Universal Design for Learning in the italian context. Results of a research on the territory

Abstract

The present research starts from the assumption that in the current educational landscape, inclusive education represents an important challenge for all teachers, protagonists, today more than ever, of a conceptual evolution of disability and the meaning of inclusion, which calls into question the way of thinking about normality, diversity and consequently the inclusive way of acting in didactic practice.
The work highlights some problems, linked specifically to three fields of investigation such as the perception on disability and the inclusive education that teachers have, the language used and the difficulties of collaboration in the shared design of curricula accessible to all.
Three aspects that influence the educational practice of each teacher and that deserve to be explored from different perspectives.
In our case we introduced and shared, after a period of training, in the class councils of a group of teachers of some secondary schools of first degree, a considered promising approach to inclusive education such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), with the aim of answering specific questions related to the three aspects of investigation and testing the applicability of the same in the field.
They have been used detection tools initial, intermediate and final as the questionnaires and qualitative analysis such as the logbook, focus group and participatory observation.
The results can be considered overall appreciable, with interesting improvements in the perception of teachers on inclusive education, in the reduction of the labeling language and in the relationships of collaboration between teachers and specialized for the support activities.