Self-efficacy in soft skills as a predictor of interest in the teaching profession

This paper focuses on the differences in self-assessment of selected soft competencies among undergraduate students at faculties of education in relation to their expected performance in the teaching profession. The paper discusses the soft competencies that are necessary for the performance of the teaching profession and their self-assessment. These soft skills are: communication, teamwork, problem solving, independence, creativity, performance, responsibility, and the ability to learn new things. Using a standardized research instrument, it was investigated whether students of bachelor's degree programmes who want to pursue the teaching profession in the future evaluate their soft competences better or worse than students of the bachelor's degree programmes who do not want to pursue the teaching profession. The size of the research sample was N = 256 respondents. From the results of the survey it was found that students who want to pursue the teaching profession in the future generally evaluate their own soft competences better than students who do not want to pursue the teaching profession in the future.