The development of soft skills in School-Work Alternation: points of view of Italian students

Abstract

School-Work Alternation (SWA) was introduced by the Law 107 / 2015, as a compulsory training methodology for students of every high school. It t can be a device to build spaces for transformative learning for all systems involved, and to provide students with experiences, useful for developing technical- professional, and soft skills. The importance to promote, in the young generations, the development of skills useful for real life, led researchers to investigate the type of learning promoted by the SWA experiences with the connected assessment processes. The study was carried out according to a qualitative approach, giving voice to students of twelve different schools. The findings showed an important level of students’ awareness about the developed and required skills during SWA programs, and a low level of awareness related to the assessment of these skills. The implications for educational practices and research are presented at the end of the paper.