The cocept of vicariance in the teaching-learning process: a possiblre didactic tool for promoting school inclusion

The theoretical paradigm of inclusive education highlights the need to respond to the different requirements expressed by the students during their school years, thus recognizing the concept of difference as an inalienable human principle. Within this scenario the concept of personalization, theorized in the 70s and fully endorsed in Italy in 2003 with the law n. 53/2003, became a milestone of the legislative measures which followed In particular, the Italian Ministerial Directive of 27th December, 2012 ‘Intervention tools for pupils with special educational needs and the territorial organisation for school inclusion’ outlines that each student can have special educational needs due to disability, specific learning difficulties, or socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Hence, teachers are required to respond to these needs with individualized and personalized teaching-learning programmes on the basis of the distinct differences and the potential of each and every learner [1]. In light of these reflections, this paper aims to suggest a possible strategy to personalize teaching practices. The key proposed is the concept of vicariance, defined as the capacity of human beings to deal with complex phenomena by means of vicarious cognitive strategies, thus allowing human adaptation to evolutionary processes [2]. Adapting the concept of vicariance in teaching could represent a form of didactic transposition [3] which allows teachers to expand their possibilities of adaptation and those of their students within the teaching-learning process, starting from personal and contextual resources and taking into account the natural inclinations and the individual cognitive strategies. This approach envisages the teaching action as the plurality of forms of didactic transposition realized by each teacher [4] with the aim of meeting the subjective students’ ways of learning in order to enhance individual differences and ensure the school achievement of each and every one.