Great enthusiasm for the 2024 edition of the SSRE Congress

Over 60 sessions, some 30 symposia and four plenaries with renowned international speakers. The programme of the SSRE 2024 Congress, jointly organised by the Department of Education and Learning / University of Teacher Education (DFA/ASP) of SUPSI, the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training (SFUVET) and the Swiss Society for Research in Education (SSRE), promised to be rich and substantial, and so it was.

From Wednesday 26 to Friday 28 June, more than 500 participants met in Locarno to discuss transversal competences, the so-called soft skills. A very topical and recurring theme in education and training. In fact, soft skills are often considered essential resources that should enable greater flexibility and the ability to adapt to the rapid changes in society, starting with the workplace.

As emphasised by Professor Stefano Losa, Conference Chair of the Congress, "the three days turned out to be a particularly privileged moment that made it possible to bring together experts in the training and educational field around transversal competences. The cross-views, even critical ones, and the joint work certainly contributed to a better understanding of the role these competences play both at an individual and societal level. The various moments of exchange also revealed a wealth of educational and training practices aimed at developing and implementing transversal competences in schools and in different training contexts. If we had to describe the Congress in three words, I would say: innovative, collaborative, interdisciplinary'.

Among the opportunities for exchange proposed during the Congress was the World Café, an interactive mode of collective reflection, which allowed participants to further discuss the topic of transversal competences with a particular emphasis on practice. The ideas and proposals resulting from this exchange will be collected in a meta-text in the near future. In the meantime, you can watch a short video that offers a glimpse of the richness of this moment: https://tube.switch.ch/videos/IGuCPZn3cD.