Immigrant, Bilingual Parents of Students With Disabilities: Positive Perceptions and Supportive Dialogue

Parent-professional partnerships are essential for meaningful and effective inclusion of students with disabilities. Research indicates that partnerships with immigrant, bilingual parents can be challenging due in part to unrecognized parent skills and educators’ own everyday uses of English that can marginalize parents during individualized education program (IEP) meetings. However, teachers can reflect on and improve their assumptions about parents’ as well as use supportive dialogue during IEP meetings to support inclusion for students with disabilities who are learning English.