Developing soft skills for the 4.0 working world in the vocational tertiary education of ITS (“Higher Technical Institutes”)


Abstract

The technological innovations linked to the expansion of digital technology to production, distribution and consumption processes, brought up contrasting visions regarding their effects on work. The possible benefits connected to them are not uniformly distributed among skilled/unskilled workers, in terms of productivity gains or quantity/quality of work processes. In this context, where workers need to acquire the requisites necessary to face change, new challenges emerge for education and training systems. The purpose is to identify applicable operational categories for the analysis of soft skills learning settings and soft skills learning processes in vocational tertiary education, so to understand if resources are being formed for full employment of quality work.