THE PCTO EXPERIENCE BETWEEN LIGHTS AND SHADOWS: A REFLECTION BASED ON THE VOICE OF ITALIAN TUTORS

The Italian upper secondary school, called, also due of the pandemic, to face complex and concomitant challenges (technological, organizational, methodological, cultural values), is the scene of important transformations, potentially impacting with respect to the acquisition of skills by students, both in view of their future entry into the world of work and a healthy transition to adult life. In the broader school context, the PCTOs (Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation), aimed, as is known, to guide the student and to encourage him/her to develop personal, social, citizenship and entrepreneurial skills, go through a parallel evolutionary process. This contribution aims to give an account of the empirical evidence emerged from a web survey addressed to tutors (a sample of 264 units) and headmasters of 78 Italian schools, selected based on a sampling design by quotas, which combines the criteria of the territorial location of schools and the variety of school addresses. With respect to the concrete implementation of these training solutions, our data, connected with the perceptions/evaluations by these crucial reference figures, show a systematic distance between expectations and experiences, although PCTOs are never, or almost never, reduced to mere bureaucratic fulfilment. In the representation of most of the interviewees, they constitute, first an effective tool for identifying the student’s inclinations and, only secondarily, a vehicle for the transmission of technical-professional skills. Competences are, however, given considerable attention and the “ability to learn to learn” is placed at the centre of increasingly innovative pedagogical practices. These general trends are fully understood by looking at the social and cultural trajectory of headmasters and tutors, as well as at the characteristics of the organizational contexts investigated (level of engagement of other components: class council, other teachers, company tutors; distribution of the workload; degree of bureaucratization of the procedures) and the peculiarities of the projects (duration, content).