The emotional intelligence approach in higher education. The case of the “Ca’ Foscari Competency Centre”

Previous research has mainly focused on the pivotal role played by the possession of emotional and social intelligence competencies in predicting and explaining work performance and individual wellbeing. This empirical evidence has spurred an increasing interest for those studies that address the development of emotional and social intelligence competencies, especially in the higher educational context. To this regards, prior studies highlight a mismatch between the set of graduates’ emotional and social competencies requested by companies and the ones acquired by graduates over their academic experience. However, limited attention has been paid to the analysis and the techniques through which these competencies can be developed and how academic curricula can be designed in order to achieve a better match between students’ competencies and firms’ requirements. We illustrate the empirical experiences of the academic Ca’ Foscari Competency Centre of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (ranked among the Top 200 QS World University Rankings), which mainly consist of: 1) monitoring the companies’ expectations in terms of competencies possessed by graduates; 2) evaluating students’ emotional and social competencies profiles; 3) exploring individual and contextual antecedents that favour the development of emotional and social competencies; 4) aligning students’ academic curricula to labour market requirements by tailoring the learning process using jointly a set of innovative sophisticated on-line (interactive platform) and off-line (seminars, laboratories and coaching sessions) techniques for the measurement, assessment and development of emotional and social competencies. Our study aims to contribute to the assessment and the development of emotional and social intelligence competencies of under-graduates and graduates by applying the intentional change theory - which has mainly been used in workplace settings – as theoretical framework and supporting them to undertake a self-directed learning process to foster their labour market entrance success