What are five barriers to family and professional collaboration? How can professionals overcome these barriers and increase parental participation?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will include 5 of the following barriers: 
• Parents may have had negative experiences when they were in school, so they may be reluctant to come to school and are uncomfortable interacting with school professionals.
• Some parents who live in poverty or who have come to the United States from another country may view educators as authority figures to whom they must listen. 
• Parents may encounter logistical problems in getting to school for meetings and conferences
• Some parents are confronted with language barriers in schools and misunderstandings that arise from cultural differences.
• Schools may not make parents feel welcome. 
• If parents' beliefs or actions conflict with those of school professionals, some educators conclude these parents are not good parents or that they do not care, and so they may make only minimal effort to interact with them.
• Some educators are intimidated by parents, particularly those who are knowledgeable about special education and who insist on particular programs or services or who have obtained legal counsel.
• Communication from school to home may focus on negatives about the child rather than balancing those with positives.
• Professionals and parents may develop stereotypes of each other, and they may act on those stereotypes instead of on objective information.
Strategies to encourage parent involvement include working to understand families' perspectives, recognizing that collaboration is not the goal in all parent interactions, addressing cultural differences, avoiding jargon, asking questions that encourage parents to provide their perspective.