A strong relationship between parents and professionals is essential to successful early intervention. Yet, programs struggle to engage families in services. This article describes a successful pilot project to strengthen parent/professional relationships for families with children with disabilities living in a high-poverty urban area. Early…

The emphasis on parents in addressing the needs of children with disabilities is of great importance as education enters the second decade of the 21st century. This involves a movement from parents being passive recipients of decisions being made about their child by those outside of the family (e.g., teachers, service providers) to being…

The increasingly diverse population in the United States calls for schools to address the breadth of cultural histories students bring with them to the classroom. High school students with disabilities are also diverse in terms of cultural histories, race, ethnicities, religions, and citizenship. These factors intersect as families engage in…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of parents involved in the IEP process. More specifically, the study explored how parents in the IEP process experience trust in their relationship with educational professionals. The two research questions addressed in this study were: What is the lived experience of…

Parent involvement and parent-professional collaboration influence positive transitions from school into adult life among young adults with disabilities. However, parents frequently report being uninformed and uninvolved in transition planning and there is a paucity of information on how to develop these relationships in high school and…

Parent engagement has been extensively studied, but more information is needed on how teacher-parent relationships vary for adolescents with different disabilities, varying socioeconomic backgrounds, and racial/ethnic backgrounds. This study investigates associations between teacher-parent relationships, teacher-student relationships, student's…

Educators in many Western nations have used the Kübler-Ross stage model of grief for five decades as a lens to explain parental response to disability. A recent article in "Improving Schools," representing this deficit model, asserted that the grief lens is useful in understanding parent's response to learning that their child qualified…

Although students with disabilities are over-represented in the juvenile justice system and frequently receive poor educational services, few studies have examined strategies to increase compliance with student needs and individualized education programs. In this study, we conducted interviews with eight probation officers in the Advocacy Unit of…

School choice has become one of the most controversial issues in education. However, little is known about how parents of children with disabilities chose schools. The present article includes an international systematic literature review of research on the factors influencing the decisions of parents of children with disabilities when selecting…

More than 40 years after passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), some special education teacher preparation programs offer limited coursework on parent involvement, advocacy, or home-school collaboration. For pre-service special education teachers and/or novice special education teachers working with students with…

This article outlines the findings from a contemporary study of teacher-parent collaboration in inclusive education in primary and secondary schools in Malaysia. Recent inclusive education policy developments within Malaysia have increased teachers' accountability to effectively meet the needs of all students. This article draws upon recent…

It is observed that professionals would meet the needs of individual children if they work closely with the child's parents [58]. The growing of a child is a continuous process which requires a coherent, close partnership between home and school, since the house is the first educational environment, and the first community in which a child lives…

It is no question that preparing teachers to work with the many facets involved in special education is a daunting task. Upon entering the classroom on the first day, special education teachers are expected to be prepared (Sayeski, 2015) when presented with numerous responsibilities (Collins, Sweigart, Landrum, & Cook, (2017), including parent…

It is always exciting when one sees a student begin to progress and learn new skills. However, it can be disconcerting when the family has a different experience. Likewise, a family may be having positive experiences at home, whereas the child is struggling with the new structure and routines that come with the classroom setting. To truly support…

All parents can and should participate meaningfully in their children's education, including those whose children receive special education services. The value of parent participation has been recognized under law since 1975, most recently as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (Coots, 2007). Many scholars and professionals…