Developing “Soft Skills” with the Flipped Classroom: Inverting a Political Science Class on Latin-American Studies

The goal of this article is to evaluate the application of the Flipped Classroom format on a Political Science class of “Regional Studies: Latin-America.” Most studies, both in Political Science and other fields, have explored the impact of the Flipped Classroom on students’ performance, usually operationalized in terms of the results in the exams. This is certainly useful as it provides valuable insights about the utility of the technique in the learning process. However, we also think that in order to better involve students in the learning process, it is not enough to focus on their performance. After exploring the impact of the technique on students’ academic performance, our study analyzes students’ perceptions in order to understand whether the Flipped Classroom can be a useful resource to stimulate their attendance to class and the development of a set of soft skills, such as personal efficiency, teamwork, self-concept, perception of one’s own learning, and critical thinking. Both attendance and soft skills can be useful indicators of how students engage with what they learn.