Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress
International
Special Education Conference
Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity?
1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland
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Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland |
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Gretchen Butera
Rebecca Hinshaw
Lisa Humphreys
Elin Hoffman
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America
gbutera@indiana.edu
ABSTRACT The contribution of family-professional partnerships to effective special education can scarcely be overstated, especially given the changing circumstances of American schooling. Personnel preparation programs must provide curriculum that supports novice special educators in examining their attitudes about families and family-professional partnerships and assists them in understanding family viewpoints. In this manuscript, we describe our study of the viewpoints of three key stakeholders groups involved in personnel preparation for family-professional partnerships at Indiana University: novice special educators (students), course instructors of a course designed to address professional competencies in family-professional partnerships and family members of children with disabilities also participating in the course. Our findings support the use of conceptual change strategies in teacher education curriculum including case studies, reflective journaling and field experiences that help special educators examine the contribution of their own personal and professional experiences to their attitudes and practice. We also discuss the importance of the communities of practice as a means of supporting personnel preparation for family-professional partnerships.
American schools exist in very different social, economic and political contexts than they did decades ago. On a daily basis, teachers encounter students whose families have been reconfigured and whose communities have undergone rapid change. At present, non- European-Americans comprise one-third of the population of the United States and non-European students are in the majority in the 25 largest school districts in the country. Both the number of families in poverty and the gap between them and families of middle or upper income status has rapidly increased in the past two decades. As schools are increasingly urged to address the needs of students described as “at-risk” because of their membership in low income families, educators are urged to form family and community partnerships in order to ensure that school practices are culturally compatible with the students they teach (Day-Vines, 2000).The situation is made more urgent and complex by the fact that the vast majority of teachers are middle class European-Americans (Utley et. al., 2000).These changes in the circumstances surrounding schooling require that prospective teachers understand the ways in which families and communities contribute to children’s learning. Developing the professional knowledge and skills necessary to partner with families becomes increasingly important.
In special education, the importance of partnering with families is especially evident. Both state and federal special education mandates in the United States outline an active role for the parents of children with disabilities. Of the six key principles at the core of special education federal mandate, for example, two (due process and parental participation) directly relate to parent-school partnerships. In addition, the need to individualize learning plans in the individual education plan (IEP) process for students with disabilities implies that special educators partner with families and communities in order to design activities that are meaningful for their students and relevant to their family.
Personnel preparation programs for teachers often give scant attention to these issues (Cochran-Smith, 1995; Committee on Learning and Educational Practices, 1999; Eccles & Harold, 1996; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future). Further, despite the emphasis on parent participation in special education, many special education personnel preparation programs fail to adequately address these important professional competencies ( Brownell et. al., 2005;Cooley & Yovanoff, 1996; Prater et.al., 2000; Whittaker, 2000). In a recent review of special education teacher preparation, Brownell et. al. (2005) point out that only one third of programs reviewed describe the use of conceptual change strategies that might assist special educators in understanding the needs of learners from diverse cultural backgrounds despite its’ apparent importance in helping special educators learn to partner with families.
The Harvard Family Research Project (1997) provided an in-depth examination of promising methods for preparing teachers in family involvement. Although the report concluded that teacher education had enormous potential to reduce the barriers to effective home-school partnerships, it also pointed out that little research exists to provide guidance to those efforts. Exemplary teacher education programs identified by the report made use of conceptual change strategies in an effort to impact the negative attitudes of teachers and others towards parent involvement. These strategies included the use of case studies, role plays and self-reflection and collaborative research activities between students and families. In special education, personnel preparation for family-professional partnerships is most often described in the early childhood special education literature which describes the use of similar curricular strategies to help novice special educators develop competencies to build family-professional partnerships ( Butera, 1997; Buysee & Wesley, 2001; Fenichel & Eggbeer, 1991; McCollum & Catlett, 1997; McBride & Brotherson, 1997; Ross & Blanton, 2004; Tertell, Klein & Jewett, 1998; ).
Preparing for Family-Professional Partnerships at Indiana University (IU)
In this study, we examined special education personnel preparation as it relates to family-professional partnerships at our university. In specific we sought to understand the perspectives of key stakeholders in a course entitled Families in Schools and Society (K548). The overall purpose of K548 is to enhance student knowledge and skill needed in providing services to individuals with disabilities within family and community contexts. The course began as a summer workshop offered through the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community in the early 1980’s. As need expanded for the professional competencies related to family and community collaboration, the summer workshop evolved into the course as it is currently offered, available on campus once a year with a full enrollment of 25-30 graduate students in special education.
Recently, an effort was made to expand the delivery of this and other graduate coursework to sites distant from IU’s Bloomington campus through the federally funded Collaborative Teacher Education Program (CTEP). CTEP offers courses using a distance education format, either web-based design or two-way interactive video conferencing. In the video- conferencing sessions, students and instructors meet in much the same way as conventional classes; however, the instructors and students are typically in different locations and are connected through live video and audio connections. Web-based CTEP activities are conducted using Internet web pages specifically designed for the course activities at IU.
In the fall of 2003, all five sections of the course in our study used a standard curriculum that provided students with an overview of methods, resources and issues related to the role of community and families within schools and in special education. Instructors met weekly to discuss the week’s topic and share suggested activities. However, each section of the course had autonomy in determining activities and resources to be used and were encouraged to select activities based on the characteristics of the students in their section and the teaching preferences of each instructor. Different learning and teaching styles contributed greatly to the diversity across the sections.
Course activities included vignettes, a Family Project and online topical cross-section chats. The vignettes are a series of stories, told most often in the voice of the parent of a child with disabilities, about their family experience as it relates to the inclusion of a family member with a disability. These stories are coupled with discussion questions that aim to help each students deepen their understanding of the family’s point of view and the effects of the community and culture on family functions and experience. The discussion questions are intended to guide students in considering their own experience, beliefs and perspectives about family, school and community in order to assist them in their understanding. Vignettes and the accompanying questions were delivered online; students responded to them by writing to their instructor. Subsequently, in-class discussions about student response were conducted.
Similarly, the intent of the Family Project was to expand students’ experience and understanding of family perspective on disability within the context of the school and society. Each student was required to become acquainted with a family that included a member with a disability. Students were to visit the family at least four times throughout the semester, scheduling time to listen to the family story and offer to provide the family with some minor assistance in return ( i.e., babysitting, tutoring with homework). Students were asked to use the project as an opportunity to understand family circumstances and their perspectives about strengths, needs and preferences for personalized and relevant family support. Students were required to keep records of their visits in a journal. The project culminated in a midterm paper that summarized what the students had learned about the family in question and their own perspective about it. A culminating class activity required students to participate in small group class discussions about the family’s stories to formulate principles of practice for special educators. In order to complete the paper, students discussed these principles with their Family Project family, ascertaining the extent to which the family believed the derived principles would assist them in achieving their goals. Students were also to evaluate the effectiveness of the school and community services that the family received in this final paper.
Electronic chats offered students the opportunity to participate in discussions with students from the course not in their course section. The chats were an hour long and students self-selected one of seven topics related to the course such as parent advocacy, issues in rural communities and parent participation in assessment activities. Each chat was facilitated by an instructor who prompts and guided the discussion.
Undertaking the Study
In this study, course activities provided us with an opportunity to examine how key stakeholders in special education personnel preparation thought about family-professional partnerships. We wanted to understand the perspectives of students (special educators), course instructors and family members in order to compare them. We sought to examine the contribution of personal and professional experiences to the viewpoints of each key stakeholder about family-professional partnerships. Our overall aim was to gather data that might begin to frame a developmental process for novice special educators to guide the design of personnel preparation in the future. We were especially interested in how the socio-cultural background of participants influenced their views.
Of eighty-nine students enrolled in the course, sixteen volunteered to participate in our study. All eight course instructors agreed to participate. Twenty-nine family members participating in the family projects provided us with survey data. Four family members also participated in interviews and/or focus group discussions. See Tables 1-3 for information about study participants.
We collected three data types: artifacts, interviews and observations. Artifacts included student journals, vignette responses, midterm and final papers and transcripts of electronic chats. We also conducted semi-structured interviews of students four times at two month intervals, two of the interviews after the course was completed. Three of the interviews were via telephone. One was face to face in the student’s home or workplace. The interviews ranged from 30 minutes to an hour and a half and sought to examine the perspective of the students about family-professional partnerships and how their personal and professional experiences contributed to their beliefs.
Course instructors participated in 30-60 minute face-to-face semi structured interviews. The purpose of the interviews in this case was to gather their impressions about course activities. In addition, we asked instructors to reflect about how their own personal and professional experiences in and with families influenced their perspectives about family-professional partnerships. These interviews were audiotaped and transcribed in their entirety. In addition, we asked course instructors to keep weekly logs of course activities. We observed each class section twice over the semester, collecting running field notes on the spot about course activities and expanding them shortly afterwards. Finally, we examined the course evaluations of each section in order to understand how various aspects of the course may have influenced outcomes.
Family members participating in our study completed a survey about their participation in the family project. Four participated in telephone interviews and/or focus groups intended to gather more in depth data about their experiences with family-professional partnerships. Telephone interviews were accompanied by running field notes composed on the spot and expanded immediately afterwards. The focus group was videotaped and transcribed in its entirety.
Analyzing and Interpreting the Data
Our research team was comprised of experienced special educators. Two faculty members leading the team and four of the doctoral student researchers had over five years of teaching experience in elementary and secondary special education. As special educators in higher education (or seeking to be), our own lives demonstrated the value we placed in higher education and formal preparation as a means of learning our profession. Although our research team included one male and two international students (from Turkey), the team was largely comprised of European-American female researchers who ranged in age from late twenties to early sixties. In addition to likely biases typical of our gender, age and middle-class origins, we were committed to the importance of family-friendly practice in special education (Butera, 1997; Butera et. al., 1999; Tertell, Klein & Jewett, 1998). We also believed in the importance of culturally competent practice and we believed that examining one’s practice was essential to effective teaching. We began our study with the expectation that the participants in our study brought a variety of professional and personal experiences to their work that were quite likely to inform how they understood family-professional partnerships and how they interacted with one another and course activities.
As data collection came to an end, we analyzed the survey and evaluation data by calculating descriptive data (frequencies, means and standard deviations) at the item level. Overall, this data demonstrated that all three groups of study participants viewed the course activities positively and reported learning from them. They also made a variety of specific suggestions about how to improve the course in specific and personnel preparation of special educators in general. We set this data aside for further analysis.
In order to analyze the interview, observation and artifact data, we employed the strategies described in the literature on qualitative research methods (Bogdan& Biklen, 1992; Lecompte, Millroy & Priessle, 1992; McMillan & Schumacher, 1997; Merriam, 2000). The first phase of intensive data analysis involved organizing each data set (student, instructor, family member) chronologically and reading each set several times, jotting down notes in the margin and keeping a separate running record of major ideas that cut across data types and sets with sections of the data read by two-three research team members. In this way, data were reduced, consolidated and interpreted to some extent with a large number of themes identified for each data set. Employing constant comparative methods, tentative themes, categories, properties and hypotheses emerged and were tested against the cross-case data in each set, seeking to disconfirm our emerging findings and question our emerging hypotheses. Preliminary themes emerged from this data analysis and were described. At this point a descriptive case study of each student participant was written. Working in teams of two-three, the data sets were reassembled and coded for the presence of each theme.
In order to ensure that our findings were credible and reliable, we employed a number of strategies. We used multiple data sources including multiple methods, participants and situations to triangulate our data and increase reliability. We also used member checking twice by providing study participants with summaries of our impressions interviews and asking them whether we “got it right” or needed to add something. In three instances, study participants corrected minor errors we had made interpreting what they told us. Working in team of two-four, we employed an electronic qualitative analysis program where electronic data was available and coding other data by hand to check for agreement between researchers using qualitative methods for establishing what is essentially inter-rater agreement (Patton, 1990). The final data reduction process at this phase involved clustering themes into larger categories related to our research questions. In some cases themes that were closely related were collapsed. In other cases, data not considered directly related to the research purposes were set aside or dropped from the data set. In this manuscript we discuss four categories related to family partnerships that emerged from our qualitative data.
Using Personal Stories
Across data sets and types, personal stories about the families of study participants played an important role in framing how individuals understood families in general and family-professional partnerships in general. This was especially the case for students in the course who used family stories to explain their attitudes and beliefs. Their families were often depicted as traditional and idealized with fathers described as the family breadwinner and mother as primary providers of child care. Margaret’s story in typical in illustrating this:
We were raised in the country and my father was a farmer who raised pigs. My mother was always a stay at home mom who took care of the majority of the childrearing. My parents have maintained a wonderful marriage of thirty four years. We were raised to respect all adults, especially teachers.
Like the family depicted above, students’ stories about their family often revealed
the socio-cultural values associated with the middle class, Midwest backgrounds of our students. Their families valued hard work and self-reliance. They depended on each other and kept “family business” to themselves. Sally wrote in a vignette response:
Money was always tight at my house. Even with both my parents working, there never seemed to be extra money for much of anything. My mom did not remodel her house (and still can’t); we didn’t buy new cars; most of our clothes were sale bargains, mom coupon cut and we knew not to ask for things just because. My family bought into the culture of not speaking about finances…. However, I do remember many times Mom would tell me in confidence that she didn’t know what was going to happen because cattle prices or wheat prices were so low.
The family stories of our students described a “semi-active role” for parents
at school. Students recalled that their parents went to school functions and attended parent-teacher conferences. But students remembered being told to “stay out of trouble” because their parents did not want to “have to go to school.” They also pointed out that their families emphasized self-reliance to them, insisting that it was their responsibility to handle school issues. As Paula explained it “My family was active in my activities. They went to my athletic events. But they let me ask for help when I needed it.” Similarly, Theresa explained:
My parents were expected to go to Open Houses and school programs. My mom was a room mother a few times and went on field trips. She spread herself between eight children…..My mother did talk to my eighth grade math teacher about placing me in a lower algebra class per my request. To this day, I am grateful because I have to teach it now!
Like the students, family members placed value on the importance of family stories. When asked about the benefits of participating in the Family Project, all of the family members participating in our study reported that it was “great to have someone who wanted to listen” and “it’s nice to have a chance to talk about your experience.”
This was also reflected in our survey data as the most frequent written comment referred to the benefits the Family Project provided for them was the opportunity to share their family experience. In an interview, Ellen explained that:
… I really loved the experience… (students should) learn more about everything, the details of our experience, how we feel and how we deal with things. I am an open person and willing to share everything I am when asked to. I really want to reach teachers to let them see how it looks to be me and other families…
There was evidence that the importance of family stories for family members
participating in our study influenced their perspectives about family-professional partnerships in general. When asked about their relationship with their child’s special educators, family members told us it was very important to them. Anne commented:
This is the person who’s going to take care of my kid who can’t always take care of himself. They’re going to change his diaper and respond to his other personal needs. If I don’t know them and feel like I can trust them, feel okay about the relationship, it will be a very bad year for all of us. Teachers have to realize this and spend the time to get to know parents.
Family members participating in our study also demonstrated that they shared cultural values with study participants in special educator (student) roles. They emphasized the importance of working hard and often described their own family as traditional. They also demonstrated the importance they placed on self-reliance in their descriptions of themselves as the primary advocate for their child. Further, despite Ellen’s self-description and their overall emphasis on the importance of the opportunity to tell their family’s story, they were not especially comfortable sharing what they viewed as “family business” openly. This was evident in their views about home visits. Family members reported that they were uncomfortable if teachers planned to visit their home. On a survey, a family member commented, “I don’t visit a teacher’s home. They don’t need to visit mine.” In interviews this sentiment was also apparent. Mary reported “hating them” and Ellen explained:
I do believe that teachers and families should develop relationships and meet each other to get to know each other…. But it does not necessarily mean it should be the home. It can be anywhere else. ..I had such an experience earlier. We were participating in a home visit program for low-income families and they used to come to our home. What I have seen is that they were only coming to check with the environment and if it is proper for the children… if your water is running… a big change in the family, should be known by the teacher… but they should not check how I do my personal things...the place should not make any difference.
Course instructors were less likely than either students or family members to use personal stories to frame their explanation of their perspectives. Across data sets, instructors varied in the emphasis they placed on their own personal experiences in teaching, although over half of the instructors reported using them to highlight important issues in class. However, instructors were more likely to reference their own family experience if they had personal experiences with disabilities in them. Ken, for example, spoke of using stories about his own children with disabilities as a way to “get across to students” in essence asking them to consider “what will you do in your job as a teacher in a school working with a family” like his. He also explained that “it brings a little realism into the class” more than a “sanitized textbook does.” Lance, who was less experienced in personnel preparation than many of the other course instructors, told about the fact that students knew “I lived most of what we talk about and it helps to draw them out.” He also told us:
I like what’s done with using stories. I’ve never used stories before. I’m very fascinated by the power of stories and how stories I think get people to connect, to take the content of the text and relate it to those stories and connect those to their own life story.
Despite the fact that all of the course instructors stated in interviews that the most important objective of the course involved helping students have an “appreciation of what families experience”, three of the eight course instructors reported in interviews that they did not reference their own family experiences in class. Observations and course evaluations and student interviews suggested that instructors in these cases seldom made use of the family stories gathered via the Family Project or vignette response to guide class discussion. One instructor reported that he was unsure the discussion in class helped students “really learn things.” Two of the other instructors reported that the discussion was “repetitious” and they need to supplement it with videos and other class activities. In contrast, in course evaluations students in their section reported feeling frustrated because “nothing was ever said about the vignettes or our family journals in class.”
Perspectives on Difference
Study participants brought a variety of perspectives to the ways they understood or thought about diversity. Students often acknowledged that their upbringing in small rural Indiana communities had ill-prepared them for dealing with students and families who differed from them in race or class. They sometimes made assumptions about families based on their socio cultural background. “These children are probably not read to a lot and receive little to no help from their parents with schoolwork,” Greg reported in a typical response to a vignette. Students sometimes acknowledged that parents in low-income families had difficulty supporting children’s educational efforts because “they have to work” and “do not have time” but they were also quick to assert that low income parents “do not value education”.
There was also evidence that the students in our study made assumptions about individuals with disabilities and the impact of disabilities on families. In discussing their likely response to having a child with a disability in vignette response, students referred to it as an overwhelming and frightening event. Greg tells us that having a child with a disability would probably result in his feeling quite depressed. He acknowledges being ashamed to say this “After all, I am a special educator, right?’ But the feeling he describes is shared by others especially the younger or less experienced study participants like Julie who explained in her vignette response:
If I had a child with a disability, I think I would be scared and confused at first. I would wonder why it happened to me and what had happened during my pregnancy that caused the disability. I would feel scared because I don’t know what life would be like with a child with a disability. I would also be scared that I would outlive the child and that the child would go through pain and many obstacles...
Despite the perceptions of the students in our study, family members were quite anxious to point out that they were not so different and in fact, making this clear to students was one of their most heartfelt reasons for participating in the Family Project. Mary pointed out that the student participating with her family in the Family Project just “hung out with us” and got to see “just being in a family.” She thinks he learned “we’re not so different from everyone else.” Anne also commented about wanted to be perceived by special educators as more like than unlike other families. In an interview, she said:
You know people who don’t have kids like Brian think ‘she must feel really bad all the time.’ But, you know, it’s not really like that. I mean Brian is a good kid. He’s really funny and good most of the time. Sure, we have concerns, but we’re sad all the time.
In most cases, course instructors appeared to be well-aware of the differences between students and family members with regard to perspectives about diversity. Their stated emphasis on the overall importance of helping students appreciate family perspective appeared related to their awareness that students viewed families as different because of the presence of a family member with a disability in them. In several cases, they also expressed frustration about their own inability to help students consider how diversity issues might impact family-professional partnerships. Ken talks about his surprise when a student in his section insisted that no student in his high school ever got pregnant out of wedlock. He thinks this could not have been true. Rachel tells us in an interview about her concerns when students blame families for students’ problems, especially in their discussions of low income families:
They say they are just like that because they don’t work hard or it’s a choice. You’re poor because you’re lazy. I understand that that could be true but I don’t want them sitting around in groups discussing this over and over.
Course instructors also reported struggling about how to help students acknowledge issues related to disability. Ken tells us in his interview that he wants students to understand that the student in question is a “kid first” and then a” student with a disability.” He hopes what they learn in the class will “carry them past… the walls disability sets up.” He also would like them to “recognize the attributes of students, too.” Dan worries that, in too many cases the Family Project focuses on a family that includes an individual with a mild disability and that students will not understand the perspective of families where an individual requires “a tremendous amount of care.” He also reflects in an interview:
The biggest difficulties teachers have are that half the families they have little or no interaction with, so that’s a big issue. How to get interaction started with families you don’t already interact with and overcome some of those difficulties…Teachers need to develop skills for interacting with families who aren’t cooperative…I’m not sure we are cracking that barrier.
What’s the job? Whose is it?
Common across all three data sets was a description of the role of each participant as a lot of work, requiring an enormous amount of time and energy on their part. Students described active roles for themselves as teachers by describing their active modification of instruction to meet the needs of individual students. As one student described what they would do to meet the needs of a student described in a vignette:
Divide the large group into small groups to meet the diversity of needs in the room. Recruit volunteer tutors from the community to assist in the classroom, allowing the teacher to rotate among the groups and individuals. Write a technology grant to be able to pursue assistive technology in helping to individualize for students needs.
Many special educators (students) in our study described their role as extending beyond instruction. Margaret explained that she tried to teach her students “morals and values. I also try to teach them how to be successful in life and how to meet and make new friends.” There was evidence that this perception about the role of special educators sometimes related to their beliefs about the shortcomings of other key stakeholders. For example, Sally commented:
Since I have been working in the Metro school system some of the days I feel that I have been a surrogate parent because I have to teach my students basic life skills, behavioral skills and how to act in public. The parents do not teach their sons or daughters life skills or basic skills that should be taught at home. Some of the time in my past three years I have seen parents who do not care or do not know how to teach the students life skills/ behavioral skills because of their lack of knowledge.
The special educators in our study also viewed it as their role to help bridge the gap between families, schools, and community resources. They recognized the difficulties families may have accessing services they are qualified to receive and they viewed it as their responsibility to help families obtain access, although they were often uncertain about how to go about doing this. They felt a moral or ethical responsibility to “personalize the recommendations that I give to my families based on their needs.” Greg commented on the different services that were available to students with comparable disabilities:
It really does not appear to be fair treatment. As a teacher, I should be making sure that my students are qualified for and receiving every bit of help that they can receive from inside and outside sources. Families sometimes might really appreciate a knowledgeable guiding hand in these situations where outside agencies are concerned.
Like the special educators in our study, family members described their role as requiring extra time and energy on their part. In many instances they viewed it as important to expend extra effort and energy because of the unique learning needs of their child. In her interview, Mary tells us that she is determined that Maddy, her daughter with Down Syndrome, learn as much as she can so that as an adult she can “live independently.” She talks about working with Maddy on math homework as follows:
I work with her… I am with her. She can’t do whatever she wants. She has to pay attention to other people too. You know I come up with ways to help her do this. I show her a visual. I show her five fingers. Then she knows. She can’t do whatever she thinks she wants to do.
Working with their children on schoolwork was discussed by all family members in our focus group. They all reported feeling at times like they needed to do more teaching in these circumstances than they would have liked Mary explains. “We do most of the teaching at home and they love it because we are doing their work.” They also reported that they “needed to keep track of the services” their children were receiving at school and that teachers should “make sure parents knew their rights.” Overall, however, they also expressed sympathy for the responsibilities of teachers and wished teachers would view them as potential resources. Pat explained that “Teachers should be able to listen to what I have to say and respond to my and my child’s needs. I might look like an adversary, but they should know that parents are there to help.”
Course instructors, like other study participants, also reported that their role required a great deal of extra time and energy on their part. Several course instructions pointed out that reading and responding individually to the vignettes and the Family Project journals required a great deal of time. They were quick to point out differences in class size across sections if their section was one of the larger ones. Mitchell told about “calming down” down his students who were concerned about the requirements of the final paper. He explains that he told them, “It is not to be longer than eight pages; no instructor wants to read 20 pages. Some of them were talking they were going to reach 20 and we’re not going to read 20.”
There was evidence in the course instructor data that course activities
increased their awareness of the role confusion between special educators and family members that was described in the other data sets. Mitchell talks in his interview about how difficult the job of teaching has become with teachers not knowing “what to recommend to parents.” Rachel, in reflecting about the differing expectations of special educators and parents comments that teachers “aren’t being teachers because they want to be mean. They just have very strong beliefs about how you should raise your kids.” Dan explains that in teaching the course “one of the things that crossed my mind” was that “teachers see a separation between roles.” He is not sure how personnel preparation can respond and says “I’m not sure it’s possible to get to” helping teachers expand their view of their role, even though he thinks that in essence teachers have to “answer to families.”
Reflecting about Change
The key stakeholders in family-professional partnerships whose viewpoints we sought to understand in our study differed from each other in how they reflected about how the curriculum in K548 impacted them. Students were most likely describe to report that the opportunity to reflect about their personal and professional experiences had brought about change in their beliefs and practice. Most acknowledged that the opportunity to learn firsthand what families experienced afforded by the Family Project changed their viewpoints. This appeared to especially the case for novice special educators with less experience or limited licenses who often described relishing the Family Project as an opportunity to understand the experience of families. However, more experienced special educators also valued the opportunity. Several experienced special educators described getting to know families familiar to them in new or different ways. For example, Libby responded to our question about the Family Project with the following reflection:
This was a revelation to me. We spend a lot of time developing an intimate relationship with the kid, especially the disability part. We want to know all about it. We want to know about his autism, for example. We should be spending a lot more time instead, getting to know him in the context of his family. So, you know, you may know a lot about autism but you know zippo about the kid that can help you help him. It’s out there, though. We just need to create it… A system that will let us do this.
Students in our study also credited the vignettes with assisting them in
reflecting about family-professional partnerships. It is probably important to note that, in most cases, students selected a family for their Family Project that was familiar to them and similar in socio cultural background, even though they were encouraged to do otherwise. Under these circumstances, the vignettes provided them with the opportunity to examine families of diverse backgrounds. Wendy comment about them was typical as she explains “no matter what ethnic group or social class you come from, the same concerns and problems about your kid are there.” The vignettes also provided the opportunity for students to reflect about the possible contribution of their socio cultural background to their beliefs. As Wendy’s comment demonstrates, students acknowledged that they came to realize that families may differ and yet have similar goals in terms of wanting the best for their children. Reflection appeared to play an important role. Margaret explains it this way:
I learned a lot about reflection. I learned to delve into myself and figure out who I was and figure out what made me that way. It made me more complete…Be prepared to reflect on your life (if you take the class) because the class is about reflection.
Unlike the students, family members in our study did not especially
acknowledge that participating in the Family Project brought about change in their family, although they reported enjoying it. Although students offered to assist the family, most family members reported refusing students’ offers explaining that “there was nothing for them to do really.” The exception to this was Mary who described the student (Peter) as making the family a terrific dinner. “really the best pot roast I’ve ever eaten” in return for the opportunity to get to know the family.
Course instructors were mixed in reflecting about change brought about by course activities. Most reported that course activities brought about student change although they differed in terms of what specific course activities they thought were important. Lance considers that the technology used in his distance education section may make it easier for students to “take risks” and “step into things that are very uncomfortable”. Dan comments, ‘it is really hard to measure that kind of change. You have to go by secondary indicators for that. People say ‘I never thought of that before.’ He also worries about what the course does not teach, reflecting “I worry about what we won’t be able to accomplish.” Ken reflects on his experience teaching the course in a positive way:
One of the first questions we asked is ‘do any of you have someone in your family with a disability?’ Only two or three of them raise their hands. That’s all. Then someone will start saying ‘I have an uncle in a wheelchair and I used to have to tell people why he was in a wheelchair.’ Then we asked ‘why didn’t you raise your hand?’ And he said ‘Oh, I never thought of him as someone with a disability. He’s in my family. He’s my uncle.’ … I think the best part of teaching is when the light goes on. Whether it’s your light or someone else’s light, that’s the best part of it. For this class, that’s the best part of it.
Lessons Learned
While the importance of family-professional partnerships is widely acknowledged as essential to effective special education, little is known about effective methods of preparing novice special educators to partner with families. Our study examines promising personnel preparation methods to prepare special educators for partnerships with families from the perspectives of key stakeholders in the process. The implications of our findings for effective personnel preparation are both encouraging and troubling.
Ample evidence is provided in our study that the conceptual change strategies described by the Harvard Family Research Project (1997) as promising were effective in helping special educators (students) examine their attitudes about professional-family partnerships. Special educators reported that examining their personal and professional experiences in and with families increased their awareness of their expectations about families and the impact of these expectations on their capacity to participate in family-professional partnerships. They reported that families the opportunity to listen to the perspective of firsthand in the Family Project assisted them in understandingfamily perspectives. In interviews months after the course was over, students asserted that course activities had impacted their practice. It was also the case that family members and course instructors reported benefiting from the opportunity to reflect about the contributions of families to student learning and about theimportance of family-professional partnerships. Personnel preparation strategies that assist novice special educators in understanding how one’s own socio-cultural perspectives about families, schools, learning and disabilities contributes to their views about families and about family-professional partnerships appear essential, especially given the increasing socio-cultural diversity of students in special education.
Examining the data collected from various perspectives, however, causes us to
remain concerned about the difficulties in bringing about substantial change in special educator attitudes, regardless of promising methods. In our study, special educators (students) and families differed substantially in how they viewed one another’s roles. Many of these differences were troubling because they were quite likely to interfere with effective partnership building. Asked about how to improve the situation, both sets of key stakeholders were likely to insist that the other potential partner needed to change the way they viewed the other. Special educators viewed parents, especially low-income parents, as to blame for their children’s difficulties. They failed to acknowledge the possible expertise of families about their own child even while assuming that what they as teachers knew about children and disabilities applied to parenting. It is important to note that while their descriptions of their role in children’s lives often took on a missionary zeal, they also were confused about what they actually could or should do. As special educators, they wanted to be able to do it all.
It is important to acknowledge that the role confusion special educators described in our study is quite legitimate, especially given the extra stress placed on them by diminished resources supplied to community social and educational services in the United States over the past decade. Special educators are often overworkedand face many unrealistic demands. This was especially the case with the special educators in our study because many worked in very stressful roles as teachers of students with serious behavior disorders. A number of them were doing so with provisional teaching licenses, serving as de facto mental health therapists in the absence of significant mental health services in their communities. They often did so lacking the sorts of teacher training experiences that might help them address student need on daily basis. Under these circumstances, addressing the needs to partner with family members may not assume a high priority. However, the shortage of fully-trained special education teachers is likely to continue in the near future. Teaching is more rewarding and successful when teachers have mutually supportiverelationships with families and communities. It is important for personnel preparation to stress that partnering with parents will ultimately assist special educators.
Family members in our study held teachers to very high standards even when they acknowledged that the responsibilities teachers had were overwhelming. Family members insisted that special educators should be readily available to consult with them on a regular basis, failing to acknowledge that this might interfere with the primary responsibility special educators have to address the individual instructional needs of students. Under these circumstances, the demands of family members often seemed excessively strident. In addition, although family members often pointed out the legitimate value of their own expertise about their child, they seldom acknowledged the expertise of others, including their child’s teacher. Asked for their ideas about the preparation of special educators needed to improve family-professional partnerships, family members in our study seldom had suggestions aside from supporting the continued use of activities like the Family Project. It may be that family members lacked enough knowledge about personnel preparation to offer comments. However, their lack of interest in it also seemed to emphasize their lack of appreciation for special educator expertise. In either case, the likelihood of professionals and family members establishing authentic partnerships on behalf of the child in question appears problematic.
It is important to acknowledge the role of course instructors in bringing about change. The curriculum itself was insufficient for the task of engaging students in an examination of their socio cultural perspectives about families. Instead, to bring about change, instructors were required to adopt a role similar to the one asked of novice special educators in forming family-professional partnerships. In order to facilitate discussion and encourage students to reflect about their own experiences in families, course instructors had to give up their roles as expert and model the reflective processes they hoped to see from students. The study provides evidence that when instructors made use of their own family story, it served to illustrate for students what the curriculum was asking them to do. It is hard and risky work for academics unused to teaching in this way to do so and some course instructors resisted it even with course materials made available to them. It is important to note that it appeared especially difficult for novice course instructors. This finding along with our finding about the persistence of negative attitude of special educators and family members towards one another suggest that more needs to be done to bring about substantial change in personnel preparation readying special educators to partner with families.
In order to bring about change that supports the development of family-professional partnerships in special education, it is probably important that personnel preparation programs look beyond the activities embedded in a course or even in a series of courses and model partnerships themselves. Cochran-Smith (1995) describes the sorts of partnerships personnel preparation programs might envision in order to reform how teachers are prepared and supported as they make the transition to teaching. Similarly, Wesley & Buysee (2001) describe communities of practice as a means of transcending organizational and geographic boundaries to address a common set of core issues for the purpose of improving practice. It is probably past time for active collaboration of institutions of higher education , state and local education agencies and other key stakeholders concerned with the preparation and continuous support of beginning special educators to pool their limited resources so as to bring about change.
References
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Table 1
Special Educators Participants
N=16
Student years of experience current position teacher preparation
Wendy 3 alternative 6-12 elementary ed
Margaret 8 alternative 6-12 special ed
Greg 1 self-contained MI elementary ed
elementary
Maria 2 itinerant LD 6-8 special ed
Theresa 4 alternative 9-12 elementary ed
Paula 11 early childhood early childhood
special ed special ed
Steve 2 self-contained EBD elementary ed
7-9
Betsy 20 juvenile correctional elementary ed
center 9-12
Peter 0 full time student social work
Julie 0 full time student elementary ed
Roberta 24 itinerant EBD K-12 special ed
Libby 10 resource LD,MI 9-12 special ed
Connie 4 resource LD, MI 6-8 special ed
Sally 12 resource, LD, MI K-6 special ed
Joan 16 self contained, EBD elementary ed
7-9
Brittany 3 resource, LD, MI elementary ed
K-6
Table 2
Family Member Interview/ Focus Group Participants
N= 4
Family Member Age of child Disability of child
Mary 5 Down Syndrome
Ellen 14 Autism
Pam 10 Learning Disabilities
Anne 9 Cerebral palsy
Table 3
Course Instructor Participants
N=8
Course Instructor Role in Higher Ed Years of experience
Rachel Faculty member 9
Ken Graduate student 1
Dan Faculty member 23
Lance Adjunct instructor 2
Karen Adjunct instructor 8
Mitchell Graduate student 1
Tammy Adjunct instructor 7
Alex Graduate student 1
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