The Italian leadership on inclusive education: myth or reality?

Background: Italy is internationally known as a Country with a longstanding “tradition” of inclusive education. Objective: Aim of the paper is to provide a frame on the education-al policies that, since 1970s, have steered the school system accord-ing to a “fully inclusive” model, highlighting the instruments of teaching – learning and evaluation tools for assessing the quality of the inclusive processes. Methodology: Starting from primary and secondary legislative sources, the paper identifies three main focus points: the passage from the inclusive “principle” to the teaching – learning practices; the tools for answering special educational needs; the tools for as-sessing the quality of inclusive processes. Discussion: Even though there are many efforts to align to interna-tional legislative regulations and to modernize the concept of inclu-sive education, Italian reality seems to be ossified in self-referential attitudes, beliefs and practices that saturate the school system. The paper outlines the need for defining new systemic research ap-proaches that can validate this long educational tradition.