A B S T R A C T Parent participation is considered to be a vital component in the education of students with disabilities. Parents' roles in pivotal changes in special education—specifically, inclusion—are acknowledged, and their rights are protected in special education law. However, their perspectives are not always understood or considered in the decision-making process. In this study, parents of children with disabilities in South Africa and in a midwestern state of the United States participated in focus group discussions regarding inclusive education. The results indicated that parent perceptions, experiences, and barriers to effective family—school partnerships and parent advocacy were remarkably similar on the two continents. Implications and recommendations for preservice teacher education are discussed.

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Views of Inclusion A Comparative Study of Parents' Perceptions in South Africa and the United States

Parental involvement was a driving and decisive factor in the development of inclusive education worldwide. In South Africa parents also became the advocates of the inclusive education movement in ...

Parents’ Experiences of Their Rights in the Implementation of Inclusive Education in South Africa:

The development of sustainable collaborative partnerships between different role players within an inclusive education system seems to be a continuous challenge in South Africa. The focus of this research study was to understand how teachers view collaboration within an inclusive education system. Open-ended questionnaires were completed by 85 participating teachers and focus group interviews were employed with 24 educators. The findings indicate that educators still believe that they are not adequately trained and skilled to play an equal role in a collaborative partnership and prefer to rather refer learners experiencing barriers to learning to other support structures and professionals for support.

South African teachers' views of collaboration within an inclusive education system

Education policies tend to evoke mixed feelings: excitement amongst advocates of change or uncertainty and stress among teachers expected to implement them. Reactions to the Education White Paper 6: Special Needs Education — Building an Inclusive Education and Training System have been no different. Emanating from a PhD study, this article documents how inclusive education is progressing in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Informed by social constructivism and the systems theory, the study investigated teachers’ experiences and understandings of this policy statement in three primary schools in two districts. Data collected showed that teachers had limited experiences of inclusive education and limited understandings of what it entails in South Africa. As a result, most teachers felt inadequately prepared to implement it. The article concludes that the limited experiences and understandings result from, among other things, the inadequate and inappropriate professional development strategy used to disseminat...

The progress of inclusive education in South Africa: Teachers’ experiences in a selected district, KwaZulu-Natal

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1053451210389033

Getting Inclusion Right in South Africa

Inclusive Education as outlined in the Education White Paper 6 is a response to the widespread social, economic and political changes in South Africa, as well as a means of establishing a caring, humane and egalitarian society. The introduction of this policy will, however, require extensive changes in education, as the focus shifts from learners' adjustment to the demands of the system, to the system's capability to accommodate all learners' needs as inclusively as possible. This means that the collaborative effort of every role-player in developing the new system is critical. For the effective implementation of inclusive education, education legislation and policy stress the role and responsibility of parents, viewing them as integral partners in developing a more inclusive system, where decision-making and the responsibility for outcomes are shared. Parent-school partnerships that allow parents to become active collaborators rather than passive observers of their children's education should therefore b...

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Raine Pettipher

Papers

Developing inclusive school communities: voices of parents of children with disabilities