Identity First or Person First? A Critical debate on disability and neurodiversity towards transformative and ecosystemic perspective in the field of inclusive education and sociale inclusion

Practices are never neutral: they are shaped by the cultural assumptions that inform them, the objectives they aim to pursue, and the visions of the future that they embody. Education is a driving force of human development. This is important to remember, particularly in the current historical moment, when engaging with complex and sensitive issues such as disability, neurodivergence, identity, and the educational models through which they are addressed. At the international level, growing scholarly attention to the relationship between disability, neurodiversity, and identity marks an expanding field of inquiry that calls for interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival approaches to be adequately understood. Over the past fifty years, inclusive education and social inclusion policies in Italy have constituted one of the most significant social, cultural, and political achievements in Europe. This contribution critically examines the notion of identity in relation to disability and neurodiversity. The analysis draws on the Italian tradition of research in Special Pedagogy and Special Didactics, which, since 1977, has developed an ecosystemic, co-evolutionary, intersectional, plural, and participatory educational approach grounded in democratic principles