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Full-Text Articles in Education

What Kind Of School Would You Like For Your Children? Exploring Minority Mothers' Beliefs To Promote Home-School Partnerships, Cristina Gillanders, Marvin Mckinney, Sharon Ritchie Jan 2016

What Kind Of School Would You Like For Your Children? Exploring Minority Mothers' Beliefs To Promote Home-School Partnerships, Cristina Gillanders, Marvin Mckinney, Sharon Ritchie

Cristina Gillanders

The purpose of this article is to describe an approach that can be used by schools to understand low income minority parents' goals for the education of their children and to design responsive strategies to support these goals. Focus groups of minority mothers with low income levels are conducted and the information collected is used by schools for promoting dialogue and self-reflection to potentially improve the quality of the school's home-school partnerships. The article includes examples of information collected through focus groups with two groups of mothers: Latina and African-American. Findings from the focus groups are used to design home-school …


Parents And Public Schools: The Experiences Of Four Mexican Immigrant Families, Nancy Commins Oct 2015

Parents And Public Schools: The Experiences Of Four Mexican Immigrant Families, Nancy Commins

Nancy L. Commins

Relates the results of a study of four Mexican-American immigrant families and the public school system. Describes communication problems between these families and schools and special fears and barriers that immigrants experience. Interviews found that parents were interested in their children's education but unsure how to contribute.


Family Portraits: Past And Present Representations Of Parents In Special Education Text Books, Dianne L. Ferguson, Philip M. Ferguson, Joanne Kim, Corrine Li Jun 2015

Family Portraits: Past And Present Representations Of Parents In Special Education Text Books, Dianne L. Ferguson, Philip M. Ferguson, Joanne Kim, Corrine Li

Philip M. Ferguson

This paper analyses the descriptions of families of children with disabilities as contained in introductory special education texts over the last 50 years. These text books are typically used in pre-service teacher education courses as surveys of the education of ‘exceptional children’. The textbooks reflect the mainstream professional assumptions of the era about topics such as disability, special education, inclusion, and family/school linkages. However, they also shape the assumptions of the next generation of educators about these same topics. The paper summarises the results of a qualitative document analysis of a sample of these textbooks from two different eras. The …


Family Portraits: Past And Present Representations Of Parents In Special Education Text Books, Dianne L. Ferguson, Philip M. Ferguson, Joanne Kim, Corrine Li Jan 2013

Family Portraits: Past And Present Representations Of Parents In Special Education Text Books, Dianne L. Ferguson, Philip M. Ferguson, Joanne Kim, Corrine Li

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This paper analyses the descriptions of families of children with disabilities as contained in introductory special education texts over the last 50 years. These text books are typically used in pre-service teacher education courses as surveys of the education of ‘exceptional children’. The textbooks reflect the mainstream professional assumptions of the era about topics such as disability, special education, inclusion, and family/school linkages. However, they also shape the assumptions of the next generation of educators about these same topics. The paper summarises the results of a qualitative document analysis of a sample of these textbooks from two different eras. The …