Importance of Parental Involvement to Meet the Special Needs of their Children with Disabilities in Regular Schools

Abstract

Inclusive education for special needs students is an important component of their inclusion into society. Despite the other conditions that school must create, in order to fulfill the rights for education of children with disabilities, the role of parental engagement is crucial to realize inclusive education. The Law on Pre University Education in the Republic of Albania has reinforced the importance of parental involvement in order to ensure the progress of education for students with disabilities. The fundamental aim of this study was to evaluate the level of parental involvement of 32 parents of special need children, from seven different schools of Korça region. To realize this study is used the snowball sampling method, according to which the first group of interviewed parents recruits other parents to be part of it. The qualitative method was used to analyze the data gathered from this study. The main research questions were: How does the school involve parents in school life? Are the parents satisfied with the special needs assessment procedure? How much are they represented in the school structures and do they feel part of decision - making process? As a conclusion, in practice parents were not involved enough into the school life in order to ensure the inclusion of their children within the regular education system. Parental involvement in school takes a significant sense in terms of achieving inclusive education for their children with disabilities, who could not raise the voice to protect their own rights.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n1p147