An ecological model of inclusive school: Italian results of a European research
Annalisa Morganti, Andrea Mangiatordi, Alessia Signorelli, Enrico Angelo Emili, Lucio Cottini
The paper presents the Italian results of the European project «Algorithm for New Ecological Approaches to Inclusion (ECO-IN)» (2019-2023) aimed at filling the lack, at European level, of a holistic/systemic approach to combat the phenomenon of school and social exclusion of students with special educational needs, the response to which has often been linked to fragmented interventions and «emergency actions» implemented only by some of the main actors in the educational process.
The research has built, disseminated and implemented in public schools, primary and lower secondary schools, an ecological model of training and intervention aimed at improving school inclusion, aimed at teachers, school principals, educators, external experts, families and policy makers.
The creation and validation of an innovative evaluation tool has allowed the collection of data that, organized according to an algorithm of «weights», show the presence and salience of the main dimensions that make up the construct of school inclusion. The results favorably support the perspective according to which inclusion in school is based on contextual dynamics, linked to the participation and co-responsibility of all the actors involved, while highlighting different levels of involvement and the concrete availability of the different environments to change according to a process of reasonable accommodation.
Keywords
School inclusion, Ecological approach, Evidence, Evaluation, Algorithm.
