Educational Care: From Pedagogical Practice to Research and Professional Training Tool

This chapter addresses and describes the work carried out during the first part of the Erasmus KA2 Writing for Inclusion project. It involved, in an active and participatory way, al the teachers of the partners' primary schools. nI particular, the work carried out, which focused on various activities related to the category of educational Care (of self and of others), was conceived and designed as aprocess in order to build a common strategy to develop the principles of inclusion. In this perspective, the theme of Care is developed both as a methodological and also as an operational tool. Among the various activities proposed in the first module, we indicate two that are particularly significant for the training of teachers, for their work with children. Each activity also included a deep study and writing by the teachers, deposited on the Moodle platform activated for the WIN project. First, much importance has been attributed to the autobiographical memory tool: the teachers are invited to write an autobiographical memory related to a particular moment of their life in which they had an experience of educational Care. Another interesting activity involves watching online movies of famous authors and scholars, such as Martha Nussbaum. This exercise proposed reflections and insights on the principle of "cultivating humanity", a principle that activates actions of accompaniment and support towards oneself and others. This principle is of great impor- tance, especially at school, where one of the main objectives is precisely to build knowledge and learning through mutual listening. The teachers, after addressing these issues and other activities, individually and collectively, have developed a writing and storytelling work at school (didactic) that started from the concept of Care as the first step to create inclusive living spaces. This first module designed the framework of the WIN project.