Why Soft Skills Are the Key to Quality Early Childhood Education

Erasmus+ Project: Soft Skills for High Quality Education
Published: June 2024

🌱 What makes a teacher not just effective—but transformational?

In early childhood education, it’s not only about what teachers know. It’s about how they connect—with children, with families, and with each other.

The ability to listen, build trust, resolve conflict, and lead with empathy—these are the essential yet often overlooked ingredients of strong educational leadership. They are known as soft skills, and they’re at the heart of what makes early education not only functional, but deeply human.

“Soft skills are not extra. They’re essential.”
– Project partner, Slovenia

Why Are We Focusing on Soft Skills?

This Erasmus+ project is built around the belief that soft leadership is foundational to high-quality early childhood education. In particular, we focus on supporting leaders of Teacher Support Learning Groups (TSLGs)—groups of educators who reflect together to improve practice.

But many TSLG leaders feel unprepared for this role. They may know how to organize a meeting, but struggle to:

• Encourage equal participation
• Navigate interpersonal tension
• Listen actively and reflectively
• Create a climate of safety and trust

Our project addresses this gap.

What We’re Doing

The project Soft Skills for High Quality Education brings together partners from Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Estonia. Together, we will:

• Conduct national-level research on the needs of TSLG leaders
• Develop a shared training framework on soft skills
• Build a practical, multilingual Toolbox full of techniques, videos, and reflective tools
• Establish an international learning community of TSLG leaders
• Share all outputs through the ISSA Knowledge Hub

Right now, we are in the research and planning phase. Partners are completing focus groups and national surveys to understand the current situation in kindergartens.

🔍 What We’ve Learned So Far

Early findings confirm what many suspected:

• TSLG leaders often feel isolated in their role
• They lack structured opportunities to develop facilitation skills
• Emotional and communication challenges are common
• There is strong interest in developing soft skills—but few accessible tools

This feedback is shaping the design of our training and materials.

What Comes Next

Over the next year, we will:

• Finalize the Soft Skills Training Framework
• Prepare and deliver a Training of Trainers (ToT) for national partners
• Begin piloting the training in kindergartens in 2025
• Launch the first modules of the Toolbox
• Facilitate the first international professional learning community (iPLC) meetings

Our goal is to create lasting change by empowering leaders with the skills they need—not only to manage teams, but to inspire growth and inclusion.

Stay Connected

As the project progresses, we will be sharing key findings, training experiences, and educator stories from across Europe. We invite you to follow along.