Diversity, Inclusion and Education

 

Diversity of culture, character, taste, aptitude, and intellect are a clear expression of our equality. They are the sign that equality lives in diversity. And that we must not find shared values, as we hear repeated from all sides, but find the coexistence of different values: values that allow us to coexist despite our diversity, to live together despite and thanks to our differences.

We are equal because we are different. Diversity is mutually and reciprocally nourished by the diversity of others. And so, while differences divide and create inequalities, diversity unites and enriches the community. The principle of equality, therefore, protects those who are different and combats differences. Equality is synonymous with cohesion and diversitỳ, i.e.̀ the exact opposite of a homogenizing vision of the social fabric and people.

Educational interventions must be designed in such a way as to make the individual capable of acquiring self-awareness through the development of his or her potential. The life project is multidimensional as it includes all aspects: family, school, training, work, culture, social.

Inclusive Pedagogy focuses on the potential of each individual and his or her resources and aims to identify strategies to promote learning with a view to effective inclusion. The aim is to avoid the creation of special places, which were abolished a long time ago because they are not suitable for the social and affective inclusion of the subject with handicap or deficit characteristics.

For a learning environment to be connoted as "inclusive" every activity presented within it must be fully accessible and usable for everyone, including people with disabilities.

The personalized use of inclusive technologies is framed by training based on Universal Design for Learning: the concept of universal design - which derives from the field of architecture, where the issue of accessibility of structures has been emerging since the 1970s - was borrowed in the educational field by the Americans with Disabilities Act in the 1990s with a focus on the issue of accessibility of content. According to the Universal Design for Learning framework, digital technology allows for easier and more effective customization of curricula to students, if carefully planned and used flexibly. The principles that according to universal design should guide the design of learning environments, methodologies, delivery channels, mediating processes, and inclusive technologies include equity and flexibility of use of materials and content, ease of use which should be as intuitive as possible, multimodality, error tolerance (considered an opportunity) and the importance of feedback, efficiency, and convenience of materials and activities, usability and care of the usability of the material, which should be usable for all students.

The values of inclusion must find a concrete translation in teaching choices, starting from the adaptation of the environment, such as, for example, the use of multisensory tools and aids or teaching technologies with a vicarious function that can ensure greater accessibility to information and, consequently, greater autonomy, for the benefit of the whole class.

Tecla Arrighini