education Conference, held in April in San Francisco (USA) by the International Finance Corporation connected to the World Bank. One of the participants of the international conference was the American expert Brian Waniewski. “One of the most important factors is learning how to learn – and curiosity is not something that is greatly stimulated by current educational systems,” he tells the BBC Brazil. “The labor market moves faster than educational.”

But there are already many ongoing experiments to teach and measure these skills. One is the Waniewski, former director of the Institute of Play, a company developing teaching methods based games. Waniewski argues that using games in the classroom helps simulate problem solving in real life . ” You progress from one level to another , overcome challenges and is a proactive agent,” he says. The same logic applies to take individual cases and real-life issues – for example, problems in the community – the discussion among students , rather than focusing only on the academic content . ” This involves taking the student from his paper and put it to develop complex problems and staff ,” says Migueles .

His colleague at FGV – SP, an economics professor Priscilla Tavares Although this is already stimulated in some higher  education or postgraduate courses, is still somewhat new in schools , says . ” Today you learn a lot more content than what they do with it ,” says , citing the example of the logarithm mathematical element commonly used by financial professionals . ” But when we learn logarithm , we learned that it can be applied . “

The trick , then , is that students try to study not just to pass the test , but try to understand the practical application of the content and how to relate them to other disciplines learned. “Many people treat the debate as if I had to choose between teaching these skills and traditional content , such as math and Portuguese ,” says Mizne , the Lemann Foundation . ” But students need both of this things – and these skills help in learning the material . “ The technology also contributes . A group of the Media Lab at MIT ( Massachusetts Institute of Technology ) is dedicated to developing creative learning methods . One of his biggest bets is a programming language called Scratch (available on the website http://scratch.mit.edu/ ) , which stimulates learning programming but also ” strategies to solve problems , design projects and ideas of communication ” . And parents can encourage children to develop these skills early , says Resnick , with games involving design and creation, as building blocks , drawings and games .

Here in Brazil , Instituto Ayrton Senna and the OECD ( Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ) conducted a study , recently published , with 24,600 students in the state of Rio de Janeiro network with a tool developed for the measurement of socio-emotional skills . Some of the conclusions are that if what they take home is more than a bookcase increases by 40 %, the chance of a child being more open to new experiences ; and encourage skills such as planning and leadership among students improve their performance in mathematics and Portuguese , respectively.