In this blog entry Nick Hodge and Katherine Runswick-Cole reflect on some of the factors that might lead to a lack of understanding between practitioners and parents\/carers\u00a0 of children with Special Educational Needs.<\/p>\n
Inspired by #festABLE<\/a> tweets, a blog about dealing with difficult parents of children with SEND<\/a> \u00a0and a very kind mention in Jarlath O\u2019Brien\u2019s blog<\/a>, we decided to reflect on the issue of parent-professional partnership drawing from our recent book chapter:<\/p>\n Hodge, N. and Runswick-Cole, K. (2017) \u2018You Say, I hear\u2019: understanding parent-professional partnerships in special education. In Runswick-Cole, K., Curran, T. and Liddiard, K. (eds) (2017) Palgrave Handbook of Disabled Children\u2019s Childhood Studies, <\/em>Basingstoke: Palgrave.*<\/p>\n We have long been interested in parent-professional relationships in the often conflict ridden world of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).\u00a0 From our different subject positions as teacher and parent of a child labeled with SEND, we have had numerous conversations about why it is so difficult for teachers and parents\/carers to communicate.\u00a0 From our work in universities with teachers and parents, we know that, as much as it may feel like this at times, parent-professional conflict is not simply produced by \u2018bad\u2019 teachers and \u2018troublesome\u2019 parents.\u00a0 In particular, we reject ways of representing certain types of parents or teachers in negative ways<\/a>.\u00a0 We see little value to such an approach.<\/p>\n We know that demands are made on teachers and on parents in systems <\/em>that make up the legislation, the paperwork, attitudinal and structural barriers to the inclusion of children labeled with SEND.\u00a0 In the chapter, we drew on Lipsky (1971)<\/a>\u2019s work on ‘street-level bureaucracy’ or, the paperwork and other demands, to understand how teachers and parents are caught up by the need to meet the demands of the system as much as the demands of the child.<\/p>\n We think that it is this current SEND system that inevitably promotes lack of empathy between teachers and parents in their communications, working against the possibility of productive parent-professional partnerships.<\/p>\n In the chapter, we explored some examples where there seems to be an empathy gap between teacher and parent, describing parents\u2019 reactions to what teachers said to them.<\/p>\n You say \u2026 I hear \u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n