Abstract:

The theoretical paradigm of inclusive education, which has become the underpinning framework of reference for educational policies globally, highlights the need to respond to the different needs expressed by the students during their school path, thus recognizing the concept of difference as an inalienable human principle.

Within this scenario a great importance assumes the concept of personalization that theorized in the 70s of the last century and fully embraced in Italy by Law n. 53/2003, thus becoming a milestone of the legislative measures wich followed.

In particular, the Italian Ministerial Directive of 27th December, 2012 “Strumenti d’intervento per alunni con bisogni educative speciali e organizzazione territoriale per l’inclusione scolastica” (Intervention tools for pupils with special educational needs and the territorial organisation for school inclusion) outlines that each student can have special educational needs due to disability, to specific developmental disturbances, or to socio-economic, linguistic and cultural disadvantage. Thus teachers are required to respond to these needs with differentiated and personalized teaching-learning programmes on the basis of the individual differences and the potential of each and every learner (EADSNE, 2011).

In light of these reflections, this paper aims to suggest a possible strategy of personalization of teaching practices based on the concept of vicariance, considered as the human capacity to face up the complexity of phenomena by means of vicarious cognitive strategies which allow human adaptation to evolutionary processes (Berthoz, 2013).

In this perspective, the concept of vicariance in education could represent a form of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1985) which allows teachers to expand their possibilities of adaptation and those of their students within the teaching-learning process, starting from personal and contextual resources and taking into account the natural inclinations and the individual cognitive strategies. This approach envisages the teaching action as the plurality of forms of didactic transposition realized by each teacher (Sibilio, 2016) with the aim of meeting the subjective students’ ways of learning in order to enhance individual differences and ensure the school achievement of each and every one.

References:
[1] European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2011). La formazione docente per un sistema scolastico inclusivo in tutta Europa – Sfide ed opportunità. Odense: Danimarca.
[2] Ministerial Directive of 27th December, 2012 “Strumenti d’intervento per alunni con bisogni educative speciali e organizzazione territoriale per l’inclusione scolastica”
[3] Berthoz A., (2013). La vicariance. Le cerveau créateur de mondes. Paris: Odile Jacob
[4] Chevallard Y., (1985). La transposition didactique. Grenoble: La pensée sauvage.
[5] Sibilio, M. (2016). Dimensioni vicarianti delle corporeità didattiche. In M. Sibilio (a cura di), Significati educativi della vicarianza: traiettorie non lineari della ricerca (titolo provvisorio). Brescia: La Scuola (In press)

Keywords:

Inclusive education, vicariance, special educational needs, didactic transposition.