The assessment of competencies acquired by returnees from Individual student exchanges: European key competencies and the Italian school

Complex transversal competencies, resulting from a returnee’s overall experience abroad, constitute one of the pillars of the pedagogy of some independent organisations in charge of long-term individual student exchanges. In educational terms, they are considered as one of the main added values in returnee’s experience. But the Italian system does not give teachers clear rules on how to assess the knowledge and the competencies their returnee students have acquired abroad. Moreover, the concept of competency has only relatively recently being introduced in the Italian school, and in general it is limited to the narrower vision of “disciplinary” competencies. Could the more complex categories provided by the “European Key Competencies” supply Italian teachers with a grid through which they could understand and assess the ampler set of experiences acquired by returnees?