Neeley, K. A. (2021, July), A Provisional History of the Idea of "Soft" vs. "Hard" Skills in Engineering Education  Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36604

\bibitem{asee_peer_36604}
  Neeley, K. A. (2021, July), \emph{A Provisional History of the Idea of "Soft" vs. "Hard" Skills in Engineering Education}
  Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference.
  10.18260/1-2--36604

Kathryn A. Neeley.  "A Provisional History of the Idea of "Soft" vs. "Hard" Skills in Engineering Education".  2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference, 2021, July.  ASEE Conferences, 2021.  https://peer.asee.org/36604 Internet.  07 Jan, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_36604}
  Kathryn A. Neeley.
  "A Provisional History of the Idea of "Soft" vs. "Hard" Skills in Engineering Education".
  \emph{2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference, 2021, July}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2021.
  https://peer.asee.org/36604 Internet.  07 Jan, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_36604
author = "Kathryn A. Neeley"
title = "A Provisional History of the Idea of "Soft" vs. "Hard" Skills in Engineering Education"
booktitle = "2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access"
year = "2021"
month = "July"
address = "Virtual Conference"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/36604}
number = {10.18260/1-2--36604}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This paper reports on the first phase of a work-in-progress: a historical and philosophical inquiry into why the terminology of soft versus hard skills emerged, how it has evolved in engineering education, why it has been so persistent, why it is problematic, and how we might begin to move beyond it in engineering education.

Here, the focus is on the circumstances that led to the emergence and prevalence of the term in two different contexts: (1) the discourse community of speakers of English as represented in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and (2) the discourse community of engineering education as reflected in papers published by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in the period 1996-2020. 

The combination of these two perspectives reveals that (1) the hard-soft skills distinction emerged in the context of leadership development in the military, (2) the terminology was viewed as problematic from the beginning, (3) the discourse on soft skills is by no means limited to engineering education; (4) interest in the topic has increased dramatically in ASEE since 1996; and (5) implementation of the EC2000 accreditation criteria provided the impetus for that increase.





AU  - Kathryn A. Neeley
CY  - Virtual Conference
DA  - 2021/07/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - A Provisional History of the Idea of "Soft" vs. "Hard" Skills in Engineering Education
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/36604
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--36604
ER  -