The Condition of Vulnerability in the Educational Context: Ethical Considerations and Juridical Perspectives

Sen: Between The Skills Profile Of The Inclusive Teacher And The Support Teacher

In view of the above, it can therefore be said that, since the effectiveness of the support teachers’ intervention is directly proportional to the extent to which the context is enabling (a statement that finds its conceptual foundation in the relational dimension of care and in the ethics of skills), it follows that their skills must be in tune with an inclusive context also made up of curricular teachers whose skill profile corresponds to that of an inclusive teacher.

Below we will take into account the content of an article entitled Bisogni Educativi Speciali (BES) e normativa scolastica, postilla critica by Antonella Valenti, who reflects on the relational dimension of the teacher / pupil relationship mentioned above and who makes an in-depth critique of the school regulations on SEN (Valenti, 2014).

According to Valenti, who is Coordinator and Head of the Centro Studi ʻBisogni Educativi Speciali e Autismoʼ of the Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università della Calabria, the SEN legislation does not place sufficient emphasis on the educational relationship as it should be understood, that is, first and foremost as an instance of dialectical meeting between people involved in educational dialogue. According to the author, this is “a perspective that – with reference to Buber – evokes a meeting between an I and a thou, as a dialogic relation or pre-structure on the basis of which one can speak in terms of the relation between teacher and pupil. A thou, the pupil, with singularity, individuality, particularity, diversity with special educational needs. On the other hand – continues Valenti - alongside the a priori dialogicity – the pre-structure that always precedes any pedagogical statement – we must place a paradigm that today is indispensable and at the same time unwavering: the paradigm of care […] [understood as, nda] the sense of responsibility constituting the essence or the a priori of every educational act” (ivi, p. 95).

In this sense, as the author herself also clarifies, the paradigm of care is not “a specific paradigm of special educational needs in teaching, but the fact that the pedagogical system would have no meaning beyond the idea of care, if by this we mean the sense of responsibility constituting the essence or the a priori of every educational act” (Ibidem). And for the sake of completeness, it must be remembered that here the author also cites the thought of some authors who have made significant contributions to the theme (Boffo, 2006; Cambi, 2010; Foucault, 2010; 2011).