Abstract:

Introduction:
Since DIGCOMP (2013) the European Commission has provided new causes of reflection and many competencies indicators that can define a competent teacher, beyond a fruitful teaching within an inclusive perspective with the use of ICT. Even more difficult is the research of more suitable methods for the teaching-learning process by using ICT and their integration into the educational curriculum (Prensky, 2015). The research adopts the EAS methodology (Episodes of Situated Learning, Rivoltella, 2014) allowing us to test the flipped lesson (Mazur, 1997) in "special contexts" where the teachers training is considered to be essential in inclusive perspective with ICT (EADSNE, 2013).

Method:
The experimentation has started at the beginning of the academic year 2015/2016 and has included a 4 months monitoring period. The sample is a group of 11 teachers from the “Centro de Educación Especial” (CEE) Fray Pedro Ponce de León, located in Burgos (Spain). The research focuses on the research-action model, with a theoretical and practical training of 25 hours, which presents the EAS method (Rivoltella, 2013; 2015), devices, Apps and environments 2.0 for the realization of inclusive activities with the use of ICT. We adopt quantitative assessment tools (specially designed questionnaires on the evaluation of digital skills and pre-post test experimental questionnaires) and qualitative assessment (observation grids, interactions in a virtual platform, as well as essay questions inside of the questionnaires) to collect the data.

Results:
A first analysis highlights that at the commencement of the training, 36.4% of teachers do not plan learning content using ICT and only 36.3% of them do it "sometimes." Otherwise, at the end of the training, 81.8% will plan digital content at least three times a week. These results demonstrate an improvement of the digital skills that at the beginning of the training had shown the 45.5% of teachers gaining low scores (18.2% for "no competent" and 27.3% "not very competent").
The end of the training reports the 90.9% of the teachers defined as "sufficiently competent" for the creation of digital content with the use of ICT (54.4% sufficiently; 27.3% quite; 9.1% a lot).
The proposed methodology (EAS) has proved to be useful to plan, organize and submit activities for 54.4% of the teachers who participated in the trial. The remaining group (45.6%) did not have the opportunity to exploit fully the potential of the methodology because of severe intellectual and physical disabilities of pupils, although 81.8% of the teacher has noted a general improvement in the motivation and in the learning ability of their students.

Conclusions:
The analysis of the questionnaires pre and post formation test detects how notwithstanding an initial preparation often non-existent, teachers believe that the path has improved digital competencies of teachers in 100% of cases. In conclusion, whilst the EAS method proved to be moderately useful to be implemented in CEE, on the other hand we have found that it is highly effective for the training of the teachers.

Keywords:

Special education, training, education, flipped, eas, micro teaching, competence.