Competenza emotiva, strategie di coping e atteggiamenti inclusivi nella relazione insegnante/alunno ipovedente

The aim of this study was to analyze the teacher / blind pupil relationship and to identify the factorsthat can influence this relationship. Specifically, it was investigated the correlation between certainteacher individual factors (emotional intelligence, inclusive self-efficacy, attitude towards inclusivepractices) and the quality of the relationship that teachers engaged in activities supporting visually impairedchildren, identifying any factors that predict the quality of this social interaction. Fifty teachers(16 M and 34F; age: M = 41.45; SD = 7.862) took part in the study; they were asked to fill in: socio-demographicschedule, SACIE-R (Forlin et al., 2011), TAIS (Monsen et al., 2015), TEIQue-SF (Petrides, Furnham,2003), COPE (Sica et al., 2008) TEIP (Sharma et al, 2012), STRS (Fraire et al., 2008). By correlationalanalysis, significant relationships emerge between the different factors investigated. In particular, higherlevel of teacher emotional competence is related to lower propensity to interact in a hostile and aggressiveway. While those who perceive the inclusion of disabled pupil as worrying and complicatedare also those who most likely tend to define relationships in a more conflictual and dysfunctional way.Finally, the teacher who perceives himself competent in using inclusive strategies believes that the inclusiveprocess does not involve major implications and upsets for the special needs children.The analysisof linear regression seems to confirm, moreover, the fundamental role of emotional competenceand of the effectiveness level that teacher believes to possess in order to face the challenges of inclusionin determining the quality of interaction between teacher and special educational needs student.It is obvious that these factors intersect with the contextual ones, that is, with a whole series of systemvariables and important alliances to overcome prejudices and offer more and adequate support. Workingwith people with visual disabilities requires therefore a continuous and proactive training of allthe caregivers, a training that teaches how to activate the students to work with their difference, but,at the same time, responds to the teacher's need to work on their own self-regulation ability, becauseonly under these conditions the educational value of inclusion is to be understood both by the servicesand by the schools.