New training paths for school inclusion

Abstract

Among the novelties expected to emerge next year is the possibility that the initial training path for future preschool and primary school teachers will be strongly innovated. There is, in fact, a provision, contained in Legislative Decree 66/2017 the socalled ‘inclusion decree’ that would add 60 university training credits (CFUs) of Special Pedagogy to the qualifying course of study for teaching in preschool and primary schools. Not, therefore, of ‘support teachers’ but of everyone, including socalled ‘curricular’ teachers.
This is a legislative measure that would have a very strong impact at the educational level and could really have a profound effect in defeating that mental attitude defined for some time now as the ‘delegation process’, i.e. that mechanism whereby curricular teachers tend to shift the ‘taking charge’ of pupils and students with disabilities onto support teachers.
This contribution will retrace the path that led to the current figure of the support teacher, making a comparison with the results of some international surveys, with the aim of showing the importance of the implementation of this law, which completes a fundamental aspect of the ‘inclusive teacher profile’, as defined in the scientific literature.