Project Description

Inclusive education guarantees the right of all children to receive quality teaching, regardless of their personal, social, or cultural characteristics. In early childhood education, both first and second cycles (ages 0-6), this model is essential for fostering each child’s holistic development, ensuring that everyone has equal opportunities for learning and participation.

It is crucial for education to be inclusive because it promotes equity, preventing discrimination and exclusion. By integrating all children into the same educational environment, respect, empathy, and coexistence are fostered from an early age. Moreover, an inclusive system enhances individual potential and improves overall group performance by addressing different learning styles.

Educators must be trained in inclusive education because they are the main agents of change in the classroom. Their training enables them to apply flexible methodologies, adapt materials, and respond to each child’s needs.

From the framing of disability in terms of legislation and rights, with particular attention to the issue of social and school inclusion, to the description of disabilities referred to the 0-3 age group, the course explores both the observation of the child with signs of difficulty and the critical elements with respect to autonomy, interaction/communication with others, play and playfulness, as well as the possible expedients and targeted strategies that can be
implemented to facilitate the child’s development in these areas.

At the same time, the course examines school educational assistance services, polymorphous realities located throughout the country, which assign the educator the difficult task of disentangling the contaminating education-care relationship.

Additionally, proper training helps them manage diversity, work with families, and collaborate with other professionals to ensure quality education for all.

Therefore, considering the relevance of the topic in teacher training, this COIL has a double objective: on the one hand to make known the Italian model of inclusiveness and on the other hand to share strategies for inclusion in ECEC

Participating institutions and countries 

Years running

  • From 2024-2025

Languages

English/Italian/Catalan

Students 

Students from BA degree programs in education:

UVIC-UCC. 2nd-year-students of Degree in Early Childhood Education Teaching,. Subjects involved:

  • Nursery School. 3-6 Years. (Prof. Berta Vila)

University of Salento: 3rd-year-students of Degree in Social Education and Educational Intervention Techniques (Pathway: EDUCATOR 0-3)

  • Inclusive education for early childhood (prof. Andrea Fiorucci, dott.ssa Alessia Bevilacqua)

Project description and goals 

The following topics will be dealt with

  • In-depth knowledge of the organisational systems in Italy and Catalonia.
  • Principles of inclusive education.
  • Educational strategies for inclusion, the prepared environment.

Students from both universities will collaborate online to achieve the following objectives:

  • Discuss the importance of inclusive environments Early Childhood Education.
  • To learn about the attitudes needed to become a committed inclusion professional according to the 0-6 years curriculum.
  • To discuss about the approaches to play and work environment preparation for the response to diversity in Early Childhood Education.
  • To frame the nursery as an inclusive service, with a specific focus on children with disabilities and the tools that can support the self-assessment of inclusion by educational staff.
  • To know and learn more about the functions and figures of school care services.

Activities

Students will have to work in groups to deliver papers related to each of the above-mentioned topics.
There will also be two online but synchronous sessions on 8 April and 8 May 2025, taught by Professor Berta Vila (from the Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya) and by Andrea Fiorucci and Alessia Bevilacqua (from the University of Salento).

Contact: scientific coordinators