Competenza emotiva, strategie di coping e atteggiamenti inclusivi nella relazione insegnante/alunno ipovedente

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the teacher / blind pupil relationship and to identify the factors that can influence this relationship. Specifically, it was investigated the correlation between certain teacher individual factors (emotional intelligence, inclusive self-efficacy, attitude towards inclusive practices) and the quality of the relationship that teachers engaged in activities supporting visually impaired children, identifying any factors that predict the quality of this social interaction. Fifty teachers (16 M and 34F; age: M = 41.45; SD = 7.862) took part in the study; they were asked to fill in: socio-demographic schedule, SACIE-R (Forlin et al., 2011), TAIS (Monsen et al., 2015), TEIQue-SF (Petrides, Furnham, 2003), COPE (Sica et al., 2008) TEIP (Sharma et al, 2012), STRS (Fraire et al., 2008). By correlational analysis, significant relationships emerge between the different factors investigated. In particular, higher level of teacher emotional competence is related to lower propensity to interact in a hostile and aggressive way. While those who perceive the inclusion of disabled pupil as worrying and complicated are also those who most likely tend to define relationships in a more conflictual and dysfunctional way.
Finally, the teacher who perceives himself competent in using inclusive strategies believes that the inclusive process does not involve major implications and upsets for the special needs children.The analysis of linear regression seems to confirm, moreover, the fundamental role of emotional competence and of the effectiveness level that teacher believes to possess in order to face the challenges of inclusion in determining the quality of interaction between teacher and special educational needs student.
It is obvious that these factors intersect with the contextual ones, that is, with a whole series of system variables and important alliances to overcome prejudices and offer more and adequate support. Working with people with visual disabilities requires therefore a continuous and proactive training of all
the caregivers, a training that teaches how to activate the students to work with their difference, but, at the same time, responds to the teacher's need to work on their own self-regulation ability, because only under these conditions the educational value of inclusion is to be understood both by the services and by the schools.