By taking into account social competences, one of the eight Key Competences for Lifelong Learning listed in the 2006/962/EU recommendation, this work aims to understand the content of the notion of social competences in the context of the processes of Europeanization (Castells 2000) in the Europea Education Space (Dale 2009, Grek 2014). Serdenciuc (2013) formally divides the two didactics patterns: content-based education e competence-based education. Research shows that the urge for competence-based education was mainly stimulated by the need to respond to the growing unemployment rates and by the urgency to lower down the lack of positive intersection between educational offer and labour market request (Hayward Fernandez, 2004) in a performance driven scenario (Stoer, Magalhaes 2009). Starting from this awareness, the lack of pedagogical scientific basis that moved educational systems towards competence-based education settings must lead to further exploration regarding what it means to transmit and evaluate competences in school. Considering the ontological differences between education and socialization, this study investigates teachers' conceptions of social competences. The aims to illustrate if and how teachers' conceptions of social competences are: a) uniform or uneven between them; b) coherent or incoherent with the European guidelines; c) brought into effect in the educational contexts (considering transmission and evaluation as main parameters). By regarding social competences as a culturally reach aspect of socialization (Hoskins 2013), the hypothesis of a distance between legislator’s expectations and current educational practice, especially in high culturally diverse environments, is evaluated. In the context of the communicative model  (Luhmann, Schorr 1988) and by considering education and socialization as two diverse events (Maccarini 2005), emphasis is put on the attempt to understand what are the forces that lead to the need for formalization of socialization processes. Considering the difference between education and socialization in the formal aspect of the first and non formal aspect of the second (Gallino 1988), the study investigates the effect of formalizing socialization processes in the form of social competences and the effect of this formalization on the shape of social competences, their transmission and their evaluation. Drawing back both to the well established sociological tradition that considers teachers as relevant actors to consult in order to explore social phenomena (Lisimberti 2007) and considering social competence education as the main social phenomena analyzed, the research observes the differences between European legislation, Italian legislation and the actual practices put in place in the Italian Middle School context, more specifically in the case study of the city of Milan. Considering all these premises, the substantial questions this research wants to explore are: 1) what are teachers' conceptions of social competences? 2) How and in what measure these conceptions vary as the respondent's profile (considering socio-biographic characteristics and context factors) changes? 3) What practices are carried out (aspect of transmission) in order to make social competence operational within the educational context? 4) How does the process of evaluation take place? At the present time, there is no empirical study that explored this area, leaving a vast scenario of undefined to the individual practitioner to fulfill. The data will show evidence of the reactions and of the practices put in place as response on the European Key Competences for Lifelong Learning recommendation (implemented in the Italian legislation from 2007), going in the direction of studying the relevance of the processes of transition in the context of a growing Europeanisation of the educational systems from a sociological perspective.

Middle School teachers in the city area of Milan is the social group considered by this research. In order to enhance the diversity composition of the classes that teachers deal with, schools were ranked by the District Problematicity Index, elaborated by Unidata Milano-Bicocca. The last five schools of the index are the schools that were considered in the research. Per each school, five teachers were involved in the research. Maximum differentiation of the sample was granted. The research resolves to use phenomenography as methodological tool. Objective of phenomenological research is to find and systematize conceptions through which individuals interpret meaningful aspects of reality (Marton, Booth 1997). From an epistemological point of view, phenomenography presupposes individuality of experience and the possibility for the social scientist to access to individuals' conceptions of specific experiences. Phenomenographers claim that there is a limited number of qualitatively different ways to experience a phenomena (Marton 1988), therefore conceptions can be categorized and aggregated. Ontologically, this perspective descends from the assumption that the only world we can communicate about is the one we directly have experience of. From this perspective, phenomenography aims to individuate the qualitative different ways in which individuals experience a phenomena (Marton 1988). Despite the individualistic character of perception, the phenomenographic perspective shows a consistent sociological relevance. This is because phenomenography describes individuals' conceptions as organizable in a finite number of coherent categories of description. This systematization offers the chance to depict a concrete set of cases of human functioning about specific phenomena. In order to access this world of experience, the instrument mainly used in phenomenography is semi-structured interview (Marton, Both, 1997; Stamouli, Huggard 2007; Ornek 2008).

In the context of lifelong learning and knowledge society, orientating the educational practice needs contribution that are not only pedagogical but also sociological. Thus, the objective of this work points in two directions that take into account this premises. On one hand, providing the sociological and pedagogical panorama of a definition of social competences that comes from practitioners that daily leave in the school environment. On the other hand, comparing this definition with the expectations legislators, both Italian and European, have over social competences, their transmission and evaluation. Given the complex situation and the future scenarios new generation will face, do today’s teachers have the instruments to provide social competences in a way that can lead to better societal results for the future? Do the instruments we ask practitioners to get in touch with have a meaning for them? In the context of mobile sociologies (Landri, Neumann 2014), this work tries to tight together social and educational aspect in a different way. In fact, when considering the social aspect, what is taken into consideration are not classical sociological parameters (such as class, income, gender, ecc). Rather, this work tries to link together the expectation macro educational system have over the educational practice and the actual cultural resources currently present in the field (micro). The objective is to provide educators with new terms and instruments that can lead to that ‘powerful discourse’ that can help them ‘navigating global transitions’ (Seddon 2014).

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