Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies: Home

Abstract:
This summative research study examined the findings from four studies previously conducted by the authors, which explored a teacher preparation collaborative model focusing on parent/professional partnerships. Parents of children with disabilities were taught together with pre-service teachers during four academic years (2006-2010). The study was designed to determine if attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions of the participants changed as a result of their participation in the course. Data was initially collected through focus groups conducted before the course began and at the course completion. Pre-service teacher responses and parent responses were reported in separate previous articles. This summative study compared all response themes from the previous pre-service teacher studies with parents' themes to explore differences and similarities across these groups. Findings indicated striking similarities among the responses of both groups with the salient feature in the data being the notion of change. Specifically, both groups were particularly vocal about the change in their perceptions of each other, their preconceived negative notions, and change in knowledge of collaborative partnerships. As a result of these changes, we learned that this model of teacher preparation is effective for changing parent and teacher attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions about working together as a team

Keywords: teacher preparation, collaboration, parent/professional partnership.

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