Humanizing higher education: Integrating soft and hard teaching skills to transform student learning in economic education

Abstract

The improvement of learning quality in schools depends not only on subject-matter mastery but also on educators’ ability to integrate pedagogical competencies with interpersonal and professional skills during instruction. This study investigates how the integration of soft and hard skills, implemented by Economics Education student-teachers through the Kampus Mengajar (Teaching Campus) Program, influences the effectiveness and relevance of economics learning in partner schools. A mixed-methods design combining quantitative and qualitative approaches was employed to capture both measurable learning outcomes and contextual teaching processes. Participants included university student-teachers, secondary school students, mentor teachers, school principals, and academic supervisors from schools in Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar, Indonesia. Data were collected through learning assessments, perception questionnaires, reflective interviews, classroom observations, and performance evaluations. The findings demonstrate that participation in field-based teaching experiences fostered substantial development of student-teachers’ interpersonal competencies, professional attitudes, and instructional skills. The integration of these competencies enabled student-teachers to deliver contextualized economics instruction that connected academic concepts with students’ everyday experiences, resulting in higher student engagement, improved conceptual understanding, and stronger perceived relevance of learning materials. Beyond technical teaching competence, the program also supported the emergence of more empathetic and socially responsive teaching practices. The study concludes that integrating soft and hard skills within experiential teacher education programs enhances pedagogical quality and promotes meaningful, contextually relevant economics learning. These findings highlight the importance of service-learning–based teacher preparation in developing adaptive and humanistic educators capable of responding to diverse educational contexts.