Historical and Current Roles of Families and Parents
The central theme of this essay is empowerment and the roles that parents,
schools and professionals take on in the quest for the best educational
decisions for those children with disabilities and those children that are
gifted and talented. It is important to understand the historical development
of family-professional relationships to fully comprehend the significance how
far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.
In Chapter One, the authors discuss the eight major roles that families and
parents have experienced over time. These roles range from the eugenics
movement (1880-1930) which pointed to the parents as the sole cause of a
child’s disability to today’s view which states that parents can be the cause
of some genetic disabilities as well as those disabilities that are caused by
drug use or alcohol abuse, but are not to blame for most developmental
disabilities. In any case, blaming parents for their child’s disability causes
a barrier that impedes progress when we should be expending energy finding ways
to support families. Professionals should avoid placing blame on parents and
instead, concentrate on empathy and caring and providing support.
Once parents began to organize because of a lack of professional response to
their children’s emotional and educational needs, progress has been made in
terms of public awareness of disabilities and educational reforms.
Professionals no longer expect that parents will assume a passive role in the
decision-making process for their children, as has been the case in the past.
Instead, the authors advocate that an environment should be established where
collaboration between parents and professionals create a bond of trust that
benefits everyone involved.
To create such an environment, it is important for professionals to recognize
the important role that parents provide for their children in terms of teaching
them, as advocates in the political process, as educational decision-makers and
as collaborators. Collaboration refers to the relationship between families and
professionals whereby resources are shared and decisions are made jointly, with
the child’s best interests in mind. Recent trends in the collaborative process
include input from families, students, classmates, teachers, administrators,
paraprofessionals and other related service providers. In this way, appropriate
decisions can be made that are the result of information gathered from a
variety of sources. These educational decisions will be much more likely to be
successful when everyone works together for a common goal- that of providing
the best educational environment for a particular child.
Chapter 2
SCHOOLS AS SYSTEMS: THE CONTEXT FOR FAMILY-PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION
Chapter two describes the general education reform movement that has resulted
in enhanced curriculum for all students. There has been a separate reform
movement in special education that has also resulted in restructuring student
placement and service delivery systems for these students. Most recently, the
two reform movements are beginning to converge. The general education reform
was started when a national commission report, A Nation at Risk, recommended
educational improvements because U.S. students did not compare favorably in
testing results with their counterparts in Japan and Germany. This has resulted
in local school districts taking more direct responsibility for decision-making
that would affect all students and has included a stronger parent role in
advocating for change. Along with this type of school reform, there has been a
focus on schools providing comprehensive services for students and families
that face multiple hurdles so that families can have their needs met for
social, mental and public health services and coordinated in a single point of
entry- the school.
The special education reform movement established a free, appropriate public
education for all in P.L. 94-142 (renamed in 1990 to the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act or IDEA). This public law was needed because of the
distinct difference between the education of individuals with and without
disabilities. Many students with disabilities were educated in separate classes
and schools and were excluded in many aspects of education. IDEA mandates that
all schools will receive state and federal monies to assist them in the
education of students with disabilities. To receive this money, schools must
abide by six principles of education for these students. They are: zero reject,
nondiscriminatory evaluation, appropriate education, least restrictive
environment, due process and parent participation. The result of IDEA was to
provide a partnership between families and educators in the educational
decision-making process. The authors expressed concern because this aspect
still is the exception to the norm.
A second phase of special education reform focuses on more inclusive placements
for students with disabilities and more meaningful curriculum. This is taking
place through the Regular Education Initiative (REI) and the current emphasis
on inclusion. Inclusion reform believes in providing placement for an
individual based on the student’s strengths and abilities. The attempt at
merging special and regular education has been a difficult one, and the authors
say that more attempt must be made to include parents in the partnership
between special and regular education.
When speaking about parent involvement in special education, provisions were
made in the IDEA for parents to collaborate with professionals to develop an
Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) from birth to age 3 that documents
the family’s resources, priorities, and concerns related to their child’s
development. When a child turns 3 and until they are 6, early intervention
services begin in the form of early childhood special education. After the age
of 6, the student receives special education services. The child is provided
with an IEP or Individualized Education Program which details the services that
a child is to receive under law. Parents are encouraged to participate in the
development of the IEP, but participation varies widely. Still, schools need to
do more to encourage active participation of parents by providing more
communication to parents and more opportunities for decision making for them.
Another reform that is attempting to bring together special and general
education is referred to as united systems reform. This system is one outcome
of the enactment of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1995. With this act,
emphasis is placed on improving and assessing student outcomes based on
standards, and encouraging site-based management for restructuring of schools.
Higher expectations, however, do not ensure that attitudes towards children
with disabilities will change. Many changes still need to occur with the
increased expectations. Through the site-based management aspect of this act,
schools are encouraged to meet the standards through involvement of all
stakeholders including professionals, students, families and community
citizens. However, the authors point out that advocacy for students is still a
continuing need in the converging of special and general education.
The authors stress that it is imperative for collaboration to occur between
families and professionals to increase opportunity for student success. School
systems need to be flexible in their approach to providing opportunities in
order for these partnerships to occur. As a professional dealing with the
school system and the family, I need to be aware of the challenges I will face
in creating opportunities for collaboration.
Chapter 3
Empowerment
The authors define empowerment as the ability to get one wants and one needs.
Empowerment differs from individual to individual and from situation to
situation. The goal of special educators should be to provide collective
empowerment of ourselves and others involved in a student’s education. This
comes into play for educators when securing related services for students and
communicating with related service providers to ensure success for students.
Also, it is important for professionals to develop techniques that to help
families feel empowered in the education of their child.
When considering empowerment, the authors have charted a model that illustrates
the concept. In the model, they have included the family resources that consist
of motivation and knowledge/skills, professional resources that consist of
motivation and knowledge/skills, the foundation that signifies the combined
collaborative effort of family and professionals called collaborating for
empowerment and education context resources that include opportunities for
partnerships and obligations for reliable alliances. When all of these
interact, empowerment is the result.
In this chapter the authors introduce a third aspect of the empowerment model-
that of education context resources. Along with the other two parts of the
empowerment model, that of family resources and professional resources,
education context resources adds another dimension of support that is necessary
for all parts to be able to function effectively. Education support is
necessary because it can make the difference for both professionals and family
members to function effectively. Without education context resources, families
can becomes overwhelmed by the system and professionals can be stymied in their
efforts to provide support for learning and development for students and
families.
Efforts must be made by all members, especially families, professionals and
schools to collaborate in providing the best educational environment for each
individual. Schools need to recognize the importance of family members in the
educational decision-making process and make every effort to include them in
order to best serve the child. When this collaborative effort happens, the
result is empowerment of everyone involved.
Chapter 4
Building Reliable Alliances
The eight obligations of reliable alliances that are discussed in this chapter
are: knowing yourself, knowing families, honoring cultural diversity, affirming
and building on family strengths, promoting family choices, affirming great
expectations, communicating positively and warranting trust and respect.
The first obligation, knowing yourself, is important because the better you
know yourself the better you can understand and appreciate the abilities,
personalities and behaviors of others. Because experience and background differ
from person to person, there are naturally differences in the way these people
interpret the same information. Cultural differences can also add to the
perception problem. It is important for us, as educators, to make ourselves
aware of the differences that exist culturally so we can better understand our
own beliefs and behaviors. Then, we can make allowances for the differences
that exist in other people in terms of their beliefs, values and feelings that
result in empathy and understanding.
The second area, that of knowing families, is complex because just as each
individual is different, so are families. In order to work collaboratively and
effectively with families, we must understand these family characteristics and
uniqueness. One way to understand the make-up of families that we are dealing
with is to get to know each family member and how they interact with each other
in order to carry out the responsibilities of family life. Then, we can make
decisions collaboratively in a spirit of trust and teamwork.
The third obligation is that of honoring cultural diversity. Race and ethnicity
are only a small part of culture. Culture is a broader vision of what makes up
an individual’s group identity and can include such areas as religion, income
status, gender, disability status, geographic location and occupation. To make
it even more complicated, these variables are changeable over a family’s
lifespan. In any case, we need to be sure that every individual we work with is
treated with respect by becoming familiar with the traditions and roles of
individuals within different cultures. In this way, we can collaborate with
understanding when dealing with specific issues with families such as
developing IEP’s, conducting evaluations and sharing information.
The fourth obligation is that of affirming and building on family strengths.
Quite often, school personnel tend to focus on what is wrong with a family
instead of concentrating on what the family is doing right. It is important to
recognize the strengths of the family unit in order to be able to collaborate
effectively with them. All families have strengths, and it might benefit the
professional to sit down prior to discussing issues with a family and list the
specific strengths of the families they are dealing with. A focus on family
strength would lead to less blame placed on the parents and lead to more trust
and confidence on both sides (professional/family).
The fifth obligation is promoting family choices and is considered critical
because families need to know that their choices will be heard and considered
by professionals. So often, parents do not feel that they have a say in the
educational issues that affect their child because we make the assumption that
only the professionals have the right answers. In the past, parents very often
were expected to play a passive role, and slowly, this role is changing. In the
collaborative model, families and professionals work together in a relationship
of trust, caring and respect for one another’s views.
The sixth obligation is that of affirming great expectations, which has a great
influence on motivation on the part of the family. We know from numerous
studies that when a family has high expectations for their child, the child
responds with higher academic achievement. The author says that parents of
children with disabilities are no different than those parents of children
without disabilities- in fact, parents in the first group tend to have higher
educational expectations than parents in the second group.
Parents need to feel that there is hope for their child in terms of the future.
As professionals, we need to encourage this hope because it is the base on
which success can be built. One of the best ways to encourage this hope, the
author says, is to share with the family the success of other individuals with
similar disabilities, and how they compensate for or even overcome their
disabilities. As professionals, we need to look for these opportunities to
share hope for the future.
The seventh obligation is that of communicating positively between families and
professionals. Communicating effectively takes practice, but everyone can learn
to apply communication techniques until they become a natural part of
communication style. To be an effective communicator, one must be aware of and
accept cultural differences and the role a person’s disability plays in their
ability to communicate. Increased sensitivity to these types of issues plays an
important role when working with individuals and families. The book gives many
examples for facilitating communication that include verbal communication
skills (furthering responses, paraphrasing, response to affect (questioning and
summarization), nonverbal communication skills (listening and attending), and
influencing skills (providing information, support, focusing attention and
offering assistance). Along with these areas, communication can take place as
individuals confer or when having a team meeting. Many times, communication
skills need to be used when relaying information in crisis or other difficult
situations. To communicate effectively, It is important for a professional to be
skilled and practiced in all of these areas.
The eighth obligation mentioned in the book is that of warranting trust and
respect. This is the most important aspect of all because when trust and
respect are in place, collaboration and empowerment are enhanced. Professionals
need to be sure that they develop a relationship with families based on mutual
trust, respect and acceptance.