Advocating and Empowering Diverse Families of Students With Disabilities Through Meaningful Engagement

Book excerpt: Family engagement varies in education literature and often includes collaboration, involvement, and partnership. The term “family in schools” has changed to include extended family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, and others who interact with the child, such as step-parents, caregivers, and neighbors. Family engagement is a practice, an interactive process, and a goal-oriented relationship involving professionals and families, allowing families to share their perspectives about their children, their learning, and their customs to improve their children's education. Advocating and Empowering Diverse Families of Students With Disabilities Through Meaningful Engagement provides the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective engagements of all families with children in special education. With recent changes in student population diversity among those enrolling in special education, the diversity of family compositions in the school system is also evolving. Covering topics such as laws and legal infrastructure, special education, and family engagement, this book is ideal for classroom teachers, administrators, researchers, and students in education programs.