A DisCrit-Informed Person-Centered Approach to Inclusive Education in Italy

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present DisCrit-informed person-centered strategies to reframe inclusive education in Italy through an equity lens. Our aim is to provide teachers in mainstream primary schools with practices that inform the design and implementation of Individualized Education Programs and Piano Didattico Personalizzato (Personalized Didactic Plans) through nondeficit, intersectional, and culturally relevant approaches. Drawing on an initial pilot case study carried out in a school in Rome, Italy, we analyze the challenges that teachers face in including students at the intersections of race, ability, language, and citizenship. In doing so, we intend to advance critical thinking about the use of inclusive tools, and the importance of reframing them through the DisCrit framework. Finally, we suggest that some of the existing inclusive practices exacerbate the exclusion of migrant students with and without disabilities, despite promises of equality for all students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The medical model of disability is driven by the imperative of “healthy normalcy,” the defining characteristic of which is the location of disability within the individual with biological impairments, ignoring macro-sociopolitical contexts of racism, ableism, and other intersecting systems of oppression (Migliarini & Stinson, 2021b).

2. With the passing of the Interministerial Decree 182, the old procedure that required local health authorities to issue a Dynamic Functional Profile (originally passed in 1994) has been substituted with the writing of a functioning profile based on new identification and assessment criteria resulting from the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health. However, a court ruling passed in September 2021 cancelled the 182 decree. Consequently, the MIUR passed new guidelines for the writing and implementation of the IEP. The new IEPs became compulsory starting in the 2021–2022 school year. Despite the clear attempt of the Ministero dell’istruzione and Della Ricerca (2009) to focus more on environmental barriers to participation and less on individual functioning, the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health is nevertheless still used to boost the medical perspective of disability (D’Alessio, 2007, 2011).

3. The seven tenets are (1) DisCrit focuses on ways that racism and ableism circulate interdependently; (2) DisCrit values multidimensional identities; (3) DisCrit emphasizes social constructions of race and ability; (4) DisCrit privileges the voices of marginalized populations; (5) DisCrit considers legal and historical aspects of disability and race; (6) DisCrit recognizes whiteness and ability as property; and (7) DisCrit requires activism (Annamma et al., 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valentina Migliarini

Valentina Migliarini is an assistant professor in the Department of Education and Social Justice and a member of the Centre for Research in Race and Education at the University of Birmingham. Her work focuses on increasing access to equitable education for students from multiply marginalized communities, specifically students with disabilities from forced migrant backgrounds, in secondary education. She uses the DisCrit framework as an intersectional lens to examine inclusive policies and practices in education systems in Europe and the United States.

Brent C. Elder

Brent C. Elder is an assistant professor of special education in the Department of Interdisciplinary and Inclusive Education at Rowan University. His research and practice focus on the development of sustainable inclusive education practices in underresourced schools in the United States and low-resourced countries around the world. Most recently, he worked on deaf rights in Northern Ireland and inclusive educational initiatives through USAID and UNICEF in Ghana and Rwanda.

Simona D’Alessio

Simona D’Alessio as an international scholar, she has carried out research in the area of inclusive education, disability studies in education, and policy analysis for international organizations and universities in Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. As a former qualified teacher of English language and a specialist teacher, she also worked as a lecturer and an expert in inclusive education globally. She has published extensively in Italian, English, and French.