Integrating Soft Skills into Net-Zero Environmental Education: An Exploratory Study in Moroccan Secondary « Life and Earth Sciences » Classes

Abstract

Soft skills have gained an increasing acceptance as an important part of a balanced development of a learner, as an indispensable resource of survival in the modern scholarly and professional conditions. Even in the Moroccan secondary school system, however, the pedagogical practices are still largely disciplinary oriented and focused on technical competence, with little explicit focus on transversal competence. The research questions that will be addressed in this study are how can environmental education initiatives associated with Net Zero, specifically the composting activities in the context of the scientific baccalaureate and curriculum life and earth sciences, be used as a setting to purposefully develop soft skills. It was a quantitative descriptive design with the qualitative analysis of the open-ended responses that were conducted between March 2025 and October 2025. The information was gathered using an online questionnaire that was distributed to the 24 teachers of the life and earth sciences in the Provincial Directorate of Azilal (Morocco). Analysis of quantitative data was done in Google sheets and qualitative data using text mining software, including Voyant-Tools and WordArt. The findings indicate that 91.7 percent of the respondents believe that soft skills are essential to the development of a student, especially in terms of enhancing the level of creativity, time management, cooperation and critical thinking, but 78.3% note that they have not been specifically trained in the area. Approximately 66.7% of the teachers report having participated in composting or Net Zero-based projects, which are seen as promising contexts in which cooperation, problem solving and ecological engagement can be achieved despite limitations that are associated with time, resources and overloaded curricula. Lexical analysis cues time and lack as the most prominent terms, which indicate structural impediments to experiential learning, and the ratio of words related to pedagogical tools pointing to the position of centrality of group work and practical activity. The identification of soft skills makes a considerable association between personal and relational competences by teachers, and less commonly, adaptive and cognitive dimensions. According to the research, Net Zero-oriented environmental programs, including composting, can be a nice place to introduce the use of soft skills into the curriculum of the subject, Life and Earth Sciences, and support the idea of eco-citizenship. It suggests, too, the necessity of specific teacher training and specialised learning platforms, following the orientation of the national policies, including the National Plan to Accelerate the Transformation of the Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation Ecosystem (PACTE ESRI 2030, Moroco), to generalise these practices by education tier.