Special educational needs and parental involvement in school

Abstract Parental involvement in school emerges as a multifaceted construct that encompasses different contexts and can be presented in various formats [1, 2, 3]. There seems to be a consensus in the scientific literature as to its benefits in the development of the child with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and family [4, 5, 6, 7] as well as for the teacher’s work and the school context [8, 9]. Within the inclusive approach, the model of collaboration and partnership of parental involvement is a theoretical framework that perceives the potential of parental skills within an educational intent for the child’s development [10, 11, 12, 13]. In the same vein, national and international legislation assign a central role to parents in protecting the educational interests of children as decision-makers and participants in the educational process [14, 15, 16, 8]. This study on parental involvement in inclusive settings is part of a broader line of research whose goal is to understand the influence of social support in parental functioning [6, 11, 14]. It has been developed according a non-experimental and correlational plan. We define the following aims: i) to compare the perceptions of parents and teachers about parental involvement in school; ii) to analyse the relationship between the perspectives of parents of children with and without SEN, regular education teachers and special education teachers; iii) to analyse the predictor factors of parental involvement in school. For this, we formed two samples of parents and teachers, consisting of 256 parents (of children with and without special education needs) and 107 teachers (regular and special education) respectively. Data were collected in six school clusters and support institutions for disabled children on the Municipality of Viseu (Portugal). The comparative analysis of the perceptions of parental involvement reveals that the largest divergence occurs between regular teachers and parents of children with SEN. In contrast, the perceptions of special education teachers and parents of children with disabilities do not show differences. We found significant differences between the two types of teachers about parental involvement [14, 15]. The results show that social support and the socioeconomic status are predictors of parental involvement in school [6, 14]. The reflections on the data obtained are shown against the backdrop of the conceptual and socio-legal changes of the national context [8, 14] and adopt the inclusive paradigm as a reference in the analysis [8, 16]. We also present a number of strategies to promote parental involvement and participation in educational contexts [11, 12, 15].