Abstract:

This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding inclusive teacher education as a process of cognitive reconfiguration rather than simple knowledge transmission or technique acquisition. Traditional approaches often conceive teacher competence as the accumulation of strategies or prescriptive responses to diverse learners; by contrast, the proposed model situates the development of inclusive expertise within processes of cognitive and metacognitive transformation. The framework is currently under development and is informed by an exploratory investigation conducted with 177 pre-service teachers enrolled in specialist training programs for supporting students on the autism spectrum (Sessa & Aiello, 2025).

Central to this framework is the concept of cognitive inhibition, understood not as a mechanism of suppression but as a deliberate metacognitive operation that interrupts automatic inferences, habitual interpretative patterns, and intuitive shortcuts. This conceptualization is grounded in neurocognitive models of inhibitory control (Houdé, 2015) as well as in empirical insights derived from a video-based reflective task in which participants were invited to suspend spontaneous mentalistic attributions while observing a short film devoid of verbal interactions. By suspending the automatic activation of prior assumptions, inhibition enables access to slower, more analytically grounded modes of perception and reasoning, which are essential for engaging with the complexity and unpredictability of inclusive classroom contexts.

Inhibition is framed as a generative and enabling mechanism that creates a cognitive “space” for reflective attention, epistemic monitoring, and flexible meaning-making. These capacities are foundational for inclusive professional judgment, allowing educators to perceive heterogeneity not as a source of error or difficulty, but as an opportunity for pedagogical re-design and adaptive reasoning. Drawing on the principle of simplexity in cognitive and motor systems (Berthoz, 2012), the framework argues that complex and ambiguous situations are not managed through simplification, but through the transformation of perceptual and cognitive processes into actionable fields for decision-making. Complexity thus becomes a resource rather than a constraint when teachers are able to regulate their cognitive and attentional processes in real time.

Within this perspective, the teacher is reconceived as a reflective professional whose inclusive competence resides less in technical repertoire than in the ability to identify, regulate, and redesign internal cognitive patterns. Inclusive decision-making emerges through iterative cycles of awareness, inhibition, and reflection, positioning inclusion as an inhibitory–metacognitive practice that fosters flexible, equitable, and context-sensitive educational choices. By shifting the locus of inclusion from the adaptation of learners to the cognitive restructuring of educators, the proposed framework contributes to international debates on inclusive pedagogy and teacher education. It also suggests implications for teacher education curricula and professional development, emphasizing the cultivation of metacognitive regulation, epistemic vigilance, and adaptive decision-making under conditions of diversity and uncertainty. Inclusive education is conceptualized not merely as an external accommodation process, but as an internally mediated and cognitively sophisticated practice.

Keywords:

Reflective practice, Inclusive education, Teacher education, Simplexity, Cognitive inhibition.