Identification of key narratives to assess students’ perception of social reality

Introduction. The article presents the results of the research investigation on identifying key narratives in the perception of the external social environment by university students on the example of St. Petersburg Peter the Great Polytechnic University (hereinafter referred to as SPbPU). The aim of the article is to identify key narratives (images of the present, past, and future) to assess students’ perception of social reality, to substantiate key needs of students in the field of soft skills development and to summarize the practices in the field of teaching these skills in SPbPU.