Abstract
Parent involvement is acknowledged as a crucial aspect of the education of students with special needs. However, the discourse of parent involvement represents parent involvement in limited ways, thereby controlling how and the extent to which parents can be involved in the education of their children. In this article, critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used to examine the discourse of parent involvement in excerpts from policy documents and interviews from a larger study on immigrant Chinese Canadian mothers’ involvement in the education of their children with disabilities. Contrasting policy documents and interviews, the discourse of parent involvement positioned mothers as over- or underinvolved, subordinate, and inexpert.
Keywords
Introduction
Parent involvement is generally used in the field of education to refer to parental support in a child’s education, occurring at and linking two important contexts in a child’s life: home and school. It is “the dedication of resources by the parent to the child within a given domain” (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994, p. 238), including the child’s education, social activities, and athletics. Researchers have shown the positive effects of parent involvement on school learning (e.g., Hill & Taylor, 2004; Pomerantz, Grolnick, & Price, 2005), as well as the importance of home environment and parental support at home for school learning (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1993).
For students with special needs, research also points to the important role parents play in their children’s education (Guy, Goldberg, McDonald, & Flom, 1997; Levy, Ae-Hwa, & Olive, 2006; Turnbull & Turnbull, 1990). In a longitudinal study of children with disabilities in secondary schools in the United States, parents’ activities in support of education were associated with improved outcomes in several achievement domains (SRI International, 2005). Unlike regular education, parent involvement in special education is formally acknowledged through legislation, for example, with regard to educational program placement and planning. In the United States, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) authorizes a free and appropriate public education for children with disabilities “and grants rights to parents to participate in the processes whereby decisions are made about their children’s education” (Turnbull et al., 2007, p. 115). In Canada, most provinces legally require parent participation in assessment and/or programming decisions (Smith & Foster, 1997). The legal intention is to provide parents with procedures to protect their children’s rights (Daniel, 2000).
Although the literature on parent involvement in regular and special education emphasizes the important role parents play, the dominant discourse of parent involvement holds that good parents support their children’s education in ways that are recognized by school personnel and “according to the school’s definition of involvement” (Prins & Willson Toso, 2008, p. 571). The resulting narrowed view of parent involvement both reduces the options for parents to contribute to their children’s educational experience and normalizes a particular ideological perspective on good parenting. The present article extends the literature by examining how the discourse of parent involvement shapes special education policy, interviews with mothers of children with disabilities, and the relationship between the two.
We begin by reviewing the literature on parent involvement in general education and special education in relation to the discourse of parent involvement. Second, we note the larger study that this work draws on and the method of analysis for this particular article. The third section provides a critical discourse analysis (CDA) contrasting educational policy statements from the British Columbia Ministry of Education and the Vancouver School Board (VSB) with 10 semistructured interviews from a study that sought to understand how immigrant Chinese Canadian parents make sense of their involvement in their children’s education at home and at school (Lai & Ishiyama, 2004). Two themes are highlighted with excerpts from the interviews. The fourth section describes the discourse of parent involvement in special education in relation to the discourses of mothering and disability. The fifth section concludes with a brief summary and recommendations.
Parent Involvement and the Discourse of Parent Involvement
Parent involvement that occurs at school and serves the school’s interests is valued by school staff above all other forms of parent involvement (Barge & Loges, 2003; Norris, 1999). One of the benefits of parent involvement that teachers report is using parents as teaching resources (Schecter & Sherri, 2009). In addition, parent involvement in classrooms, on field trips, and fund raising is often viewed as a method for reducing the effects of limited budgets. Other forms of parent involvement, like the support that parents give to their children at home, may not be recognized as valuable by school staff because it is not observed. Indeed, Norris (1999) concluded that teacher perception of parent involvement was based on what teachers see, that is, involvement at school.
Parent involvement initiatives often attempt to shape the behavior of parents to fit mainstream middle-class values and practices in ways that contribute to cultural assimilation, for example, emphasizing involvement at school (Crozier, 2001; Lightfoot, 2004; López & Stoelting, 2010). Huntsinger and Jose (2009) found that immigrant Chinese parents focused more on systematic teaching at home, whereas European American parents focused more on volunteering in schools. Indeed, the literature highlights several reasons why parents of lower socioeconomic status (SES), parents of color, and immigrant parents may refrain from involvement at school, including exclusionary practices at school (Abrams & Gibbs, 2002), a lack of cultural and social capital (Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Levine-Rasky, 2009; Vincent & Martin, 2002), work and/or child care responsibilities, and English language skills (Ji & Koblinsky, 2009). Unfortunately, educators commonly interpret parents’ limited involvement at school as lack of ability, interest, or concern for education.
This common interpretation is also embedded in the discourse of parent involvement, which assumes that there are particular, yet potentially contradictory, ways for parents to support their children’s education (Gellert, 2005; Lubeck & deVries, 2000; Macfarlane, 2008; Prins & Willson Toso, 2008). Nakagawa (2000) conducted a CDA of educational policy and school documents in the United States to examine how parents and parent involvement were represented. She concluded that the discourse of parent involvement “trumpet[s] the value of parent involvement and simultaneously demean[s] the abilities of those parents” (p. 451), especially parents of color and of lower SES. On the one hand, the discourse constructs parents as resources, and, thus, as a solution to school problems. On the other hand, it also represents parents as problems: for not supporting their children’s education (Nakagawa, 2000; Prins & Willson Toso, 2008). In Sweden, Dahlstedt (2009) examined the discourse of home–school partnership in educational policy documents. Although immigrant parents were expected to be involved as partners, they were also portrayed as “authoritarian and uninterested, uninformed, and ‘semi-lingual’” (p. 199). Their involvement required their transformation “from problem to resource” (emphasis in original, p. 201).
Research on parent involvement in special education tells a similar story. Parents of children with disabilities have been viewed as potential teaching resources (Dowds & Hess, 1996) and are the target of parent training programs that teach skills to enable parents to assist in labor-intensive interventions (Matson, Mahan, & LoVullo, 2009). Like the discourse of parent involvement in regular education, there is also a clear boundary for good parenting and overinvolvement (van Ingen, Moore, & Fuemmeler, 2008). McCloskey (2010) noted the contradiction between positioning parents in the role of advocate for and expert about their children in documents guiding parent participation, and parents’ actual experiences. A mother reported her experience when she brought an occupational therapist as an ally to a meeting: “I saw what happens when she goes into the room. It’s the difference between night and day. She talks, they listen. I talk; I’m just his mother” (p. 167).
The view of parents as problems is particularly evident when it comes to families from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. For example, Harry’s (2008) review of recent studies on parent involvement in special education with families of CLD backgrounds indicated that service providers hold deficit views of these families. Although parents from CLD backgrounds frequently face overt discrimination, many have a traditional deference to authority and expert knowledge that influences the role they see themselves playing in their child’s education. For example, Kalyanpur, Harry, and Skrtic (2000) found that parents from CLD backgrounds may not be as involved at school because they do not expect themselves to be collaborators in the decision-making process.
Unique in special education, however, is the development of an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for children and a consultation process that may include one or both parents. Parental consent and involvement is commonly legislated to protect the rights of children with special needs, but teachers may do the minimum by asking parents to sign consent forms without informing them of their rights or inviting meaningful participation. Indeed, parents may not feel comfortable offering input or disagreeing with educators’ recommendations, not because they agree, but simply because they do not know they have the option to ask questions, make suggestions, and/or provide alternative or additional solutions.
Parents’ deference to authority may be further reinforced by the social relations reflected between parents and educators in the discourse of parent involvement. Assumed in the discourse is the notion that the teacher is the authority on school grounds and in all matters of education: The role of the parent is to support, but not challenge (Nakagawa, 2000). Nakagawa (2000) concluded that the expectation for parents to be “involved but not too involved” effectively limits the possibilities for building productive family–school relationships. Similarly, Macfarlane (2008) noted that while disengagement is not an option for parents when their children are in school, the proper ways of being involved are limited to the traditional helper role and sitting on advisory councils without meaningful participation in decision making, for example, about curriculum. In these roles, parents must remain “inexpert and unleaderly” (p. 705); those who cross the line are managed and controlled.
Method
In this article, we use CDA to examine the discourse of parent involvement in special education as documented in educational policy statements and as emerging from semistructured interviews with 10 immigrant Chinese Canadian mothers of children with disabilities. Here, parent involvement included involvement in school, such as attending meetings and events on school grounds, and involvement at home, from homework help to teaching.
Policy
Official policy produced by the British Columbia Ministry of Education and recontextualized in VSB policy documents plays a role in constituting the discourse of parent involvement in terms of the relationships, responsibilities, and rights of the stakeholders involved in special education: the school board, principals, teachers, parents, and students. The policy documents analyzed here represent the written materials available at the provincial and school district levels on special education and parent involvement, as well as booklets on parent involvement for immigrant parents: (a) Special education services: A manual of policy, procedures, and guidelines (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009) provides information on legislation, ministry policy, and guidelines for programs and services; (b) Special instructional programs and accommodations (VSB, n.d.-a.) includes policy on the integration of students with special needs; and (c) Intervention levels for students requiring learning and/or behavior supports (VSB, 2010), written guidelines for staff practices, and Parent involvement in school (VSB, n.d.-b.) and What schools expect from students and their families (VSB, n.d.-c.), written for newly immigrated parents. Though not specific to special education, the latter two booklets are related to parent involvement.
Of these documents, the first document, Special education services (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009), updated several times by the Ministry, is the only one that clarifies the individuals and groups that provided input: “In preparing this manual in 1995, the Ministry of Education received valuable advice from a Special Education Advisory Committee, school district representatives, groups of specialist teachers and administrators, and associations throughout British Columbia” (p. iii). It does not appear that parent groups were involved in the advisory process, unless the noun “associations” above includes parent associations.
Participants
Six of ten participants were recruited through a letter sent to the school district and the district parent support group, and four were referred by school staff (see Table 1). The source of recruitment did not appear to make a difference in the outcomes of the interviews. The letter invited parents of Chinese descent to participate in semistructured interviews related to the topic of parenting children with disabilities; little research exists on parent involvement with members of this ethnic group (Lai & Ishiyama, 2004). Interview topics included the child’s developmental and educational history, communication with the school, and school service provision. Though no gender was specified in the recruitment letter, eight participants were mothers, and the two fathers who contacted the first author recommended their wives for the interview.
Parent Background Information.
The labels that were given to the children of the participants were developmental delay (DD); intellectual disability (ID); hearing impairment (HI); and visual impairment (VI).
At the time of the interview, one mother, Sophie 1 , had a full-time job, and the other nine mothers were full-time mothers; all were in the middle- to upper-middle class. Their children were integrated for at least part of the school day. Five of the children were in mainstream classrooms for the majority of the day, two of them receiving assistance from classroom aides, whereas the other five were enrolled in special programs and mainstreamed part of the day. Interviews were conducted by the first author in Chinese and translated for meaning into English for analysis; the Chinese is not included given space limitations.
Analysis
Linking policy documents to interviews on the parent involvement of mothers of children with special needs requires a method of analysis that enables the examination of contradictions, including (a) the positioning of parents as both potential resources and problems within the discourse of parent involvement and (b) a comparison of the roles offered to parents between educational policy and the experiences of parents. CDA examines how discourses (re)produce unequal power relationships that may further reinforce the discourse (Fairclough, 2003).
Discourse is sometimes defined as the language above the sentence, or how sentences are organized, relate to each other, and form patterns. It may be elaborated to refer to language in use, where words cohesively relate to one another in functionally meaningful ways, and include both written and spoken texts. Speaking is a way of acting in the world, participating in social practices, and a means for making sense. As such, our understanding of the world is both expressed in and shaped by discourse (Fairclough, 2003). Discourses, frequently based on the norms of a group, exclude and devalue the norms and practices of other groups and, therefore, dominant discourses wield power. The hegemony of the dominant group (re)produces a commonsense ideology that protects and enhances the interests of the group, as well as maintains the status quo (van Dijk, 1997). However, discourses and social practices are dialectical, or mutually constitutive; a relationship that enables the interpretation, reinterpretation, and recontextualization of discourses in alternative ways (Fairclough, 2003). This dialectic makes possible the development of counterdiscourses and changes to dominant discourses over time.
Like all social practices, parent involvement is discursively constructed, by governments, educators, and parents. The discourse of parent involvement shapes, and is shaped by, everyday practice and talk as well as institutional policy and practice. Policy statements often work instrumentally to normalize the official discourse of parent involvement. In addition, what people in power—teachers, principals, and school counselors—say or do around, and to, parents may further entrench the discourse. The discourse of parent involvement may be linked intertextually—between texts like policy documents and interviews—to examine the way that macrolevel discourses are operating in microlevel interactions. This sort of intertextual analysis highlights both the direct movement of the discourse between macrolevel and microlevel and the way the discourse is taken up by parents, including parents’ understanding of how they are to be involved in their children’s education.
Interestingly, though text-based research on educational policy documents and interview-based research on the experiences of parents exist, we have yet to find any literature that links an analysis of educational policy with the experience of that policy in the day-to-day practices of parents and teachers. This kind of research is crucial for at least two reasons. First, it highlights the uptake of macrolevel policies on the local or microlevel, thus, verifying the potential ways in which policy influences social relations, between parents and teachers, and social practices, such as parent involvement, as well as larger social relationships between groups of parents and groups of teachers as a whole. Second, it provides a way for research in the critical tradition to both (a) address the critique that it remains “just a critique” incapable of offering a way forward and (b) instead, articulate multiple potential paths for change.
What Policies Say, What Parents Experience
Two significant themes surfaced in the analysis of policy statements and interviews. Each theme is discussed in turn with data from policy contrasted with data from interviews. We do not see these themes as being mutually exclusive categories, but rather see them as a result of complicated intertextual relationships, and themselves intertextually related. More specifically, the first theme may be considered the primary theme in a recursive relationship, with the second theme as both outcome of and explanation for the first.
Partnership: A Failed Metaphor
The purpose of the provincial document Special education services (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009) is to assist school boards in developing, as well as accessing, programs and services for students with special needs. It specifies roles and responsibilities for stakeholders, including parents, particularly in relation to the legal issues of program placement, planning, and implementation. For example, the Ministry acknowledges that parents “play a vital role in the education of their children with special needs by working in partnership [emphasis added] with educators and other service personnel” (p. 10). Partnership is mentioned in one other place in the document: parents are “important partners in the development of the Individual Education Plan” (p. 12). Partnership appears to be a guiding principle in special education, however, neither the partnership nor the roles and responsibilities assigned to parents, principals, and teachers, is defined. This is a significant omission in special education, given the legal role of parents to safeguard their child’s rights.
Regarding placement in a particular education program or program planning, the policy states, “A school board must ensure that a principal offers [emphasis added] to consult with a parent of a child who has special needs regarding the student’s placement in an educational program” (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 2). The word offer suggests proof of attempt, not actual consultation. The Ministry’s policy on program planning uses the same language as its placement policy: “A school board must offer [emphasis added] the parent of the student . . . the opportunity to be consulted about the preparation of the IEP [individual education plan]” (p. 3). Note that the language used to require parents’ participation in consultation is different from the requirement for educators: “a parent must [emphasis added] consult with respect to the student’s educational program” at the request of the teacher or an administrative officer, citing a clause in the School Act (p. 11). Although school personnel must offer to consult with parents, it is here that principal and school board responsibilities end. Parents are compelled to provide input when it is requested, but are not given the same power to compel school staff to respond to their requests.
This imbalance in the “partnership” was experienced, albeit implicitly, by the participants. In fact, none of the participants were aware of a defined and/or valued parental “partnering” role. Instead, all of the participants were aware of a boundary between parents and school professionals. Six parents—Ellen, Helen, Joan, Ping, Sophie, and Xiang—viewed their roles as seeing and listening, essentially receiving information, a relationship that was decidedly unidirectional. Ping commented on “meetings” with her son’s teachers, she said, “I don’t think they are meetings. It is—it is just to see the teachers who teach John.” When her son was told he could not participate in PE class because the school did not have resources, Xiang replied, “I cannot, I cannot say anything, you know. Also, I cannot do anything.” Similarly, Wen noted that parent–teacher communication was often controlled by teachers. They initiated the contact, while parents were rarely encouraged to make a call: “It seems that the communication is not two-way but one-way.” Lan’s experience was notable. She was not given sufficient information when decisions were being made about her son’s educational program placement and, in this instance, she said that there was no communication between school and home. We describe her experience further in the next part.
Relevant to our research, the Ministry policy is proactive with regard to providing some services for parents from non-English speaking backgrounds:
when language is a barrier, use an interpreter for communicating with the parent . . . to assist with meetings, assessments and planning sessions. The interpreter should be an adult who is familiar with the language and the culture of the parents. (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 22)
The policy makes provisions for the inclusion and participation of new immigrant parents who do not speak the official languages well enough to communicate with school staff. Again, however, this is open to interpretation at the school district level. For example, parents are told, “Interpreters may [emphasis added] be available to help you if you need them. It is important to be on time [emphasis added] for these appointments” (VSB, n.d.-b.). While the board is not obligated to provide interpretation if it is needed, parents are obligated to be punctual when interpreter services are offered and admonished to, “Keep conversation with the teacher short” (VSB, n.d.-c.). Immigrant parents are cast as nonprofessionals who may not realize how to show respect for a teacher’s busy schedule. The choice of words positions parents and educational professionals hierarchically with parents at the bottom.
Regardless of provincial policy, the schools controlled the information shared with immigrant parents by default given limited services for interpretation. Of the ten participants, only two felt completely comfortable communicating in English and, yet interpretation services were provided for only three—Ellen, Lan, and Joan—and only at formal school meetings. Interpretation services were not readily accessible; they had to be arranged in advance by the parents themselves. The participants stated the importance of relying on family and friends for translation support, although this was not without its own problems. Sophie noted that her son, who had been interpreting at meetings concerning his own education for four years since Grade 4, had probably selectively translated teacher comments. Another mother, Ping, required her college-age son to serve as interpreter at school meetings, which led to family tensions. Helen’s husband clarified words for her: “Listening, I can, I can understand. Sometimes there, there might be words that I don’t know. Then I would ask him.” In special education, full communication is critical to parent participation. Without regular and ongoing interpretation services, three parents—Ellen, Joan, and Wen—explicitly noted they had no idea of the day-to-day education their children received and heard generalizations only at meetings.
Mentioned earlier, the participants neither saw themselves as “partners,” nor knew of the potential relationship offered by that metaphor. In response to her experiences with school personnel, Fiona seemed to have adopted a “hands off” attitude of submission, repeatedly saying that her reaction to miscommunication and frustration with the way things were done by her son’s teacher was to “let it be.” In addition, Helen recounted feeling as if she was “on trial” during her son’s IEP, undergoing with her husband an hour of questioning by a panel of nine school professionals. These experiences illustrate the difference between the intentions of school policies to engage parents in educational meetings, and how those meetings actually felt for the participants. The status difference between parents and professionals—who define the setting and the procedure—is frequently overwhelming for parents. In the absence of an established, respectful, and trusting relationship between school personnel and parents, the possibility of a partnership is lost.
Interestingly, rather than the partnership metaphor, Grace and Helen used a culturally relevant “guest/host” metaphor to describe their relationship with the school. Both roles in the guest–host relationship have responsibilities. For example, the host is responsible for making the guest comfortable, and for attending to the guest’s needs, while the guest is responsible for being courteous and not making requests. When participants in both roles perform their duties, the “good parent” is likely to withhold requests so as not to impose on the teacher, and the “good teacher” is attentive so as to reduce the need for requests. Excerpts from Grace’s interview highlight how this metaphor enabled her to navigate the system, although it ultimately failed: as guest, it required her to constantly monitor the ability and willingness of school personnel to respond to her concerns, rather than clarify and request what her son needed when a teacher refused to modify his course according to the IEP.
Prior to the excerpts included here, Grace mentioned the advice that she, as a new immigrant parent, received from other parents about the need to be assertive and to lobby for services. She disagreed and, instead, talked about the value she placed on relying on her own abilities and the resources in her own family. Then, she related the story of a parent who had the reputation of being a “demanding parent” in the school. Grace said,
I think the reason that some parents do not get along with school is just . . . I feel it is as if she takes the reversed role and becomes the host {while the teacher becomes the guest}. She feels the need to direct the teacher: “You should teach him this way; you should treat him this way; and he needs this and that.” The teachers are all afraid of her.
Grace’s recounting of a demanding parent who “directed” the teacher reflects an overly involved parent. The word, 反 (meaning: reverse) in the Chinese expression, 反客為主 (meaning: reversing the role of guest to that of host), reveals what she considered to be normative: teachers act like hosts and parents act like guests. This norm regulates the parental role. Playing the role of “a good parent” requires the gracious acceptance of what is offered. If a parent acts like a teacher, or tells teachers what to do, she is assuming the role of the teacher as host and is overinvolved.
When asked about the communication and relationship with her child’s school, Grace noted a positive experience as follows:
It is also very useful to provide teachers with input. Because—that is—I think my opinions are not too far out. My requests are not overly demanding, and the teachers should be able to accommodate within their limits. If they, they can’t make it, and if they, they can tell me, I would consider, huh, saying to myself, “You have to think for the school, as to whether it can accommodate my requests.” . . . where we came from, hm, the teachers and the school seem to hold higher status than the parents. Therefore, when I talk to them, I am very polite {acting like a guest} so that I don’t ask for too much.
Here, the account shows her readiness to compromise, as well as her willingness to work with the teachers in the interests of her son. Though she emphasized the usefulness of providing parental input, supported by the generally positive responses of the school, her role as a parent required her to anticipate what teachers would deem doable and not to ask for “too much.” The term she used for “polite” literally means “acting like a guest.”
When asked if there was any disagreement with the school, Grace appeared hesitant. Then, she noted her experience with a teacher who refused to modify his course according to her son’s IEP (see Excerpt 1).
Excerpt 1: Interview with Grace
Grace: I only hope that—I don’t know if the school manages—if the teacher accepts the student or not, or if she has the—has the right—if she has the—[bit her lip] if a teacher does or does not want to modify the program, it would be alright? If there is a body {a governing body}—If there is a special—{a special needs child}—then the teacher must do it? That I don’t know.
Int: Hm. It seems—I’m not sure either. It seems that it depends on the teacher. It seems teachers have a choice, it seems.
Grace: Hm, because, because she is a professional, then you could not—you as a parent—even though parents could, could speak up ==
Int: == Hm. {affirming}
Grace: But we feel—we often feel that you should not tell the teacher—We should not get in a jam. Otherwise, it would not be good for our children either. . . . So—Usually parents would, would, [smiled a bit] would adopt a more submissive attitude, being more accommodating. . . . This is a difference between us and the non-Chinese. They would show strongly.
Int: You mean parents who are not Chinese?
Grace: Yes, the native parents would, if they don’t like something, they would express strong opinions. If she is not happy with something, she would==
Int: ==go for legal routes sometimes?
Grace: ==insist. Yes. Unlike us. Because I know of a few cases. They would . . . would ask to change the teacher, or change the school. They dare to make demands.
In Excerpt 1, Grace took great care to craft her response so as not to challenge the teacher, even when recounting the event. She hesitated, restarted, and repeated her words in an effort to arrive at her concern: a subtle, but significant, contrast between Grace’s hope for what was best for her son and her deference to teachers. Beginning with “I only hope,” she abandoned the half sentence, with “I” as the subject, and started a new sentence in which the real subject is “the school” (“I don’t know if the school manages”). Here, she was wondering if the school would enforce an IEP and if teachers had the right to refuse to modify their programs. In other words, she wondered if there was an administrative body that monitors legal compliance, to ensure the teacher modified the program for a particular child in accordance with his IEP. Grace continued to think aloud in an attempt to clarify teachers’ rights and responsibilities as professionals, alongside parents’ rights and responsibilities as protectors of their children. As a Chinese Canadian parent, she did not “dare” to “change the teacher, or change the school,” or even take a smaller step: perhaps begin a conversation with her son’s teacher about the IEP itself.
Notably, we could not find information regarding how implementation of the IEP would be ensured. The Ministry does not monitor the enforcement of IEPs, instead: “Responsibility for delivering educational programs and related services for students with special needs should be clearly identified in the organization of the school district” (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 7). Although the VSB (n.d.-a.) states that teachers and other staff have responsibility for programming for students with special needs, it falls short of stating whose responsibility it is to ensure IEP implementation, how it is assessed, and how noncompliance is addressed.
Operating as if the parent–teacher relationship is a guest–host relationship works as hegemony at two levels in Grace’s account. At one level, parents are guests in the dominion of school. At another level, immigrant parents are guests in a host country; immigrant parents should defer to the Canadian ways of doing things. However, Grace was unable/unwilling to step into a more demanding role; fearing retribution for her son was part of it, but it was a role that was inconsistent culturally as well. Her input and requests were tamed; they were “not too far out” and “not overly demanding.” Given the high status accorded to teachers in Hong Kong, deferring to the authority of teachers in Canada was consistent with her lived experience, although, again, the guest–host metaphor assumes that a teacher plays the role of a host. Helen, like Grace, did not ask too much from teachers, and displayed a guest mentality in regard to local practices: discouraging her husband from making a suggestion to the school, she said, “I don’t think it’s very likely to be accepted, because I feel the practice [in Canada] is such.”
Under these conditions, Grace and the other participants could not be partners: they were not positioned as partners, respected as partners, or given access to information required for partners. Standing in the way of partnership was also a lack of recognition for parent’s knowledge; this becomes both an outcome of the lack of partnership, because school personnel simply do not know parents well enough to know what they know, and an explanation for why parents are not qualified to contribute as partners.
Parent Knowledge: Valuable or Disregarded
The Ministry notes that school districts, in developing special education programs and services at the local level, “should involve meaningful consultation with the parents or guardians of students with special needs, as they know [emphasis added] their children and can contribute in substantial ways to the design of appropriate programs and services for them” (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 6). In addition, parents of children with special needs are informed that they
know [emphasis added] a great deal about their children that can [emphasis added] be helpful to school personnel in planning educational programs for them. Districts are therefore advised to involve parents [emphasis added] in the planning, development and implementation of educational programs for their children . . . and the input of parents respected and acknowledged [emphasis added]. (p. 10)
After identifying parents as knowledgeable, the rest of the statement reduces the potential value of their knowledge. The word can here has the same effect as the word may casting uncertainty over how helpful their involvement will be to school personnel. Indeed, districts are not required to involve parents; they are “advised” to involve them. Schools are in an agentic position regarding if, when, and how to involve parents. Despite the acknowledgement of the importance of parental knowledge, the guidelines emphasize that their involvement is at the school’s discretion.
Parents’ contribution, in particular in relation to their presumed expertise, is clarified by the following statement: “Parents can [emphasis added] assist the school in achieving and evaluating progress toward learning outcomes—particularly [emphasis added] with respect to achievement of social goals, acquisition of life skills, and career exploration and development” (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 21). The school is encouraged to seek parental input in evaluating student learning, but only in matters that typically do not require academic knowledge, for example, social and career development. What the Ministry does not highlight is parents’ ability to achieve and evaluate progress in the core curriculum. The Ministry positions parents as nonprofessionals with limited ability to contribute to their child’s learning of the core academic program. In consultation, parents and the school district are positioned hierarchically given the distinction made between professional and parent knowledge and the differential valuing of each.
There is also a requirement for IEP implementation to safeguard the rights of students with special needs. The Ministry incorporates the legislation when it states: “A school board must offer each student who has special needs learning activities in accordance with the IEP designated for that student” (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 3). However, the policy on program placement and planning is reinterpreted at the level of the school board while the policy on IEP implementation is nonexistent. For example, regarding integrating students, the VSB (n.d.-a.) affirms the home–school partnership:
The education of students with special needs, as for all students, is a shared commitment. The Ministry of Education, the Board, parents, and community agencies each have prime responsibility for some areas of the students’ development while sharing responsibility for other areas [emphasis added]. Maximum benefit to students occurs where the efforts and expectations of those involved with them complement each other [emphasis added].
On what or whose terms responsibilities are located primarily in one category of stakeholder over others, or shared across stakeholders, is something that must be decided on an individual basis, rather than remaining at the level of stakeholder. Furthermore, “Parents or guardians have the right to be involved in both the placement and program plans for their child” in accordance with the British Columbia policy manual (VSB, n.d.-a.). However, there is no assurance that parents must be consulted. For program planning, the board simply states, “Parents/guardians are encouraged [emphasis added] to be involved in the development of their child’s individual education plans (IEPs).” In addition, support for parental input in program placement potentially surfaces between a teachers’ initial concern about a student’s progress and prior to referral for assessment: “parent/guardians are informed and collaborate with the school” (VSB, 2010). In particular, prior to assessment: “It is important to ensure that informed consent is obtained from parents/guardians” (VSB, 2010). In these statements, however, soliciting parental input and collaboration is de-emphasized in relation to obtaining parental consent for assessment, which is marked as “important.”
The categorization of professionals and parents with differential valuation, noted in both policy and interviews, helped little in developing collaborative home–school relationships. However, seven parents—Grace, Helen, Joan, Lan, Fiona, Wen, and Ping—were committed to working toward a home–school collaboration, arguing that they had a responsibility to support their children’s education at home and to cooperate with school personnel. Ping noted, “The reason that we often have contact with the teacher is that, if the teacher has difficulty teaching him, we can teach him at home. Then, we all can cooperate. That’s how we can help him.” In fact, two other parents also echoed the same belief. Wen said, “Teachers, after all, have their limits. With one more person involved, isn’t it better for the child?” Fiona was thinking of teaching her son a skill that was not included as an element in his educational program. She said, “Sometimes it is difficult to rely on others. In Hong Kong, I know some parents who make demands on teachers. Even with normal kids, you cannot depend on teachers.” Like Grace, she did not want to ask for too much from teachers. In addition, she believed that parents have their unique contribution to make; the responsibility should not just fall on teachers.
The topic of collaboration did not surface in interviews with Ellen, Sophie, and Xiang. What did surface was that they felt ill-equipped to support their children given their limited English. Their lack of knowledge of the English language became the reason that they were not involved in their children’s education. To make up for this, Xiang hired tutors and Sophie assigned and ensured homework was completed. Joan also noted that she felt entirely inadequate when a teacher wrote on her son’s report card that to help her son who was hearing impairment, she needed to communicate with him in English:
If my English were very good, then I could—because I have the time, I could teach him more. But I find out that I could not teach my children. Because of my own limitations, how can I teach him? I think the teacher’s request is pretty, pretty hard on parents.
For these three parents, a lack of proficiency in English negated all of their parental and academic knowledge, in large part, because they could not be involved in ways recognized by the school.
Collaboration was hampered by the boundary between school professionals and parents in relation to knowledge, and in turn, the valuation of professional knowledge and disregard for parent knowledge was used as a rationale for limiting parents’ involvement in some aspects of program placement and planning: parents were not positioned as qualified to make decisions. This boundary maintenance was no more clear than in Lan’s interview that highlighted, in several ways, the role of teacher as expert and parent as inexpert. Lan was a resident in Canada for 9 years, but she spoke little English. Lan’s son, identified by the school district as developmentally delayed when he entered, was in Grade 2 at the time of the interview. Lan was not consulted for his kindergarten placement in a special program in a school away from their neighborhood. The excerpt begins in response to a query about the distance of her son’s former school from their home (see Excerpt 2).
Excerpt 2. Interview with Lan
Lan: It {the school board} placed him in, in that program. The program is only available in that school, not in any other schools. I went for a visit for the first time and I was taken back. “Gosh! Trouble! How did it place my son here?!” I, I disagree. I disagree with it. Later on, he—his teacher placed him in another class for half of the time.
Int: A regular classroom?
Lan: Yes, a regular classroom. . . . Hm, it’s not just me who did not like it. He really is not that bad. His teacher also disagreed, hm, and wrote to the Board. So, there was someone who came to see him and gave him—I’m sure that person made an evaluation. So, then, he was returned there, returned to the school in our neighborhood. . . . He could not learn anything from attending the program. All he learned was vocalizations. His dad said to me, “Don’t let him go there.” I said, “If you don’t let him go, it’s not OK. You would be in trouble if you don’t let him go to school.”
Int: Who would take legal action? The school authority?
Lan: The school authority. It would ask, “Why didn’t you let him go to school?”
Int: Yes, it would ask.
Lan: He, his dad, said, “What could he learn attending that program? All he learns is bad behavior.” He said it would be better that I teach him at home. Later on, he—his condition is not too good. He was absent from school. Every winter he gets sick a lot, from having a cold. Therefore, soon the school year came to an end. He returned to this {neighborhood} school for Grade 1. Then, I was fine.
Lan began by reporting her shock on visiting her son’s program for the first time. The placement was made without her being fully informed of the nature of the program. She continued recounting her own and the teacher’s attempts to reduce the effect of the inappropriate placement and eventually to undo the action of the school board to place him there. In her account, these attempts followed her expressed concern over the mismatch between what the child was able to do and what the program offered. The teacher agreed that the placement was inappropriate and arranged for him to attend part-time in a regular classroom in the same school.
The school board responded with a visit from an evaluator to determine the appropriateness of the special program for the child. The reported conversations between Lan and her husband concerned the effect that attending the program for students with severe disabilities would have on their son, the school’s response if they refused to allow their son to attend this program, and the idea of making up for inappropriate schooling by teaching him at home. Lan noted her son’s absences from school and his eventual return to the neighborhood school. After her son was restored to the neighborhood school, in a regular class, she concluded with relief, “Then, I was fine.” With the teacher’s support, Lan was able to successfully challenge the placement of her son, though he was required to continue in the placement until the following school year. Implicit, here, is the solution Lan and her husband created to the inappropriate placement: keeping him home as much as possible to teach him academic content.
When asked if she assisted with homework, Lan noted working on math and spelling. She said that her son was capable of more advanced math content, although at school he was working on single-digit addition and subtraction. She knew that his English language skills were far behind his classmates, and she worked with him on building his vocabulary and spelling. Then, she talked about what he learned, or did not learn, at school.
Excerpt 3: Interview with Lan
Lan: I know his teacher hasn’t taught him these things. Not yet.
Int: Have you told the school that you have been working with him on these?
Lan: [smiled] Um, yes. I did at the school meeting. His teacher said that he’s still too young to learn that. He said he could not digest all that. I, I said, “I—It’s OK.” I—Whatever he says, I—I’d cooperate with him as much as I can. But once at home I have my own plan. I, I feel, I won’t give him too much at once. I would not give him too much to digest. But I think he has a very good memory.
Lan noted her disagreement with her son’s current teacher on the matter of her son’s academic learning. The teacher’s remarks were phrased in the negative, including he’s “too young” and “not able.” After she was challenged by the teacher for teaching what he considered to be developmentally advanced academic material, she agreed to stop this kind of instruction, perceived as overinvolvement in his education. While agreeing to follow “whatever he {the teacher} says,” apparently choosing “cooperation” over conflict, she continued nevertheless.
She was unconvinced that her son did not benefit from her teaching, noting her son’s responsiveness and her own commitment to using his ability to recall for learning. On the one hand, she recognized the importance of cooperating with school personnel. She deferred to teacher authority and accepted the school’s agenda when she was at school. But once at home, she continued to work with her child on academic learning, she said,
Now, his school focuses teaching him proper behavior. It mainly teaches him behavior. His teacher asked me, “What do you think?” I said, “It’s OK. I don’t have any, any opinion about that.” Because I, I think I could handle teaching him the Grade 1 and Grade 2 material. So I—He wants to teach him this way, I don’t have any opinion. I said to myself, “It’s O.K. I will teach him subjects at home. His school, hm, slackens a little and I tighten it a little at home. That should do it. That’s what I do.”
The school’s emphasis on her son’s behavior was a stark contrast with Lan’s attention to his academic learning. At the IEP meeting, she was consulted about the behavioral emphasis in his program, and she said she expressed a neutral opinion. Rather than challenge the teacher, she decided to play his role at home, reasoning that she could teach the academic material while her son was in primary grades. She acknowledged the teacher’s concern that her child may not be able to digest too much and addressed it in her teaching. As she noted, “I won’t give him too much at once. I would not give him too much to digest.”
The importance of parent knowledge and involvement in a child’s education is nowhere more important than in special education. School resources, which may be limited, may be able to build on the resources of parents and families; an ideal that is potentiated by collaborating with parents (e.g., Dowds & Hess, 1996; Matson et al., 2009; Schecter & Sherri, 2009). Seven of ten participants were committed to developing a collaborative relationship with the school, staying in contact with and supporting teachers. In addition to these seven, two other participants felt the need to hold themselves responsible for some of their child’s education. Unfortunately, none of the participants reported being sought out or valued in that role. Indeed, Lan’s parent knowledge, both in terms of the kind of placement that may be appropriate for her son and as a teaching resource for academic material, was disregarded. Perhaps, it was not recognized; Lan and her son’s teacher did not have a relationship, and did not know each other well, given time limitations and a language barrier among other things.
Discussion: Interdiscursive Links Between Policy and Practice
The discourse of parent involvement runs through the excerpts of policy and its effects can be seen in the interviews. In special education, however, the discourse carries with it additional complex assumptions about how to be appropriately involved. While parents are seen as resources if they meet the expectations of teachers and schools with visible contributions at school, and “problem” parents are either over- or underinvolved (Nakagawa, 2000), the distinction between involvement at school versus at home unravels in special education given the legal requirements for parents to act as protectors, and for parents’ involvement in IEP meetings that include decision making around program placement, planning, and informed consent.
Parents as protectors of their child’s best interests takes on special meaning in special education, following Daniel (2000), who made a distinction between procedural and substantive rights of students with disabilities. The latter refers to the appropriateness of an educational program to an individual child’s needs, while the former provides procedural safeguards so that the appropriateness can be monitored or challenged. Parents are entrusted with a role to safeguard their children’s educational rights without assurances regarding how schools are held accountable, for example, in IEP implementation or placement consultation with parents. Grace did not know what to do about a teacher who refused program modification, or even if there was anything that she could do. Neither the school board nor the school intervened on behalf of her son; his IEP was not enforced. We were unable to find information about how the school board would ensure compliance at the school level. The only option we could find is for parents to take the route of appeal: “if parents are not satisfied with decisions made by school officials that significantly affect the education, health or safety of a student, they may appeal to the local Board of Trustees,” in pursuant with Section 11 of the School Act (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, appendix 13). In terms of placement, as discussed earlier, British Columbia has a placement policy: “A school board must ensure that a principal offers to consult with a parent of a child who has special needs regarding the student’s placement in an educational program” (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 2). Yet, in Lan’s case, the placement of her son in a special program was made without her being fully informed of the nature of the program.
Ironically, though Grace did her utmost to avoid being overinvolved in her son’s education by not making demands or saying what she really needed or thought to her son’s teacher, and Lan hid the nature and amount of teaching she did at home to avoid the label as well, in relation to their legal duties to protect their children’s educational opportunities and rights, it is also possible to see how both Grace and Lan may have been positioned as underinvolved. Unique to special education, complying with the school’s definition of parent involvement alone does not necessarily enable a parent to protect their child’s best interests from a legal perspective. Yet if they advocate on behalf of their child, they risk being positioned as overinvolved. Ultimately, neither was able to protect the rights of their child. The only resort parents have is to appeal, which is not a tenable option for many parents whose social and cultural backgrounds differ both from those of professionals in schools and from the cultural norms of demanding what is a personal or legal right.
Our data highlight contradictions between the ideal intent of policy and the positioning of parents as subordinate and inexpert within policy documents and between policy and practice. In special education, parents are given mixed messages: from the first theme, that their involvement is an important part of a partnership and legally required, AND that they ought not do or ask for too much, and; from the second theme, that their knowledge and input is valuable, AND that they are not professionals and are inexpert at much of what is valued by the school. While not every parent wants to or can offer themselves as partners, as teaching resources, the participants in this study did want to and were able to contribute their knowledge and time, but this was seen as being overinvolved. Perhaps one of the biggest gaps in the move from policy to practice was the overreliance on categories of people—parents, teachers—and a lack of time and attention paid to the individual qualities of individual parents and teachers. Interestingly, the policy documents erased assumptions about parental involvement and special education that appeared prominently throughout the interviews: (a) that parent involvement typically means the involvement of mothers (Griffith & Smith, 2005) and (b) that disability itself is constructed through discourses (Forman & McCormick, 1995; Reid & Valle, 2004).
Drawing on the Discourses of Mothering and Disability
The discourse of mothering, defined through research by Griffith and Smith (2005), advances expectations for parent involvement based on an idealized image of a “standard North America family,” with a husband, wife, and children. Along with being heteronormative, it assumes a particular social class location—one in which the husband works and the wife stays home to raise children—as well as English language and Euro-Canadian cultural locations. Although the participants in this study were middle- and upper-middle class, and had the time and financial resources to support their children, cultural and language barriers shaped the way they were perceived by school personnel and influenced the extent to which they were positioned as resources themselves with something valuable to offer including time, an understanding of their child, and/or knowledge about academic curricula. Although there may be good reasons for mothers to have various parenting practices, for example, different cultural values, the
ideals of mothering in the context of schooling, and the mother’s responsibility for realizing them, are absolute. The practicalities of the contexts and conditions of mothering do not appear to modify the interpretation of mother’s responsibility for her child’s schooling. (Griffith & Smith, 2005, p. 33; see also López & Stoelting, 2010)
The rigidity inherent in the discourse of mothering challenges an individual or nuanced view of what particular parents, mothers, may be able to offer in the collaboration between school and home. In addition, the discourse of mothering is based on “normal child development and the parenting required to develop and maintain that normalcy” (p. 43). The historic attribution of the developmental and behavioral problems of children to errors made by mothers frequently positions mothers as problems from the outset, even before they attempt to involve themselves in their child’s education. The “child who does not read on time, who does not behave in ways which fit the classroom order . . . invites—via the discourse—her mother to scrutinize her own mothering practices for what is wrong” (Griffith & Smith, 2005, p. 39).
While the positioning of mothers as subordinate and nonprofessional surfaces in the discourse of parent involvement and the discourse of mothering, the claim to expertise takes on a new dimension in the context of special education through the discourse of disability. With a child with disabilities, parents may not have recourse to trajectories of child development that may be used with children who follow a more common path. Under these conditions, a mother’s role, a parent’s role, becomes even more important given parent knowledge of child and parent as teaching resource. Indeed, Barton (1996) noted the accumulated knowledge and expertise of parents of children with disabilities as they interacted with medical professionals. In her study, a mother who claimed expertise in relation to her child’s development was supported by medical personnel, while a mother who claimed expertise in relation to a diagnosis or advised a change to a prescription was perceived as “over-involved” and “micro-managing the doses of drugs” (p. 312). The success of encounters between a mother and her child’s physician was based, in part, on her “willingness to define and limit family expertise to knowledge of the child and his behavior” (p. 313).
Unique to this study is a devaluation of parent expertise in the discourse of disability that is exacerbated by social relations between mothers and schools. Along with the expectations linked to the standard North American family—with regard to social class, linguistic, and cultural location—parent involvement is also a historically feminized and, therefore, devalued position. Expertise, a main component of institutional discourses, is common in educational contexts, as well as medical contexts. Grace’s deference to her son’s teacher and her appropriation of a teacher’s perspective on the “demanding parent” highlights the influence of this complex nexus of discourses. It also foregrounds the unique way in which cultural location may lead to the reification of inequitable discourses, for example, in the way the host–guest analogy reinforced the professional–nonprofessional/expert–inexpert dichotomies. From the excerpt with Grace, it may have been that the teacher herself did not have the expertise required to modify Grace’s son’s educational program, and may have refused to modify it, rather than face her own lack of specialized knowledge. In the excerpt with Lan, while it is clear that her ability to contribute to her son’s academic learning was not acknowledged, it is also clear that her specialized knowledge with respect to her son’s strengths was not acknowledged. Her lack of ability to communicate in English and the teacher’s lack of ability to communicate in Chinese may have reduced his expectations of her as able to contribute to her son’s academic education.
The discourse of parent involvement in special education as constituted in educational policy and parent interviews yields problematic results for parents, and more specifically, mothers who are language minority speakers as well. The home and school relationship is cast in educational policy as a partnership, however, the role for parents—as a partner in education—does not extend beyond policy text to practice. Though parents are positioned as both potential resources and problems—a dichotomy that we do not support—it seems more likely for the latter position to arise in social relations in special education given the complexity of both the legislation and discourses operating. Although parent knowledge is both explicitly stated as valuable and implicitly devalued in policy, in practice it is disregarded in favor of deferring to the knowledge of teachers.
Conclusion and Implications for Practice
The discourse of parent involvement is woven through special education policy, along with local school board education and special education documents, and interviews with mothers of children with disabilities. Despite the acknowledgement of the importance of parental partnership and knowledge, in the context of special education the discourse of parent involvement intersects with the discourse of mothering and disability to establish the school’s agency to define parent involvement. Noted by Dahlstedt (2009), this is the partnership contradiction: the “‘rules of the game,’ or the terms of partnership, seem to be given in advance, dictated by one of the partners (i.e., the school staff)” (p. 201). In provincial and school board policy, the language exemplifies a hierarchical relationship—parents “must” and the school “may”—that further grounds the positioning of parents as either resources or problems. The positioning of parents as problems plays out a bit differently in the context of special education. Involvement is elaborated through additional dichotomies embedded in policy and practice: the parent as inexpert, nonprofessional, and subordinate in relation to the teacher as expert, professional, and dominant; the ideal parent as mother, middle class, Euro-Canadian, English speaking, heterosexual, and the mothers who are different in terms of social class, culture, language, and sexuality. These dichotomies shape the way over- and underinvolvement is constructed and perceived.
Though legislation intends to enable and ensure parent involvement, the language of provincial documents places more restriction on parents than on school administrators, and when provincial policy is translated into local school board documents, a further narrowing of parent involvement occurs. Parents’ roles are predetermined and may have little bearing on what any one particular parent may offer in the home–school relationship. Indeed, there is a contradiction between the intent in special education documents and parents’ actual experiences. The role of parents as experts about their children, as noted in the literature (Barton, 1996; McCloskey, 2010), was a role that was difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate for all of the participants. They balanced their roles in their own ways, in the interest of their children’s education, at times taking on a conciliatory role to manage relationships with the teachers and at other times successfully challenging inappropriate placements and limited curricula.
Though several implications regarding practice surface from this research, only four are touched on here. These implications overlap and are interrelated, which foregrounds the importance of systemic change. First, teachers and school officials must recognize that there are multiple ways that parent involvement matters and counts in a child’s education; not just over- and underinvolvement, not just at school or at home, not just in English or on behavior regulation. For example, López and Stoelting (2010) noted that there are “multiple ways in which families are already [emphasis in original] involved in the educational lives of their children” (p. 31), including, first and foremost, being parents. Advancing a single universal definition of parent involvement, especially in a society as diverse as Canada’s, is unjustifiable. In addition, parent support of their children’s education may not be visible (Auerbach, 2007). Dialoging with parents to learn what they are already doing at home may help educators understand individual parents’ perspectives and reduce or eliminate assumptions around the universality of cultural norms. It may also help educators learn how parents can contribute to both the nonacademic and the academic work of education. If teachers treat home–school interactions as mutual learning (e.g., Prins & Willson Toso, 2008), take action to create equitable parent participation (Auerbach, 2007), and build on what parents have been doing at home (López, 2001), then parents may have the space to both reflect on and develop their contributions to their child’s education.
Second, for parents faced with multiple barriers to participation—linguistic, economic, or cultural differences—there is a need for educators to take a step further to involve parents by informing them of their rights, seeking their input (Kalyanpur et al., 2000), and building trusting relationships. Many immigrants are learning a new language and a new culture, and guests, to borrow Grace’s guest–host analogy, may feel little authority to challenge or change practices. Learning about parents’ lives, as noted above, may make taking steps to develop trusting relationships easier. Anything that an educator or school personnel can do to reduce the formality of meetings at school, to support parents on school grounds, is likely to be appreciated. Even having teachers come to parents on parent–teacher night, rather than asking parents to run to different rooms in an unfamiliar school for their 3 to 5 min conversation with a teacher, could make a difference. At the same time, we also believe it is possible, and preferable, to enable parents to be familiar with school spaces and feel at ease in them. A parent is empowered—and we would add, a resource—to the extent that she is supported (McCloskey, 2010). Relatedly, the significance and value of services for interpretation cannot be overstated for both parents and teachers. Teachers need the support of parents, and the knowledge that parents can share with them, to manage the requirements of heavy teaching loads, large class sizes, and few learning aides. Services must be readily available, easy to access, and those providing interpretation services must be both culturally sensitive and, for parents of children with disabilities, prepared to support communication that is potentially difficult to discuss. Without interpreter services available, parents cannot help but be underinvolved.
Third, teachers need support in terms of time, resources, and specialized knowledge. Parents are presumed to be less knowledgeable than teachers about education, who in turn are less knowledgeable than school psychologists about assessment. Yet many teachers are faced with the challenge to integrate students with special needs in their classrooms. They need specialized instructional resources, pedagogical approaches, and time to develop an understanding of how to use these materials. They may also need additional time to prepare their classes. Teachers may also need support to address their attitudes toward students with disabilities and toward instructional approaches alternative to traditional ways of whole class teaching. Approaches, such as Differentiated Instruction (e.g., Tomlinson, 1999), may be available for professional development within school districts and ministries may compile and include special educational resources on their websites. In addition, approaches that reconceptualize teaching and learning have helped to integrate students with disabilities, in terms of acceptance, as well as academic learning (e.g., Gutiérrez & Stone, 1997). Teachers may also learn from parents given their knowledge of their children.
Fourth, home–school partnerships must be more clearly defined and defined with more room for variations across roles and responsibilities for parents and educators. Not every parent has the same amount of time to contribute, or the same kind of knowledge to offer, so partnerships must be built in ways that allow for and encourage different contributions based on the strengths and resources of particular parents, with attention to ensuring that teachers are supported and resourced in ways that allow them to do what their jobs require. Policy makers may contribute to a change in the discourse of parent involvement by revising policy statements with attention to redressing asymmetrical home–school power relationships. Bringing parents and educators together for dialogue, collective reflection, and joint contributions to policy is a potential immediate step in the right direction.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.