Conference Agenda

Inclusive education aims at the social inclusion of all students, that is, their equal access and right be involved in a mainstream school (UNCRPD Art 24 2008) and to contribute to all classroom activities (Bates & Davis 2004). Although also Finland has committed to the neighborhood schools as the first educational option for all children (Basic Education Act 2010; Basics of the National Core Curriculum 2014), merely sharing placement in the same classroom environment does not automatically result in all students’ social inclusion (Petry 2018; Vetoniemi and Kärnä 2021).

This paper comes to grips with the topic of inclusive education by focusing on how the aims and principles of inclusive education appear in the learning and individual education plans (IEP) documents. These documents are a key to promote inclusive education in practice, since they define and justify students’ learning aims and contents as well as the need for necessary support measures, and modifications of the classroom environment the student will need to succeed.

The quality of IEPs has not been found to vary by students’ educational placement whether in inclusive or separate learning environments (Kurth et al. 2022), but teachers in inclusive classrooms seem to emphasize social IEP objectives more than teachers in segregated classrooms (Kwon, Elicker & Kontos, 2011). However, earlier research has showed that the general quality of pedagogical documents such as IEPs is often poor. This appears in vague or even missing descriptions of learning aims or pedagogical solutions in the documents (Boavida et al. 2010; La Salle et al., 2013; Ruble et al.; Räty et al. 2019) as well as in the lack of coherent continuity when describing the support measures or pedagogical solutions in the sequential pedagogical documents over the years (Heiskanen et al. 2019). In addition, the documents typically focus on describing children’s challenges rather than planning ways to eliminate barriers in learning environment or planning appropriate support measures for all students (Andreasson et al. 2013; Heiskanen et al. 2018; Isaksson et al. 2007; 2010; Kurth et al., 2022).

There is also a risk that IEPs do not provide concrete guidance for mainstream teachers on how to meet the individual learning needs of students in inclusive classrooms (Bray & Lin Russell, 2018). Therefore, it is of great importance to examine how the aims of inclusive education are advocated in learning and individual education plans and how the transparency in support provision appear in the documents. The research questions are the following: 1) What kinds of meanings of inclusive education are constructed in the learning and individual education learning plans? and 2) How are the aims of inclusive education justified in these documents?

For special and inclusive education policies and practice in most of the Western Countries, Individual Education Plans (IEPs) play a crucial role at the point that Mitchell, Murton and Hornby (2010) in their review write that “IEPs are ubiquitous”. Interestingly, IEPs exist both in countries with special schools or special classes and in more inclusive school systems like Norway, Italy or Portugal. They are called with different names and take different forms in different countries and school systems, but they all have in common the aim to define formal plans for special provisions in schools understood as necessary not for all, but for some pupils, in many countries those identified as having SEN (Alves, 2018).

Previous literature that reflects the use of IEPs within the framework of the development of inclusive education shows that the tool is connected with several challenges. Some of them are related to difficulties in its implementation, like for example accessibility of IEPs in terms of language and communication, the lacking professionals’, parents’ and/or students’ participation in the IEP-elaboration, or the perception of the IEP as an administrative rather than pedagogical tool (Alves, 2018; Andreasson & Carlsson, 2013; Blackwell & Rossetti, 2014; Cioè-Peña, 2020; Elder, Rood & Damiani, 2018; Müller, Venetz & Keiser, 2017; Breitenbach, 2019).

Others, and this are those we focus on in this work, relate to the essence of the IEP structure in being a tool for special provisions for somehow identified “special” student. On one side, IEPs mark pupils that for some reasons are identified not to fit the norm, with special educational needs for which it is assumed that general provision is not responding, on the other side, the simple abolishment of IEPs risks of flattening differences and making educational offer insensitive to individual differences (Alves, 2018; Ianes and Demo, 2021).

Moreover, IEPs can, on one side, design ways to reconnect so called special needs with the learning paths of a class that also implies the risk of a “normalizing” pressure. On the other side, IEPs can design separate curriculum and instructional strategies distinct from those for the whole class, with the risk of segregation (Andreasson, Asp-Onsjö and Isaksson, 2013; Bhroin and King, 2020; Martinez and Porter, 2020).

Finally, additional and specialized professionals (e.g. special education teachers) are linked directly to IEPS and connected with the risk that class teachers and subject teachers to do integrate students with IEPs in their planning and delegate to specialized professionals the responsibility for them, (Mitchell et al., 2010; King, Bhroin and Prunty, 2017; Bhroin and King, 2020; Martinez and Porter, 2020)

In Italy, in contrast to other European countries where separate curricula are formulated for certain categories of students with so called special educational needs, the IEP represents a tool which aims to guarantee all pupils access to the national curriculum and the curriculum of the school (Ianes & Demo, 2021). Despite the almost three decades long practice in the use of IEPs, problems and dilemmas are still arising (e.g., Associazione TreeLLLe, Caritas Italiana & Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 2011).

On this background, this paper aims at analyzing the way class teachers and support teachers describe the relationship between IEPs and class planning in Italian primary school classes.