SWA/PTSO Projects. Career trajectories and student educational pathways. Building of a typology

The recent law (l. 145/2018) on Pathways for TransversalCompetences and Orientation (PTSOs), which replaced the School-WorkAlternance (SWA), confers to the Italian upper secondary schools a central rolein promoting educational paths oriented to the development of bothprofessional and soft skills. The paper aims to discuss the characteristics ofSWA/PTSO projects that involve upper secondary school students in culturalor work training activities. Project corpora were analysed using the 'contentanalysis as survey'. It allowed to identify the most significant associationsbetween the constitutive elements of the projects developed by the schools. Inthe typology of projects are differently combined: i. soft skills to be developedby the students (e.g., citizenship, vocational and managerial skills); ii.educational methods used to implement the activities (differentiated intolearning by doing or learning by thinking).