Index for Commitment to inclusion

In the Italian context the children with special educational needs and disabilities are included in mainstream schools since the Italian legislation had recognised the importance of the process of inclusion to the activity and participation dimensions of the child and the importance of the environmental factors to the determination of a disability. Starting from the “Index for inclusion” (Booth et al., 2000) the purpose of this study is to modify this document by simplifying and compressing the items and to create an instrument that can be more easy to use. The new “Index for Commitment to inclusion” can be used by the schools in a double way: - to recognise specific actions for inclusion in which schools are committed to, and which could be observed, implemented and evaluated; - to certificate and accredit their process of inclusion. In the first phase of the study we have created three tools to which schools, students and parents/carers give their responses (based on a 6-point scale) considering the process to inclusion of their school. A representative group of schools (primary and secondary schools) of the Veneto Region spread over all the different provinces is involved, in collaboration with the Regional Instructional Office and an on line form of the tools is provided. The second phase of the research will extend the participation to all Veneto Schools. The implications of these findings are considerable because the study provides results directly derived from the application of a Commitment version of Index in which the corresponding actions for inclusion made by teachers and schools politics in that direction are expressed and became sharable and available among different institutions and evaluable also by families and students. The data implementation is still in progress and will be presented and discussed in the paper, as well as the main educational implications of the results.