Character skills e nuovi orizzonti per il mondo della scuola

Character Skills and New Horizons for Schools · Human Capital is usually measured in terms of Cognitive Skills at the end of schooling, as- sessed in terms of standardized achievements test scores. Recently Human Capital has been also connected to Non Cognitive Skills (also named Character Skill), personality resources linked to motivation in learning, relational capabilities, emotional stability, autonomy in pursuing personal objectives. Many authors showed that Non Cognitive Skills improve the acquisition of Cognitive Skills. We present the results of the research “The development of non cognitive skills in Trentino students”, carried out on lower secondary school students in the Autonomous Province of Trento. The aim is to verify whether Non Cognitive Skills lead to an improvement in Cognitive Skills, as measured by school performance, and whether ap- propriate educational programs increase Non Cognitive Skills, through two analyses, the first related to the 2017-2018 school year, the second to the following year. The results confirm that the presence of more robust skills promotes growth in Cognitive Skills as well; further, that various aspects of Non Cognitive Skills can be improved through specific educational pro- grams conducted in school settings.