Chronotopes of inclusive education

Abstract

The social history of inclusion is a tale written around the concession, claim, conquest
and transformation of denied physical and relational spaces. From a pedagogical-didactic
and legislative point of view, we can read in the same way the history of Italian scholastic
inclusion, that today challenges us with the duty of constantly rethinking the forms of
inclusive education that aim to identify specific answers, in common spaces, to a wide
variety of educational needs. In order to avoid the homogenizing tension induced by the
tendency to simplify to categorize differences, the space needs to be thought of in terms
of its intimate connection with the time in which the educational event takes place. To
this end, using of the notion of “chronotope”, borrowed from Bakhtin’s studies on the
novel and adapted to the reflection on teaching-learning processes, this paper aims to
identify which chronotopes can best accommodate an inclusive demand. In particular,
the paper will argue that the chronotope, set against the backdrop of the Bakhtinian
dialogical approach, could represent a way to overcome an additive vision of spaces, in
favour of a relational and transformative one.