Critical Issues in Research on Families
Family involvement in the education of children in the United States has emerged in recent years as of paramount concern to policymakers seeking to improve the quality of public education. In special education, concern about opportunities for family involvement was formalized in the original language of the Education of the Handicapped Act, extended in the early childhood education amendments, and strengthened most recently with the 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which further details the rights, as well as the responsibilities, of families of students with disabilities who are eligible for special education. However, despite the obvious intuitive appeal and growing support for the idea that family involvement leads to better student performance, we know relatively little about the process of facilitating family involvement and less still about how improved relationships between family members of students with disabilities and professionals might affect either student well-being or family functioning. Nor have we studied the extent to which increased family involvement in a child’s education leads to better educational outcomes. In many respects, the answers to such queries turn on a far more fundamental question: What is “family”? Societal changes in the latter half of the 20th century dramatically altered the ways in which the family has been conceptualized by researchers, and it is only recently that our theoretical approaches have meaningfully transcended the 1950s stereotype of the nuclear family. Brinker (1992) cautioned the professional community against developing and implementing service models that fail to reflect the changing nature of the family, but the reality of practice as reflected in this special series suggests we have not adequately heeded that advice. The complexity and diversity of family systems at the close of the century is abundantly clear throughout the contributions to this special series. It is reflected in a newfound research emphasis on cultural diversity and multiple environmental challenges as well as in the increasing importance attached to families’ interpretation of their needs and experiences. There is an emerging consensus that the answer to the question “what is family?” rests, as it always has, with families themselves. Collectively, these four articles on families’ involvement in their children’s learning and education offer a synthesis across a broad span of family-related literature in special education and related fields. They provide interpretive reviews and integration of four interrelated topics: historical perspective on parental reactions to having a child with a disability, trends and issues in serving culturally diverse families of children with disabilities, family-centered practices from early intervention through secondary school, and pragmatic directions for research on families of children with disabilities. The first article, by Phil Ferguson, offers a quick and enlightening history of professional interpretations of families with children who have disabilities. Ferguson provides a useful conceptual matrix for understanding how parental reactions to having a child with a disability have been characterized at different points in time. His article traces the evolution and value of an adaptational context for understanding parental reactions (i.e., viewing families as adaptive, evolving, and supported in various ways and degrees). Finally, it emphasizes the lack of direct accounts from parents and other family members and directs us to attend especially to cultural and generational considerations in future research. The second article, by Beth Harry, presents a thorough analysis of trends and issues in serving culturally diverse families of children with disabilities. Harry discusses barriers such as professional ethnocentrism and the way in which disability as a “master status” can obscure understanding the needs of ethnic minorities with disabilities. Harry synthesizes findings from cross-cultural studies with special emphasis on the utility of an ecocultural framework. She offers a cogent analysis of the roles of culture and ethnicity in parental participation and family coping styles, with an effective application of the ABCX model of family stress and coping related to the latter. Finally, she provides a comprehensive review of program evaluation literature related to early intervention programs that serve culturally diverse families. The third article, by Carl Dunst, reviews studies of family-centered practices from early intervention through secondary school. Dunst presents a useful framework for organizing evidence regarding parents’ participation in their Critical Issues in Research on Families: Introduction to the Special Issue