TITLE:
Barriers to Parental Involvement in the Education of Learners with Intellectual Disabilities
AUTHORS:
Josephine Oranga, Enock Obuba, Florence J. Boinett
KEYWORDS:
Barriers, Strategies of Intervention, Parental Education, Intellectual Disabilities, Special Needs Education
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.2,
February
28,
2022
ABSTRACT: This study is an in-depth qualitative literature review on the barriers
to parental involvement in the education of learners with intellectual
disabilities. The review adopted Paulo Freire’s theory in an attempt to
illustrate the significant role that parents
are supposed to play in the education of their children with intellectual
disabilities. The findings revealed that the barriers to enhanced parental
involvement in the education of learners with intellectual disabilities
include: low level of parental education, teachers’ negative attitude towards
both the affected learners and their parents, economic constraints,
stigmatization of intellectual disabilities, lack of support, parental
stress/depression, lack of knowledge and skills, the number of siblings in the
family, mismatched expectations (between parents and teachers), absence of
legal/policy frameworks on parental involvement, absence of clear channels of
communication between parents and school personnel and, the severity of the
child’s disability. As a result of the findings, some suggestions to enhance
parental involvement in the education of learners with intellectual
disabilities are given, these include: parental education, economic
emancipation of the parents, change of
teachers’ attitude, specialized training for all persons handling learners with
intellectual disability, establishment of positive home-school working
relationships, proper legislation on handling people with disabilities,
civic education on human rights and development of a policy framework to guide
school-home collaborations.