There has been a progressively heightened preoccupation with soft skills among education stakeholders such as policymakers, educational psychologists, and researchers. Soft skill curricula have been considered these days and developed not only for graduates and as on-the-job training programs but also for students across all levels of education. However, different people mean different things when referring to soft skills. This review presents evidence to suggest that the use of the term "soft skills" has expanded to encompass a variety of qualities, traits, values, and attributes, as well as rather distinct constructs such as emotional labor and lookism. It is argued here that these infinite categories of things can be skills because soft skills research is primarily focused on what are the needs and requirements in the world of work. This approach is problematic because it assigns characteristics to soft skills, which in turn affect the design of the soft skills curricula. For example, soft skills are often construed as decontextualized behaviors, which can be acquired and transferred unproblematically. The paper proposes that an in-depth and embedded approach to studying soft skills should be pursued to reach a consensus on what they are and how to develop them because otherwise they will always be expanded before restricted (as they have become ambiguous) in their meaning and definition.

中文翻译：

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扩展但受限制：软技能文献的简短回顾。

教育利益相关者（例如决策者，教育心理学家和研究人员）对软技能的重视程度逐渐提高。如今，人们已经考虑了软技能课程，不仅为毕业生和在职培训课程开发了软技能课程，而且还为所有教育水平的学生提供了软技能课程。但是，当提及软技能时，不同的人会表达不同的意思。这篇综述提供了证据，表明“软技能”一词的使用已扩展到涵盖各种品质，特质，价值和属性，以及诸如情感劳动和外表主义之类的截然不同的结构。这里争论的是，事物的这些无限类别可以是技能，因为软技能研究主要集中在工作世界中的需求和要求上。这种方法是有问题的，因为它为软技能分配了特征，这反过来又影响了软技能课程的设计。例如，软技能通常被认为是去上下文化的行为，可以毫无问题地获得和转移。本文建议应采用一种深入，嵌入式的方法来研究软技能，以就软技能是什么以及如何发展达成共识，因为否则它们将始终在其含义受到限制（因为它们变得模棱两可）之前得到扩展。和定义。