Heading for Inclusive School in Europe
The sub-module presented here focuses on two major themes related to inclusion: the praxeological approach and empathy. To understand it, we must briefly re-lay the foundations of this concept posited today as a contemporary societal issue.
Inclusion can be seen as a utopia, as reminds us the anthropologist Charles Gardou (2012) , which means the ability of society to offer a "home for everyone" in the large house of the human family. An inclusive society is a society that must be capable of plasticity, versatility, polymorphism, to distort itself to make room for those who are considered as people with disabilities, social misfits, marginalized and excluded. The question is not to make these people adapted by isolating them in integration, insertion programmes, ... as if it were enough to focus on their problematic to make them access the circle of humanity. Our societies’ inclusiveness depends as much on their ability to adapt to the one that is not in the "norm", to distort the norm so as to perceive this different other as an identical other.
But, fundamentally, "society" is only a word or a concept because who is responsible for its inclusiveness if not those who constitute it. It is the human subject that is being discussed when our contemporary societies’ inclusiveness is invoked as a necessity. It is on the level of the human and citizen subject and its relationship with people in difficulty that inclusion is at stake. And, in this relationship, it is precisely from our empathic ability that will depend the "home", the place that will be made to people with disabilities.
And empathy is not just about the intellectual, rational ability to put oneself in the other's shoes. If so, what becomes of the other? Will taking his place finally not end up living in his place? Empathy has much more depth in terms of emotion, of experiencing things. "By experiencing things, I taste the feeling of the other to explore its interiority. But I do not succumb to affects, I make a movement of withdrawal by the analysis and the conceptualization of what I engage with the other in the empathy of the relationship". This second phase describes the praxeological approach which consists of meeting and knowing the other not only from what academic knowledge can tell me about (e.g. on autistic disorders, behavioural disorders, various syndromes handicapping the development of the child). "As a professional, teacher, school teacher, educator, ... I come to know and meet the child with special educational need (SEN) first of all because I recognize him/her in the empathy of the relationship.
" In this relationship, he/she will question the standardized knowledge "of which I am a bearer but the singularity of what he/she will propose" will be at the same time the source of a new knowledge on the eminently complex issues of children with SEN.
"The questioning of my standardized knowledge by the child’s singularity is possible only from an empathic position in the relationship". This creative doubt brings out new knowledge, new representations from which the professional (teacher, educator, attendant worker, caregiver), the institution in which he/she intervenes and finally society itself reconfigure themselves to be included in the SEN child’s singularity.
In this sub-module, the learner is led to place him-/herself in a situation of analysis, and self-reflection on the basis of audio-visual media that echo his/her professional experience. He/she will then wonder about empathy, by becoming familiar with the praxeological approach. And, from his/her own experience, he/she will consult theoretical knowledge (resource sheets) and practical knowledge (best practice sheets and pedagogical sheets) that will feed his/her training to an inclusive approach to his/her professional practices.
