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September 2012 Family Engagement and Children with Disabilities: A Resource Guide for Educators and Parents Harvard Family Research Project, Jamie Ferrel Download a PDF of this publication (71 kb)

FINE Newsletter, Volume IV, Issue 3
Issue Topic: Facilitating Continuous Family Engagement

Resources and Research from Harvard Family Research Project

All students benefit from family engagement in their education, but children with disabilities often require a greater degree of parental involvement and advocacy than their peers without disabilities in order to be assured of receiving the same level of instruction as the general student population. In addition, special education teachers and parents of students with disabilities often face a competing set of demands that can make it difficult to develop positive home–school partnerships.

We compiled this resource guide to help parents and special educators establish a comfortable and effective partnership in service of promoting successful outcomes for children with disabilities. We highlight research reports, journal articles, examples of best practices, and tools that suggest methods for developing productive collaborations so that educators and families can, together, ensure better services for children in their care.

The resources in this guide are grouped into the following categories, which reflect common areas of focus that concern families and educators while striving to meet the needs of children with disabilities:

• Families as advocates
• Family roles in assessment and intervention
• Families as partners in student learning

Within each category, educators will find a selected list of resources that can guide their work with families of children with disabilities, and families will find resources to help them ensure due process and positive educational experiences for their children with special needs.

This resource is part of the September 2012 FINE Newsletter. The FINE Newsletter shares the newest and best family involvement research and resources from Harvard Family Research Project and other field leaders. To access the archive of past issues, please visit www.hfrp.org/FINENewsletter.