Editorial

Biography: Pardon My Harvard Accent by William G. Morse. Farrar and Rinehart. 364 pp. $3.00.

Sherman Thacher and his School by LeRoy McKim Makepeace. Yale University Press. 197 pp. $3.00.

Education: An Adventure in Education by The Swarthmore College Faculty. The Macmillan Company. 232 pp. $2.50.

Free Learning by Elizabeth Buchanan Cowley. Bruce Humphries, Inc. Boston, Massachusetts, 334 pp. $3.00.

Group Activities in College and Secondary School by Ruth Strang. Harper Brothers. 361 pp. $4.00.

Healthful Living by Jesse Feiring Williams. The Macmillan Company. 585 pp. 1941. $1.60.

Indoctrination for American Democracy by B. F. Pittenger. The Macmillan Company, no pp. $1.50.

Library Guidance for Teachers by Margaret Kessler Walraven and Alfred L. Hall-Quest. New York: John Wiley &; Sons, Inc. 1941. 308 pp. $2.75.

Principles of Secondary Education by Rudyard K. Bent and Henry H. Kronenberg. McGraw-Hill Book Company. 594 pp. $3.00.

Radio and English Teaching edited by Max J. Hertzberg. D. Appleton-Century Company. 246 pp. $2.00.

Secondary Education in American Life by Harold Spears. The American Book Company. 388 pp. $2.50.

The Administrator's Wife by G. H. Marshall, Clara W. Marshall and W. W. Carpenter. Christopher Publishing House, Boston. 122 pp. $1.50.

The Mind's Eye: Life and Learning Through the Mental Picture by Bertha Cobb, Madeline W. Cobb, and Ernest Cobb. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 254 pp. $1.50.

The Principal at Work by George C. Kyte. Illustrated. Ginn &; Company. 496 pp. $3.25.

The Role of the Teacher in Health Education by Ruth M. Strang and Dean F. Smiley. The Macmillan Company. 348 pp. $2.00.

Fiction: Jacob by Irving Fineman. Random House. 295 pp. $2.50.

General Literature: The Intent of the Critic by Edmund Wilson, Norman Foerster, John Crowe Ransom, W. H. Auden. Edited, with an Introduction, by Donald A. Stauffer, Princeton University Press. 147 pp. $2.50.

Religion: Have You a Religion? by Henry James Forman, Farrar and Rinehart, Inc. 246 pp. $2.00.

Social Studies: America Prepares for Tomorrow: The Story of Our Total Defense Effort by William Dow Boutwell, and others. Harper Brothers. 612 pp. $2.65.

Getting Us into War by Porter Sargent. Published by Porter Sargent, 11 Beacon St., Boston Massachusetts. $4.00.

I Paid Hitler by Fritz Thyssen. Illustrated. Farrar &; Rinehart. 281 pp.

Society and Medical Progress by Bernhard J. Stern. Princeton Press. 264 pp. $3.00.

The Impact of War: Our American Democracy Under Arms by Pendleton Herring. Farrar &; Rinehart. 306 pp. $2.50.     

Final year undergraduates’ perceptions of the integration of soft skills in the formal curriculum: a survey of Malaysian public universities

A recent initiative or skill bridging measure taken by the Malaysian public universities is to build into the formal curriculum soft skills to produce graduates with a right balance of diverse abilities. However, to date, there is no comprehensive attempt to review the integration of soft skills in the formal curriculum (both coursework and training) of university programmes. The paper therefore reviews the adequacy of the infusion and acquisition of the entire range of skills embedded in taught courses and practical/industrial training from the students’ perspective. The specific focus of the study is to identify what worked well and what had not in acquiring the skills designated in the teaching–learning process. The key findings of the study are as follows. First, the perceived infusion–acquisition of skill types differs unequivocally between coursework and training, suggesting the complementary nature of both components of the formal curriculum for the integration of soft skills. Second, the infusion–acquisition of soft skills remains highly concentrated on specific items/skills for both coursework and training. For the coursework component, communication skills explain most of the total variance, whilst moral and professional ethics ranks first in explaining the total variance for the training component. In total, the perceived low and selective appreciation of skills by students signals the need to readdress the existing strategies within the teaching–learning process to ensure a better integration of soft skills.