The professional competence of teachers with specific learning disorders and physical and sensorial disabilities is an emergent issue in the inclusive debate in the Italian culture.

A professional qualification that reaches high standards for all students (with or without a disability), also in their training path, has been known in literature as “Dilemma of professional competence” (Dvir, 2015; Lebel & al., 2016). This Dilemma also describes the tension that connects the right of persons with disabilities to become teachers, also using reasonable accommodation during their training and the responsibility of becoming competent teachers that can grant high quality education for all students.  

Literature shows that some features of teachers’ disability can be considered as a point of strengths in their daily work. For instance, Hickman & Brens (2014) report that teachers with dyslexia felt that their ‘condition’ helped them to be empathetic with students. According to Smith (2017), teachers with dyslexia pay special attention to how time is structured in the classroom and often avoid or minimize reading and writing activities or themselves and their students. Lamichhane (2016) states that teachers with a visual impairment seem to maintain class discipline better than their colleagues without disability.  

On the basis of this theoretical framework an inter-university Italian research project, named BECOM-IN: becoming a teacher with a disability, has been running since 2018 to explore the issue of inclusion of in service and training teachers with disabilities or specific learning disorders already in service at school. The project plans two phases and it deals overall with teachers with disabilities or specific learning disorders (SLD), teachers that worked with colleagues with disabilities or specific learning disorders (SLD) and students with disabilities or SLD attending primary teacher education and school directors.

In its first phase an international systematic review (Bellacicco & Demo, 2019) focused on teacher trainees (i.e. students of primary teacher education) with disabilities was carried out. The second phase of the project involves a mixed methods ongoing research.

More specifically, our research aims to explore: (1) how teachers with disabilities address the “dilemma of professional competence” in teaching (2) the barriers, the facilitators (WHO, 2001) and the coping strategies developed for teaching (3) the perceived impact (in terms of benefits) of their inclusion in teaching profession. 

In this paper, the preliminary qualitative analysis and the results of the interviews conducted with a group of teachers with disabilities, SLD and a group of teachers that were in relation with people with disabilities or SLD in the working field (later called colleagues).

Another paper - referring to the interviews administered to the students - will be submitted to the ECER Conference 2021.

To date a total of 16 Primary/Kindergarten school teachers participated in the interviews, of which 8 with specific learning disorders, sensorial or physical disabilities from the North, Centre and South Italy and 8 that have worked with colleagues with specific learning disorders or sensorial or physical disabilities. Snowball sampling was used as a method of data collection to select this, otherwise difficult to reach, population for the interviews. The online semi-structured interviews explored teachers’ perceptions of the impact of inclusion in their own life, in particular in their training path, the use of reasonable accommodations, the communication of “coming out”, the use of coping strategies, the point of strengths of the disable condition that people bring in their profession and the personal perception of inclusion of the academic and scholastic institutional context. As far data collection is concerned an ad hoc semi-structured interview was used. Each participant provided informed consent before participating in the research. The interviews have started during Winter 2020/2021 and they were video-registered through the online platform Teams or Meet. In particular 14 questions, which were validated by 9 experts from 6 different Universities (University of Bolzano, University of Bologna, University of Milano-Bicocca, University of Roma Tre, University of Salento, University of Torino) explored two main topics: 1) teachers’ opinions about being a competent teacher and experiencing a disability or having a specific learning disorder and 2) the obstacles and facilitators they encountered in their work life and the compensation strategies they used to overcome the difficulties. Interviews are transcribed and analyzed by means of Qualitative Content Analysis (Schreier, 2012) and transcripted are reported in a summary table.

Preliminary categories, mixing a concept-driven and data-driven development of codes according to Kuckartz’s model (2014, 2019), are created. Interviews are coded through the emerging category system. Preliminary analysis of data offers important suggestions on the dilemma of professional competence for teachers with disabilities or SLD. An interesting convergence in the opinions between teachers and colleagues regarding the barriers and facilitators has resulted. For both, “physical context” can represent a barrier especially for blind teachers or teachers with motor impairments, highlighting the need of assistance with transferts (e.g.: getting the canteen during the lunchtime). As regard the facilitators, according to colleagues the “mutual knowledge” between the person and the context is critical. For example, a school located in a context (e.g. town, district) that is already known by the person and viceversa is a facilitating factor. In teachers opinions, children’s attitude to cooperate in classroom management (e.g. helping with distribution of materials) is a facilitating factor. As far the exploration of teaching professional competence is concerned, in the opinion of the teachers, their ability to cope the differences in the classroom is strictly related to the acceptance of their own situation especially when students experience their same difficulty. According to teachers and colleagues, professional competence is not affected by person's impairment but it is the predisposition and the training on how to solve daily life problems that create the competence, independently, from the impairment. Finally, both teachers and colleagues think that having teachers with SLD or disability is a point of strength because they can be an efficient role model for the students of the classroom. At the same time, they represent a chance to deal with important topics such as diversity and acceptance of others and they can show concretely how to face difficulties in daily situations.

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