Encouraging Active Parent Participation in IEP Team Meetings

Team Culture Let’s explore team attitudes and practices and the potential effect of the behavior of team members on active parent participation in decision making. Though all IEP teams come together for the purpose of developing an IEP, team culture usually dictates the process by which the meeting takes place (by culture, we mean the attitudes and beliefs that are valued by a particular team). Among other attributes, teams demonstrate their culture in the following ways: • The procedure by which people share information. • Who speaks at meetings. • How influential their perspective is in making decisions. • The specific recommendations people make. • The expressed beliefs about instructional strategies and their effectiveness. For example, one professional may serve as meeting facilitator and dominate the discussion, whereas on other teams, all members may actively participate in discussions. Some teams may be quick to recommend a particular instructional strategy or placement, and others may be reluctant to do so. Team culture dictates the ease or difficulty with which parents gain acceptance as team members (Briggs, 1997). Some teams, for example, may encourage parent participation throughout the meeting, whereas others may encourage such participation only at the end. Further, team culture may affect parent participation by the way the team strucNow answer thes e questions hones tly: