Physical activities and special educational needs

Abstract

The Ministerial Directive dated December 27, 2012 and the subsequent Circular dated March 6, 2013 for the identification of students with special educational needs (SEN), have planned a school that knows how to respond appropriately to all the difficulties of students by preventing them, in the perspective of a deeply inclusive school. Ianes & Cramerotti (2013) stated that in order to recognize the real needs of a student, it is necessary to understand their current and general situation of functioning; ICF (WHO, 2001), in fact, being fundamentally organic-psycho-social, obliges to consider the totality and complexity of the functionings of the people and not only organic and structural aspects. From this perspective, the didactic setting that is built during Physical Education and Sport, is an excellent valuation framework for the identification of SEN, because physical activity has always been recognized as a disciplinary area that allows students to express their personality, build dynamics of relationships, express motor behavior, etc. (IN 2012). The Personal Factors, in fact, were considered key elements for the construction of instruments with indicators and qualifiers, because according to the latest neuroscience research (Caruana & Borghi, 2013; Damasio, 2009; Gomez Paloma, 2013), they are particularly influencing into the learning process. The research involved 34 schools (2500 students) from four different regions. For data collection has been activated an online platform which allowed to the teachers to download the necessary tools for the assessment and enter the results at the end of the process. From the data analysis it was possible to understand that there is a significant and positive correlation between indicators encoded by ICF and indicators that detect situations, attitudes, behaviors and postures specially created for the identification of difficulties and special educational needs, affirming the validity and reliability of the tool and giving teachers the opportunity to apply strict criteria to identify pedagogically students and act in an inclusive way.