A Crtitical Review of “Future of maritime education and training: blending hard and soft skills” by Geada Borda de Água et al.

Abstract

This review evaluates an article entitled “Future of maritime education and training: blending
hard and soft skills” by Pedro Manuel Geada Borda de Água, Armindo Dias da Silva Frias,
Manuel de Jesus Carrasqueira and José Manuel Modas published in the Scientific Journal of
Maritime Research. The original article focuses on the integration of 21st century professional
skills as soft skills into maritime education and training programmes, while proposing
knowledge triangle concept and double-loop learning method to overcome the future
challenges of the programmes. While this article is articulated in a thorough and
comprehensive review of authors’ opinions, there is not a clear categorization of “soft skills”
provided, which clearly encompasses 21st century skills referred in this article. Additionally,
this review discusses on some suggestions to improve the review on MHEIs, the knowledge
triangle, double-loop learning methods and connection between them comprehensively.
Furthermore, the proposal of authors on MET programme based on MarLEM project,
which could be improved by adding more variety into the programme as proposed in this
review.