Abstract

 

In special education, partnership with parents has emerged as an important ingredient in providing quality services to students with disabilities.  Parental partnerships potentially provide greater access to multiple perspectives, support systems, and resources to improve educational services and outcomes of students with disabilities. The education philosophy of Malaysia is that education is the right of all children and that educational opportunities must be extended to children with disabilities. However In 2009, Malaysia presented a national report which revealed barriers to inclusive education including the problem of effective home-school communication and recommended that more effective partnerships between parents and schools be implemented. The research study reported in this paper investigated parent partnership in the education of children with learning disabilities in inclusive classes in Malaysia. A contrastive case study approach was used to look at partnership in two schools, based on interviews with parents, mainstream teachers and specialist teachers. The study found strong relationships between parents and specialist teachers but weak partnerships between mainstream and specialist teachers. This had the potential to limit parents’ access to information about the mainstream curriculum and thus jeopardize the goals of inclusive education.

 

 

Keywords: parent partnership, home-school relationship, inclusive education, special education, Malaysia