The limits of a mostly homogeneous teacher population in terms of socio-economic status, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientations and ability emerge from the international agenda (Education Commission 2019). Also, the scientific community argues that a more diverse teacher body is a key factor for responding to students’ differences within inclusive school systems (Keane & Heinz 2015). In this field, a line of research has addressed the aspect of disability (e.g., Baldwin, 2007; Griffiths, 2012; Keane, Heinz & Eaton 2018; Riddick, 2003). The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN, 2006, art. 24.4) explicitly mentions that schools should recruit persons with disabilities as education staff.  Nevertheless, to date, research on the topic has been mainly focused on teachers’ life trajectories, the challenges they face, their practices in the classroom, and the decisions about disclosing disability (Neca et al., 2020),with less attention being paid to the peculiar issue of ‘fitness to practice’ requirements for the teaching profession. This leads to tensions between the call for diversification and selection, that has been discussed already in 2005 by Cochran-Smith. On one side there is the effort to raise teaching quality and the decision in many Western countries to adopt professional standards, applied already in teacher training. On the other side, there is the right of persons with disabilities to access higher education, also with reasonable accommodations (UN, 2006, art. 2), and then to pursue the teacher profession, if this is what they choose for themselves.

On this background, referring to Norwich’s conception of Dilemma of Difference (2008), we use the term "Dilemma of professional competence" to describe the tension that connects two apparently opposite conceptual perspectives in the discussion on inclusion of students with disabilities in teacher education programs and teachers with disabilities in schools (Bellacicco & Demo in press). The dilemma takes the following formulations:

-          If the (student) teacher with a disability has access to accommodations, his/her professional profile will move away the standardized idea of it and the tasks related to it

-          If the (student) teacher does not have access to reasonable accommodations, he/she will encounter more barriers in her course of study / in their professional experience

The research “Becoming a teacher with disabilities: from teacher education to the work-field of primary school and kindergarten (BECOM-IN)” funded by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and conducted in Italy between 2018 and 2021 addressed, among other issues, the dilemma of professional competences with the aim to describe the different forms it takes. In this paper, the following research questions will be answered by means of the results achieved by the research projects:

• Which forms does the dilemma of professional competence assume in primary school/kindergarten teacher training?
• Which forms does the dilemma of professional competence assume in primary school and kindergarten?

The questions are relevant for the field of Inclusive Education from several perspectives. First, in the field of Higher Education, they contribute to a deeper understanding of how standardization and inclusive perspective are balanced in teacher training. These findings are relevant for many countries beyond Italy, specifically for all countries where teacher professional standards coexist within the UN-Convention. Furthermore, they can offer some insights also for other courses granting a license to practice that imply standards (i.e. nursing, etc.). Second, for the field of school inclusion, the results contribute to a better understating of how institutions and persons in them deal, on one side, with standards of the teacher profession and related tasks, and, on the other, with the right to accommodations, moving the focus from diversity in childhood and youth to adults working in schools.

As a first step of the research project “BECOM-IN”, two systematic reviews were conducted on evidence from research on student-teachers and teachers with disabilities, based on empirical studies conducted between 1990-2018 (Bellacicco & Demo, 2019; Bellacicco, Ianes & Macchia, under review). For the empirical part, the research has a multi-method-design, adopting both quantitative and qualitative methods. A survey was conducted in order to reach the widest possible number of participants in the 33 Italian universities offering a primary/kindergarten teacher training (in the academic year 2019/2020). For each university, the following participants are recruited: the teacher training director, Dean’s Delegate for Disability, the Referent for Disability of the Department/Faculty to which the teacher training belongs to, three lecturers and one practicum coordinator. The questionnaire is structured in four sections (with slight adaptions for the different respondents) focused on: 1) the evaluation of the frequency of use of accommodations and of their ethicality in respect of the achievement of professional standards, 2) early leaving of students with disabilities, 3) original policies developed to support student teachers with disabilities 4) background information. In this paper, we dig deeper into the data from section 1. The administration took place between February and June 2020. Surveys were distributed to academic staff mailboxes and a total of 92 forms were returned (17 course directors, 11 Dean's Delegate for Disability, 38 lecturers, 15 practicum coordinators; respondance rate 4.2%). Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and analysis of the association between variables with the chi-square test. For what the qualitative part concerns, semi-structured interviews were conducted with student teachers and teachers with disabilities and colleagues of the latter (teachers without disabilities). Interviews are structured in five thematic sections: 1) background information; 2) barriers and facilitators encountered and coping strategies developed; 3) perceived reluctance in receiving “reasonable accommodations" that can be linked to the "professional competence dilemma"; 4) methods for addressing and resolving the dilemma; 5) disclosure, 6) perceived benefits of teachers with disabilities. In this paper, only data related to the sections 3), 4) and 5) are presented. A voluntary sample of 16 student teachers with sensory, physical or learning disabilities and of 20 primary school and kindergarten teachers, 14 with a sensory, physical or learning disabilities and 6 without participated in this phase. Data were analyzed by means of computer based content analysis, using a priori categories related to the interview thematic sections and deductive data-driven subcategories.

On the basis of the results of the conducted research project, we put forward the idea that the dilemma assumes at least two forms in the context of teacher training and in the context of school: an institutional one and a personal one. The institutional one has been formulated in the introduction of this paper. In line with what was found in the literature review, results from our quantitative data clearly show the existence of the dilemma among academic staff and lecturers in teacher training courses, particularly for some forms of accommodations that change the direct nature of the task or alter the standards of the task. These results are partially confirmed by the qualitative results from interviews with student teachers. Several students have elaborated on this tension, even if other interviewees showed a lack of reflection on the topic and, in some cases, difficulties in understanding the dilemma. For what teachers with disabilities concern, the institutional dilemma is much less present, probably also due to the fact that clear legislative guidance regarding accommodations for teachers with disabilities are much less formalized than for students. The personal form of the dilemma is strictly connected with the way persons with disabilities themselves deal with the choice of disclosing the disability (if invisible) that, on one side gives access to accommodations, but on the other side exposes to a major risk of being seen as not sufficiently competent because of disability. Confirming previous research (Neca et al., 2020), this form of the dilemma is well represented both in results from student-teachers’ and from in-service teachers’. As a conclusion, implications for the development of welcoming contexts for (student) teachers with disabilities in teacher training courses and schools will be discussed.

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