Parental involvement in individual education planning for students with mental disabilities : a Lithuanian experience

Abstract

This article explores Lithuanian research on parental involvement in the education of their children with mental disabilities through individual education planning. The authors also more generally discuss parental involvement in child education issues in Lithuania. Individual education planning is described as a means for developing parental involvement in their children’s education and for creating equal cooperation of all participants. The Bientraitance concept (Detraux, 2002; Detraux & Di Duca, 2006) is introduced to conceptualize the research intervention in a special education school. Participatory action research was carried out with the aim of constructing coherence between parents and professionals through confrontation and negotiation of different needs and interests, identification and exploitation of different resources to enable achievement of the negotiated objectives, elaboration of an action plan, and implementation of that plan. The research results show that individual education planning enables all participants to create common understanding of the objectives, develop mutual cognition, actualize internal resources, create new institutional culture, legitimate parental expectations, and open up parents and educators to new challenges.