Service Learning: a pedagogical methodology to have students develop Soft Skills. An empirical study

The transformative and complex social conditions put under question many of our knowledge and skills systems so that it could make them functional to sustainable economic development, as mentioned in Agenda 2030, which should consider the innovations taking place in government institutions, at schools and in educational-training contexts as well. The models of work and participation in community life, as a result, are increasingly stimulated by processes of innovation and change that requires a deep review of: the ways of collaboration between roles, the use of personal and relational skills and the practices of interpersonal and collective life. At School, therefore, in addition to the issues related to disciplinary knowledge, it is necessary to orient the learning-teaching processes towards didactic activities that allows the necessary skills to develop in order to inhabit and govern the complexity in its characterizations of uncertainty and minor predictability. Teachers, therefore, are required to undertake processes that aim both at the organization of disciplinary contents, through the use of innovative teaching methods and at developing functional skills to improve awareness and understanding of the relationships and interactions that characterize communication in the various formal, informal and socio-working contexts. Teaching is therefore, requested to be integrated with methodologies that may act on qualitative aspects such as perseverance, responsibility, self-control, leadership and problem solving attitude; these identity elements are placed in the literature among the other Soft Skills (requested by the world of work). Bearing this in mind, the work presented here starts from the conviction that Service Learning, thanks to its procedural and methodological characteristics, can help students to observe and mature the Soft Skills to be used in the work context.