Factors influencing parents' intention to select soft skill training school for their children from 3-11 years old in Ho Chi Minh City An application of Ajzen's theory planning behavior

Abstract

Vietnamese is facing a shortage of workers skilled in affective outcomes, especially soft skills. There are some fingers are pointing to the current educational programs from preschool to university for failing to prepare future employees with those skills. While soft skills have been considered a part of the “hidden” curriculum in the education of children, outcomes from our education curriculum, specifically in primary and secondary schools. This stages of education schedule appears to not be meeting the soft skill requirements essential to today job market. There are many soft skill center were established and also been very competitive to match with the new demand of social Vietnamese in training soft skills for children, especially in some big cities such as Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Ha Noi. How could identify which factors affect to Parents’ intention to select soft skill schools for their children? A very famous model which was applied in many sections relative psychology of human around the world is Ajzen’s theory planned behavioral to research Parents’ intention of selecting soft skill courses for their children from 3 to 11 years old in Ho Chi Minh City. All the main predictor variables (Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control) were statistically significant in predicting to parents’ intention. Of the three, Perceived Behavioral Control was found to be the strongest predictor of Parents’ intention, then is Subjective Norm, and weakest predictor is Attitude. Key words: Application of Ajzen’s model, parents’ intention, soft skills for children, selection preschool.