#1563 terminology: hard skills versus soft skills change request pending
It would be good if SFIA10 would contain terms such as "hard skills" and "soft skills", or "specific skills" and "general skills" as we currently don't have good terms for this.
The usefulness of SFIA would be increased if it contained some terms that refer to some of its underlying concepts. My own suggestion is to perhaps use term "hard skills" to refer to skills such as PROG and TEST, and the term "soft skills" to refer to Autonomy, Complexity, Knowledge, and Business Skills / Behavioural factors. Doing so would mean we're at least consistent with what is already used in the document that was handed out to the participants of the webinar "Implementing SFIA for Work-Integrated Learning" webinar of the Australia/NZ SFIA week.
An alternative to "hard skills" versus "soft skills" would be "specific skills" versus "general skills". Skills such as PROG and TEST are specific to a particular role, whereas skills such as Autonomy are more general. This would make these terms a good match for the concepts they are meant to refer to, which is a key criterion for making any decisions on terminology.
What should probably be avoided are terms that are bland and uninformative. "Generic attributes" can mean anything. "Professional Skills" is so broad that it's not immediately clear whether it applies to PROG, to Autonomy, or to both. I think we should choose terms that carry some intrinsic meaning that is related to the concepts they refer to. "Hard skills" versus "soft skills", or "specific skills" versus "general skills" would be good candidates, but perhaps other terms could also be found.
As an aside, the reason for filing this change request is that here at Cardiff University we need these terms for the coursework description that is handed out to our students, to explain how they should use SFIA.
Current status of this request: pending