Communication Between School Staff and Parents of Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Author(s):

Mairi Ann CullenMairi Ann Cullen(presenting / submitting)Stephen Cullen Elisabeth Arweck Geoff Lindsay

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

14 SES 05 A, Schooling of Ordinary and Vulnerable Youth. Transitions between Levels of Schooling and Transitions to Adulthood (Part 1)

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-14

10:30-12:00

Room:

KL 25/134,G, 70

Chair:

Linda Mary Hargreaves

Contribution

Across Europe, attention continues to be focused on the benefits to individuals, families and society of enabling children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to access education and to be supported to achieve to the best of their ability (e.g. UNESCO, 2009; European Disability Forum, 2010; Council of Europe, 2010). In England, widespread concern about teachers’ lack of the knowledge, skills and confidence to teach pupils with high incidence SEND led to a series of government funded initiatives, including the Inclusion Development Programme (IDP). This was a national-scale, voluntary programme of professional development for teachers, promoted over three academic years (2008-2011). A key aim was to raise the confidence of parents of pupils with SEND that their children’s schools could and would meet their needs.

The IDP was evaluated over 2008-2011 as part of a wider, government-funded study. The research questions relevant to this paper were: to explore the views of school staff (through interviews and questionnaires) and parents of children with SEND (interviews only) about parental confidence in the school system; and to find out what influenced parental confidence in the school; and how far if at all, the IDP impacted on this. Because we wanted to find out what parents valued about what school staff did, we asked schools to select parents that the school special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) believed were pleased with how their child’s SEND were dealt with in the school. We assumed that these parents would, nevertheless, also have critical views about aspects of what the school did. We also assumed that it was unlikely that parents would know about the IDP-related staff development work being done in the school. Our interview schedule was constructed to allow for this.

Method

Within a wider evaluation project (Lindsay et al., 2010), views from and about parents of children with SEND were collected through qualitative and quantitative methods. Thirty parents of children with SEND were interviewed about their relationships with the schools their children had attended, focusing on what had gone well and what had gone less well and the reasons underpinning this. In addition, teachers in 28 schools were interviewed three times (2008/09; 2009/10, 2010/11) and asked their views about how confident they felt about teaching pupils with SEND and how satisfied parents of pupils with SEND were with the quality of education their children received in the school. Similar questions were included in surveys of school leaders and teachers in 500 schools across 30 local authorities (2009/10 and 2010/11).

Expected Outcomes

Interim results indicate that the IDP, where implemented well, can raise teachers’ knowledge, skills and confidence in providing inclusive teaching in mainstream classes. It can also improve teachers’ confidence about communicating with the parents of pupils with SEND. Overall, school staff believed that almost all parents of pupils with SEND were satisfied with their children’s education. The interviews with parents show that parents want their children to do as well as possible at school and believe that, if teachers were more willing to converse with them about their child, to listen to their views and ideas, and to implement relatively small changes in teaching practice, their child’s educational experience would improve. The quality of communication between home and school was the single, most powerful factor affecting parents’ level of confidence in the school’s ability to provide their child with appropriate, inclusive education. The parents interviewed who had a child with SEND in the later years of primary school were fearful about their child's transition to secondary school. Final results will be presented at the Conference with reference to other literature that explores the home-school relationship for this sub-group of parents.

References

Council of Europe (2010) Draft Resolution of the Council of the European Union and the Representatives of the Governments of the member states, meeting within the Council, on a new European Disability Framework. Brussels, 2 June 2010. 10173/10; SOC375; COHOM 134. http:// www.register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/10/st10/st10173.en10.pdf , accessed 20.1.11 European Disability Forum (2010) Disability Pact Declaration. http://www.edf-feph.org/Page_Generale.asp?DocID=24287, accessed 20.1.11 Lindsay, G., Cullen, M.A., Cullen, S., Dockrell, J, Goodlad, S., Arweck, E. (2010) Evaluation of the impact of the DFE investment in initiatives designed to improve teacher workforce skills in relation to SEN and disabilities - 1st interim report. Research Report DFE-RR058. London: DFE. http://www.education.gov.uk/search/results?q=DFE-RR058, accessed 20.1.11 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (2009) Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education. Paris: UNESCO.

Author Information

Mairi Ann Cullen

University of Warwick

CEDAR

Coventry

Mairi Ann Cullen (presenting / submitting)

University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Stephen Cullen

University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Elisabeth Arweck

University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Geoff Lindsay

University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.

Session Information

Contribution

Method

Expected Outcomes

References

Author Information

Search the ECER Programme

Navigation

Info for