Living With Diversity at School
Stefano Cainelli
The gradual marked increase in diagnoses of neurodevelopmental disorders and in particular autism spectrum disorders (ASD), has resulted in many children and adolescents entering school on level 1 of the autism spectrum. These pupils formally require little support from support teachers. Whilst having good cognitive and performance skills, they have many difficulties in cooperative work and interpersonal relationship management, which leads to a lack of ability in building relationships with classmates and to subsequent isolation and exclusion from the group. These conditions in the classroom, although presenting less difficulty and need for support than ASD levels 3 and 2, become progressively invisible. To foster processes of real inclusion, during these years of coaching to class councils, contextual, rather than supportive, interventions were proposed, which would enable these pupils to learn strategies for developing skills and learning in small groups. At the same time, information exchange and training programmes for their classmates were designed in order to build mutual and effective interpersonal communication and meaningful relationships in the class group.
Keywords
Autism, Neurodiversity, Coexistence, Inclusion, Classmates.
