The Index for Inclusion (Booth T. and Ainscow M., 2002; revised third ed., 2010) is an international well established instrument in supporting an inclusive school development, which has been translated in over 30 languages. It is based on a social model of inclusion that focuses on two main actions for school development: 1. analysis of school barriers and facilitators for participation and successful learning for all; 2. production of a development plan that addresses barriers and constructs new facilitators. In both the actions students, families and teachers are asked to participate and collaborate. Concretely the Instrument offers a list of indicators and questions that support schools in a systematical self-review work and in shaping a precise development plan. It also offers a methodological systematic of how the process of reviewing the setting and planning change can be structured in phases and how the phases can concretely look like.

The research project has the goal to detail the methodological aspects of the use of Index for Inclusion and discuss them for the Italian context. Despite of the value of using an international instrument that leads to a common understanding of inclusion, its application needs to be adapted to the different contexts. In this action-research the researchers played the role of the critical friend (Schratz et al., 2000) in 5 different schools for three school years. The analysis of the methodological choices done by the schools in adopting the Index and problems that were encountered led to the development of guidelines for the use of the Index in the Italian context.

Although it won’t be presented at the conference, the research project also aims to draft an adaption of the Index for the province of Bozen, starting from the already existing Italian and German version.

The project contributes to the international discussion about the Index for Inclusion under two points of view:

- the collection of international documented practices with Index for Inclusion (Rustemier and Booth, 2005;Duke, 2009)

- the purpose of a research-design for defining methodological aspects of the Use Index for Inclusion in single Countries, taking into account the specificities of the national settings.

Booth T. and Ainscow. M. (2002), Index for Inclusion, Bristol, CSIE Booth T. and Ainscow. M. (2010), Index for Inclusion, Third revised edition, Bristol, CSIE Duke J. (2009) The use of the Index for Inclusion in a regional educational learning community, unpublished, http://eprints.qut.edu.au/29400/1/c29400.pdf Rustemier S. and Booth T. (2005), Learning about Index in Use, CSIE, Bristol Jakobsen L., MacBeath J., Meuret D., Schratz M., Self-Evaluation in European Schools. A Story of Change, Routledge