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Module 4 - Management

Administrative Staff Learning Path

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Chapter 10. UNIVERSITY POLICIES
The policies of an educational institution, such as the university, fit within the equilateral triangle of the Index for Inclusion that Booth and Ainscow defined (2000; 2002; 2011). Indeed, only inclusive cultures generate inclusive policies that follow up on inclusive practices. Attendance, participation, and progress, in terms of learning with others, are the 3-P indicators of the inclusiveness of educational and training actions that Ainscow (2003, 2004) outlined and are particularly useful in the management of institutions that want to be inclusive. The principle of reasonable accommodation of the UN Convention(2006) cannot be separated from the intentionality of wanting to place one's institution within the bio-psycho-social approach of the IFC (2001). This perspective sees functional diversity (Romañach Cabrero, 2009) encountering a context that can either act as a barrier or as a facilitator within the Relational Model (Shakespeare, 1994) of Disability Studies and only in the failure to relate these two elements does the context become disabling for the individual who encounters more barriers in learning (Soldevila Pérez, 2015).


In this perspective, it turns out to be fundamental to the management system:

  • the choice to remove the preclusion of the participation of some students in academic life in relation to the characteristics of intellectual functioning and neuro-diversity;

  • the intentionality of the institution to undertake paths of self-evaluation and improvement of the quality of inclusive actions adopted through the involvement of all stakeholders directly concerned (including, of course, the students with intellectual disabilities themselves);

  • the ability to understand, interpret and intercept the needs of students with neuro-diversity through the bio-psycho-social perspective of the ICF and profiles of functioning capable of abandoning the medical-individual perspective in favour of the relational perspective proper to the Relational Model that sees neuro-diversity as one of the types of development of human beings;

  • the design of pathways that, in line with the principles of reasonable accommodation, are able to make academic knowledge accessible in relation to individual neuro-diversity needs through the direct involvement of the student;

  • the widespread dissemination and information of the actions taken both internally within the academic environment and externally.

The University staff involved at any point in the process needs specific specialization starting with the policy makers who govern the academy, reaching the managers of the process itself, and ending with the individual faculty members who act out the pedagogical-didactic action in the classroom.

Adopting this perspective requires the management system:

  • the intentional management of spaces, not as places of separation specifically intended for certain types of neurodiverse students, but as inclusive places where everyone feels they belong as a welcoming and accessible place beyond individual functioning characteristics;

  • the intentional management of academic life times from the perspective of sustainability, capable of intercepting all the needs of the students who inhabit the University;

  • the identification and adoption of useful strategies to make the academic environment cognitively accessible through the adoption of functional forms of communication;

  • the adoption of strategies to adapt curricular and educational offerings also in relation to the content, tools and requests that each individual faculty member involved in the process.

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