Index for inclusion and empowerment: guidelines to use it as inclusive instructional design tool

The researchers of the Department of Education of the University of Bologna, in partnership with EducAid designed and tested an extension of the original Index for Inclusion (Booth and Ainscow, 2011) which included the concept of empowerment. The new tool, called Index for Inclusion and Empowerment, is analyzing the level of empowerment and inclusion provided by each school to its students, with or without a disability. The aim of this tool is to support a reflection and discussion to self-review the level of inclusion and empowerment in didactical and educational activities, and in the local policies, in order to improve the school planning, the student’s performance, and the community quality of life. The tool is not individual one, but collective tool since teachers and principals should meet together to discuss and fill in the form, reflecting about answers and adding comments, questions, doubts, and anything useful to better understand the context. The Index is made of 4 parts: 1) The school’s data to monitor change thorough time; 2) Organization of didactical and educational activities in the school, including the way teachers and students are used to work and plan individually or as a group; 3) Space arrangement and use, means how the spaces are organized and used in school during school time and after it; 4) Index of inclusion and empowerment where school have a list of macro areas and specific indicators. The Index for Inclusion and Empowerment serves as a self-assessment tool that aims to increase evidence-based knowledge about the level of inclusion and empowerment that schools have where using this tool is helping the users to better analyze their own contexts (the community, the school, the class, the students etc.) and schools’ inclusive practices; and to better identify the needs of the subjects involved.