Fostering civic education and soft skills in secondary students through college-led cross-age peer tutoring in community service settings

Purpose This study intends to examine the effectiveness of developing secondary students’ soft skills and civic awareness via a unique college-led service-learning programmes. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-methods approach incorporates a pre-test and a post-test with secondary students, along with semi-structured in-depth interviews with the students, teachers and service providers. Findings After attending the unique college-led service-learning programmes, the secondary students show the most improved skills, including proactiveness, positive thinking, stress tolerance and time management. As such, these results suggest that participants benefited most in areas related to mindset, stress management, time management and proactiveness. The secondary students perform moderately, including communication skills, problem-solving and leadership skills. Research limitations/implications This result creates constructive guidelines for educators and secondary schools on how to enhance the quality of these civic education programmes for the future. Originality/value These research findings help to explain and forecast the evolution of civic education and soft skills in secondary school education. Also, valuable suggestions on how to design and implement community service programmes into civic education in the secondary school curriculum are provided. Although the demand for civic education continues to increase, its roles in secondary education remain relatively ambiguous.