Question & problem
The importance of parents/teachers collaboration (PTC) has been extensively researched generally, with more to be done in relation to its outcomes for children with disabilities. Collaboration between parents and teachers has proven to be an effective and creative means to achieving better outcomes in learning for all including children with disabilities (CwDs). This has an extensive and lasting impact on a child’s success in school. As schools strive to be effective and inclusive, they are encouraging and supporting parent/teacher interactions, increasing knowledge of what interaction exist or can exist between teachers/parents, the challenges of these collaboration and prospects crucial for strengthening the impact of the collaboration. This brief provides a synopsis of some evidence on the impact of parent/ teacher collaboration in a way that provides insight into how teachers and parents of children with disabilities view their collaborative roles to achieve better outcomes for learners with disabilities and highlights on challenges that exist with regards to parent teacher collaboration of Children with Disabilities.
Quote
Recommendations
Key recommendation
Action
Initiate an inclusive policy to ensure parent/ and eacher collaboration globally is the same across settings and disciplines. This can be a sure means to achieve similar educational outcomes for all and bridge the North–South gap as well as that which exists between PTC of children without disabilities to those with disabilities for effective collaboration. This should include measures geared towards ensuring strategies for forming and sustaining PTC are clearly spelt out.
Key recommendation
Action
Identify ways of building the capacity (training, workshops, seminars etc.) of both actors to collaborate (e.g. orientation on how to effectively collaborate, enlightening teachers of CwDs on the need to tap into the knowledge of parents of CwDs, working as partners in the collaboration, and to complement for each other’s lapses etc) and ensure that both parents and teachers of CwDs have reasonable and meaningful participation in the collaboration
Key recommendation
Action
Both the school and the home considers how they can strengthen parent/ teacher collaboration through the use of technological strategies (telephone conversations, emails, and other forms of web conferencing). These are possible ways to communicate with ease in their interactions, limiting the likelihood of the actors working as separate entities and increasing reliance on technology for effective communication between them. Due to the diversity and busy work schedules of some parents, schools will have to pay particular attention to the use of a multi-modal approach (home visits, parents supporting in the classroom as volunteers pending their availability, monitoring home learning activities and parent-teacher networking) to strengthen collaboration.
Collectively, the views of both parents and teachers of CwDs about their responsibilities towards education must be clearly outlined in reference to local conditions and context and the proposed universal framework to guide PTC. Each actor fulfils their role with a sense of responsibility (whether parent-focused, school-focused or partnership focused).
Key recommendation
Action
The school and education directorates should empower parents to contribute and participate in special education processes, whiles teachers’ skills are upgraded to fulfil the demands of the collaboration. Both teachers/parents should avail themselves to participate in professional development initiatives to show commitment to collaboration.
Governments could subsidies and facilitate smooth welfare cash transfers to ease the economic hardships on parents and take away burden of cost participating in assessment procedures and technological tools needed for collaboration.
Challenges
Challenge #1: There is no Universal framework guiding parent/teacher collaboration of children with disabilities globally
- The absence of a universal framework guiding parent /teacher collaboration has brought about disparities in the collaboration outcomes in both the global north and the global south;
- Various policies in the Global North have emphasised the role of PTPs in schools since 1975 (Coots, 2007). The ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy in the USA encourages the establishment of partnerships between parents and schools. In the UK, the ‘Children’s Plan’, also emphasises the key role which parents play in educating children. The ‘Schooling Strategy’ has proven to improve involvement of parent and family in educating children in New Zealand (Hornby, 2011), serving as a guide for ensuring effective PTCs in schools.
- In contrast, the global South has a dearth of policies guiding PTC in schools for children with disabilities, making it difficult to ensure uniformity in practice. As different schools have their different ways of making PTC happen, and this may not be applicable to all context.
- This has also makes parents appear confrontational, difficult, and unfriendly to PTC arrangements initiated by schools as there are no rules or strategies that spell out how collaboration should be formed and maintained.
Challenge #2: There is little to no evidence on training for both parents and teachers of children with disabilities in their collaboration
- Both parents and teachers of children with disabilities have a need for training if they are to harness an effective collaboration, however there is little orientation on how to effectively collaborate and ensure better outcomes in learning for all.
- Some teachers of children with disabilities feel they know their work and do not tap into parent’s knowledge when working, with some parents of children with disabilities feeling the school is primarily and solely responsible for their child’s educational outcome, and this can be linked to a deficiency of training on how to collaborate effectively.
- Both parents and teachers of children with disabilities are not trained to make up for the lapses and promote each other’s strength in the collaboration endeavour.
Challenge #3: Poor communication and no outline of expectations of each other’s role in the collaboration.
- Globally, the absence of clear channels of communication and a lack of role description appears to be challenges that exist between parents and teachers of children with disabilities in their collaboration, hindering its effectiveness;
- Communication appears weak in the collaboration because sometimes parents and teachers of children with disabilities work as separate units.
- The inclusive/ special schools are limited in their ability to offer a unique opportunity to apply a multi-modal approach necessary for increasing parent-teacher collaboration.
- There is a poor role construction due to how both parent and teachers of children with disabilities view their responsibility towards education (whether it is parent–focused (parents assumed their primary role), school-focused (when parents feel the school is primarily responsible for the children’s educational outcome but they get involved) or partnership focused – when parents and teachers of children with disabilities work together and share responsibility for a child’s better educational outcome.
Challenge #4: Parents and teachers of children with disabilities are not adequately resourced to enhance collaboration.
- Acknowledging the disparities in the practice of parents/teachers collaboration in the global north and south, scarcity of resources is an issue both parents and teachers of CwDs consent to as a seeming barrier to an effective collaboration in both context.
- Parents are limited in their ability and need to contribute and participate in special education processes due to the lack of technical know – how on how to effectively play their role in the collaboration.
- Lack of adequately skilled teachers - most teachers become anxious about the role they have to play in the collaboration because they lack the requisite skill to handle children with disabilities.
- Non- availability of funding, the inability to navigate different funding schemes, differences in funding access globally creates inequalities in decision-making regarding the contribution each actor in the collaboration could provide. For instance, where parents are economically constraints, purchasing a technological device for web conferencing or paying for the cost of assessment procedure for their child with disability becomes difficult if not impossible, impeding the process of an effective collaboration. Schools on the other hand, are faced with a seeming insufficient teaching and learning resources. Schools mainly in global south are under resourced with technological and pedagogical content tools needed for collaborating with parents in meeting the needs of children with disabilities.
Finding the answers
A review of reviews, examining systematic, narrative, and other types of review evidence on the topic of “What evidence is there for the impact of parents/ teachers collaboration?” was carried out. All recommendations are based on reviews of literatures from both high income countries and low- and middle-income countries, where the recommendations made were transferable to a high-medium/wide variety of resource settings. This evidence brief is based on the findings of a total of seventeen (16) research papers, 7 reviews of low- and middle-income countries evidence, 9 reviews concerning evidence from high-income countries.
Recommendations & actions
Key recommendation
Action
Initiate an inclusive policy to ensure parent/ and eacher collaboration globally is the same across settings and disciplines. This can be a sure means to achieve similar educational outcomes for all and bridge the North–South gap as well as that which exists between PTC of children without disabilities to those with disabilities for effective collaboration. This should include measures geared towards ensuring strategies for forming and sustaining PTC are clearly spelt out.
Key recommendation
Action
Identify ways of building the capacity (training, workshops, seminars etc.) of both actors to collaborate (e.g. orientation on how to effectively collaborate, enlightening teachers of CwDs on the need to tap into the knowledge of parents of CwDs, working as partners in the collaboration, and to complement for each other’s lapses etc) and ensure that both parents and teachers of CwDs have reasonable and meaningful participation in the collaboration
Key recommendation
Action
Both the school and the home considers how they can strengthen parent/ teacher collaboration through the use of technological strategies (telephone conversations, emails, and other forms of web conferencing). These are possible ways to communicate with ease in their interactions, limiting the likelihood of the actors working as separate entities and increasing reliance on technology for effective communication between them. Due to the diversity and busy work schedules of some parents, schools will have to pay particular attention to the use of a multi-modal approach (home visits, parents supporting in the classroom as volunteers pending their availability, monitoring home learning activities and parent-teacher networking) to strengthen collaboration.
Collectively, the views of both parents and teachers of CwDs about their responsibilities towards education must be clearly outlined in reference to local conditions and context and the proposed universal framework to guide PTC. Each actor fulfils their role with a sense of responsibility (whether parent-focused, school-focused or partnership focused).
Key recommendation
Action
The school and education directorates should empower parents to contribute and participate in special education processes, whiles teachers’ skills are upgraded to fulfil the demands of the collaboration. Both teachers/parents should avail themselves to participate in professional development initiatives to show commitment to collaboration.
Governments could subsidies and facilitate smooth welfare cash transfers to ease the economic hardships on parents and take away burden of cost participating in assessment procedures and technological tools needed for collaboration.
Policy priorities
As a globally acknowledged phenomenon, the positive impact of parent–teacher collaboration in the education of children with disabilities cannot be underscored. Research has shown that collaboration between parents and teachers is a key factor in promoting academic success of children with disabilities and as well, very cost-effective. Consistently, educational reforms have tried to move parent–teacher collaboration from self-directed activities working on different accounts towards a more collaborative relationship where shared responsibilities and teamwork are emphasized. As many countries in the global north have worked to ensure parent–teacher collaboration is part of legal policies and mandates in their context, countries in the global south still have a lot to do in that regard. There is the need to ensure that, global educational trends/policies such as the inclusive education policy adequately creates the right condition to promote parent/teacher collaboration of children with disabilities. This policies must cover role construction of the actors involved to help them have a better view/understanding of their responsibilities towards their child’s education. This can be achieved through the adoption of the partnership focused approach (when parents and teachers work together and share responsibility for the child’s educational outcome) to collaboration. Holistically, this can be done if international agencies like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) work to harmonize the best practices from the policies of the global north into a universal one for use globally.
Conclusion
Parent-Teacher-collaboration have a lasting impact on a learners success in school, and has become an accepted attribute of an effective school. However, in the education of children with disabilities, parent-teacher collaboration is fraught with a double fold of widely reported challenges that needs attention if success is to be chalked. Actors should be ready to encourage and support each other in the interaction and education of children with disabilites, and promote the total development of children’s educational and developmental outcomes. Therefore, as major stakeholders, both parents and teachers of children with disabilites must work to build a good collaboration (accept each other’s knowledge of the collaboration, barriers/challenges they face as they collaborate as well as how they can promote an effective collaboration) essential and beneficial to the child and to them as actors in the collaboration.
Gaps & research needs
As an extensively researched area, reviews on parent/ teacher collaboration was not difficult to come by. Even so, most of this studies were limited to parents/teacher collaboration is relation to specific school subjects, the effect the various kinds of collaboration has on the learning of children and inclusive practices. A number focused on collaboration to support school attendance in the early years of education and on using parents/ teachers collaboration to check social behaviours in learners, much more evidence is needed on;
- Factors accounting for the difference in outcomes of parents/teachers collaboration for children with disabilities in the global north and the global south. - Factors influencing how both parents/ teachers of children with disabilities view their role descriptions - Technological dynamics and innovations in the collaboration of parents/teachers of children with disabilities
Acknowledgements
Peer Review: This brief has been reviewed by Liandrie Steffans, consultant at the Disability Evidence Portal, LSHTM and Onaiza Qureshi, Knowledge Exchange Officer, International Centre for Evidence in Disability, LSHTM.
Publication details: © London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, April 2023.
Suggested citation: Abu-Sadat Rabbi. Evidence Brief: What evidence is there for the impact of parents/ teachers collaboration?" Disability Evidence Portal, 2023.