Covid-19 emergency has dramatically affected education, globally. Its impact on VET sector has been even more critical. In terms of school-based activities, lockdown interrupted practical learning which can be considered pivotal in VET curricula; at the same time, the closure of companies and work activities, made work-based learning (internships, apprenticeships) almost impossible (OECD, 2020) in many sectors where remote working is not available. 

The paradigm shift, accelerated by Covid-19, also concerns a renewed attention to social-emotional learning (SEL) & life skills (Schleicher, 2020). While the relevance of technical skills in VET is undoubted, recent analyses outline the role played by transversal and life skills for the future of job. As pointed out by the WEF (2020), the business community gives an increasing value to self-management, active learning, flexibility, stress-tolerance, as complementary to technical skills, namely digital, aiming at revealing the “human potential” of current and future employees. A concept close to the approach of “VETfullness” by Gendron (2018).

The interruption of school activities, including work-based learning, the adoption of remote learning instead of a more personal relation between learner and trainer, the persisting physical distancing, reducing the daily interaction among peers, have to be analyzed as threats to the development of SEL in the VET sector. Literature has already outlined the psychological impact of lockdowns on the community (EdResearch for Recovery, 2020; Piopiunik, Schwerdt, and Woessman, 2020; Kuhfeld et al., 2020): in the VET context, potential risks include an increase number of dropout learners, as well as a more difficult transition to the job market.

In order to cope with these emerging issues, Cometa VET centre (Como, Italy) has implemented several measures to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on its activity. Among them: 

1. Remote learning based on more active didactics, encouraging strong interaction and learners’ active engagement;

2. A strongly personalized support to learners played by school tutors through one-to-one sessions and community activities to foster self- and social-awareness.

Since 2020, Cometa has been recognized by the European Commission as one of the 12 Centres of Vocational Excellence for its inclusive approach to learning (Arenas et al., 2020). Based on this case study, this research aims at focusing on the impact generated by Covid-19 on both technical skills and SEL on a sample of learners in Cometa VET centre. The authors, in particular, will build an ad-hoc measurement system, will evaluate the impact of Covid-19 on learners’ SEL, and eventually will describe and assess the measures of mitigation implemented by the same centre.

SEL is defined as part of a process of acquiring abilities, skills and aptitudes for managing emotions, developing empathy and communication capacities, for establishing positive relationships, for making decisions with responsibility. Empirical studies have highlighted it as a vital component in job performance and an important competency demanded in the labor market (Dudley et al., 2006; Noftle and Robins, 2007; Heckman and Kautz, 2012). Part of the most relevant dimensions of SEL have been identified in Task Performance, Emotional Regulation, Collaboration, Open-mindedness, Engagement with others (Kankaraš and Suárez-Alvarez, 2019). According to these SEL components, the authors have implemented a survey where they are taken as a reference to analyze the perception of Cometa's VET students. The survey elaborated from the SEL structure will allow the analysis of different emotional areas in which students report their perception of the learning process in the context of Covid-19. The survey was applied in four different waves, at the beginning and at the end of the school year in 2019 and in 2020; this contains 17 different questions in which respondents could indicate their perception on a point scale from 0 to 100% related to the different dimensions of the SEL components suggested in the OECD study (Kankaraš and Suárez-Alvarez, 2019). Responses were collected before and after the impact of the pandemic, making a comparison between the two contexts possible. To test the hypotheses about the emotional impact of Covid-19 on students, the authors will analyze the internal survey data using the 2019 and 2020 waves. Also authors will list the (anonymous) responses of the students who participated in the different waves of the questionnaire by providing basic descriptive statistics. Subsequently, a principal component analysis (PCA) method will be used to identify different indices across time (Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondal, 2008; Snijders and Bosker, 1999). An exploratory factor analysis will indicate how many components can be grouped for the creation of internal indices for the analysis of student behavior taking into account the pandemic context.

Based on the creation of indexes able to capture SEL dimensions, the preliminary results suggest a decrease in the learners’ perception in terms of improvement of social-emotional skills. The pandemic and the consequent restrictions have affected the natural ways to carry out the learning: to some extent, telecommuting and remote learning are not enough to motivate learners. This analysis will also offer information to assess to what extent the implemented measures of mitigation have been successful and how they can be improved to address those gaps still emerging. This study can then contribute to both the development of techniques for evaluation and the measurement of the Covid-19 impact in VET. Furthermore, the research can also provide insights on the existing or emerging solutions to support learners in the current pandemic crisis and the coming “new normal”.

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