Conference Program

This article presents the preliminary findings of a qualitative, exploratory research conducted by an interdisciplinary team comprising sociologists and educators. The study's objective is to analyse the biographical and professional trajectories of participants in the Training Course for Specialization in Support Activities for Pupils with Disabilities (2023-2024 edition), which was organized by the University of Siena.

The research is based on an analysis of the internship reports of the 305 course participants (90% of whom were women). From these texts, it was possible to extract information on their biographical, educational and professional backgrounds and on the reasons that led them to choose to specialize. Other areas taken into consideration were their perception of their professional role, the social representations associated with it and how these could be changed. In particular, the following information can be extracted from the documents collected:

• socio-demographic data, with reference to educational and professional history and a particular focus on motivations, training, profession (jobs held, their duration), and significant events in the individual’s personal history;

• social and individual representations of the profession, significant actors, territorial context;

• expectations regarding one's role as a teacher for inclusive education in the community of reference;

• possible ways of changing critical and/or negative representations of the profession.

The picture that emerges seems to highlight bumpy paths and composite professional identities, an aspect that is well known in the literature (Fondazione Agnelli 2021; Frison et al. 2023a, 2023b; Giaconi et al. 2021; Ianes 2016; Paccagnella 2025). There are frequent cases of professional careers from very different backgrounds: often, in these cases, it is biographical events or institutional opportunities that, in the participants’ accounts, bring them closer to the world of care or lead them to seek greater meaning in their work. The search for economic stability and, even more so, for a work-life balance is also important, especially for those coming from highly flexible and precarious jobs. There are also more linear paths in which teaching is not a “discovery” but an original ambition. Since the sources used are texts created for educational assessment, it should be noted that these may be affected by a bias generated by the intention to enhance one’s own learning outcomes. At the same time, the texts analysed reflect how subjects reconstruct their professional paths, giving them meaning.

Ultimately, life stories are very rich and complex and paint a more nuanced and complex perspective than that presented in the most widespread social representations, according to which being a teacher, especially a teacher for inclusive education, is only a fallback option or an opportunistic choice. Similarly, the picture that emerges from these documents regarding social representations of the profession of teacher for inclusive education is far from obvious, with a fairly widespread rejection of a limited role, of mere support, and therefore of being “second-class”. The analysis, in fact, allows for a better understanding of the relationship between biographical and professional paths on the one hand and social representations of the profession on the other.