Simplex didactics and teacher training: An exploratory study to improve inclusive processes

Abstract

As maintained by both Bakker and Morin, the classroom is a complex system shaped by multiple factors that influence teaching and learning. Current scholarship acknowledges teachers play a crucial role in addressing such complexity through reflective and adaptive practices. Sibilio’s Simplex didactics, grounded in Alain Berthoz’s theory of simplexity, provides a theoretical framework for simplifying without reducing complexity, thereby fostering flexibility, creativity, and coherence between theory and practice. In particular, the study presents data collected during the “Special Education: Metacognitive and Cooperative Approach” lectures from the 8th cycle of Specialisation courses for future support learning teachers held at the University of Salerno. Results highlight significant changes in participants’ perceptions of complexity that were increasingly understood as a process to be interpreted and addressed through adaptive and reflective decision-making. The training seems to have improved some dimensions of teachers’ professional competence, such as their capacity to reconsider usual responses, anticipate possible developments and adapt didactic action to contextual variability. The qualitative analysis of the exercises also suggests an increased ability to integrate disciplinary objectives with forms of mediation attentive to learner variability. These findings show that training based on simplex Didactic may support future teachers in developing reflective and adaptive competences with potential implications for inclusive didactic design.