Autobiographical narrative as a means to promote self-orienting and inclusive processes in SEN teacher training courses

Abstract

The paper describes a training and research experience conducted with teachers attending a SEN laboratory.

The main purposes of the training and research activities (20 h) implemented over several cycles (2020-2024) fall into two areas: the first related to autobiographical narration; the second concerns collective narration and educational planning. The objectives of the first area are to involve future teachers in the recognition of their own needs to arrive at the acceptance of those of others as well as to experiment, using the narrative tool, how orienting motivations and interests functional to the start of a new professional project. The objectives of the second area are linked to the idea of ​​building with the teachers a experimentation of a curriculum of readings and activities by which the fairy tale takes a mediating function aimed at promoting the development of communicative interaction between peers, sociability, the recognition of differences, the improvement of cultures and inclusive practices of the educational context.

A corpus of more than 400 autobiographical narratives, whose analysis is still ongoing, was collected during the training, The findings showed a high degree of appreciation of the activities especially in order to reevaluate one's own experiences, to become more aware of one's own attitudes and to foster mutual comparison and listening.