Parent Perspectives on Special Education Services: How Do Schools Implement Team Decisions?

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine parents’ perspectives and experiences of special education, including the degree to which decisions about their child’s education were implemented as they had agreed upon with the school personnel. Additionally, a secondary purpose of this study was to understand how parents explain why school personnel do or do not implement elements of their child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). In this study, parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities described their experiences attempting to reach agreement with school personnel on decisions involving their child’s educational placement and special education services. Parents expressed a desire to be involved in decisions, and they described a desire to obtain inclusive educational placements for their children. Parents described varied experiences with the implementation of special education services. They also described both successes and concerns related to the special education services their child was receiving at school. Implications for special education policy, practice, and research are discussed from the perspective of supporting family involvement in the special education process

Toddler's self‐regulation strategies in a challenge context are nap‐dependent

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111763/1/jsr12260.pd

Parent identity and family-school partnerships: Animating diverse enactments for (special) education decision-making

Family-school partnerships between family members and school personnel can be successful as well as unproductive for parents who have children and youth with developmental disabilities. This qualitative study sought to capture parents’ identities as they negotiated family-school partnerships when making inclusive education decisions and discussing special education service-delivery options for their children and youth with developmental disabilities. Seventeen participants shared their personal narratives in interviews and focus groups. Data were thematically analyzed after an initial round of open-coding generated broad themes. Findings revealed the experiences parents have in partnering with schools span an identity spectrum, including: (a) victim, (b) advocate, (c) perseverer, (d) educator, (e) broker and negotiator, and (f) surrenderer. Implications for policy, practice, and research focus on parent identity and familyschool partnerships

Parents’ experiences in education decision-making for children and youth with disabilities

Families should be an active part of educational decision-making for their children and can be particularly influential in advocating for inclusion for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Yet, significant research has shown that parents do not feel schools effectively collaborate with them. We interviewed 19 parents of children with disabilities to investigate the ways they were included and excluded from educational decision-making, and how they decided on their children’s placement and services. Five themes emerged: parents’ exclusion from decision-making, parents’ independent efforts to shape their children’s educational services, parents’ decisions as a result of school and district factors, parents’ role changes to direct their children’s education, and discrepancies between beliefs and experiences of inclusion. Parents’ responses indicate that specific school structures and institutionalized procedures may regularly exclude parents from decision-making. Results have implications for parent-professional partnership during decision-making for students with disabilities and personnel preparation

Emotion Knowledge, Loneliness, Negative Social Experiences, and Internalizing Symptoms Among Low‐income Preschoolers

Children with poor emotion knowledge (EK) skills are at risk for externalizing problems; less is known about early internalizing behavior. We examined multiple facets of EK and social‐emotional experiences relevant for internalizing difficulties, including loneliness, victimization, and peer rejection, in Head Start preschoolers (N = 134; M = 60 months). Results based on multiple informants suggest that facets of EK are differentially related to negative social‐emotional experiences and internalizing behavior and that sex plays a moderating role. Behavioral EK was associated with self‐reported loneliness, victimization/rejection, and parent‐reported internalizing symptoms. Emotion recognition and expressive EK were related to self‐reported loneliness, and emotion situation knowledge was related to parent‐reported internalizing symptoms and negative peer nominations. Sex moderated many of these associations, suggesting that EK may operate differently for girls vs. boys in the preschool social context. Results are discussed with regard to the role of EK for social development and intervention implications.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110878/1/sode12083.pd

Associations between maternal depressive symptoms and child feeding practices in a cross-sectional study of low-income mothers and their young children

Background: Maternal depression may influence feeding practices important in determining child eating behaviors and weight. However, the association between maternal depressive symptoms and feeding practices has been inconsistent, and most prior studies used self-report questionnaires alone to characterize feeding. The purpose of this study was to identify feeding practices associated with maternal depressive symptoms using multiple methodologies, and to test the hypothesis that maternal depressive symptoms are associated with less responsive feeding practices. Methods: In this cross-sectional, observational study, participants (n = 295) included low-income mothers and their 4- to 8-year-old children. Maternal feeding practices were assessed via interviewer-administered questionnaires, semi-structured narrative interviews, and videotaped observations in home and laboratory settings. Maternal depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale (CES-D). Regression analyses examined associations between elevated depressive symptoms (CES-D score ≥16) and measures of maternal feeding practices, adjusting for: child sex, food fussiness, number of older siblings; and maternal age, body mass index (BMI), education, race/ethnicity, single parent status, perceived child weight, and concern about child weight. Results: Thirty-one percent of mothers reported depressive symptoms above the screening cutoff. Mothers with elevated depressive symptoms reported more pressuring of children to eat (β = 0.29; 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 0.03, 0.54) and more overall demandingness (β = 0.16; 95% CI: 0.03, 0.29), and expressed lower authority in child feeding during semi-structured narrative interview (Odds Ratio (OR) for low authority: 2.82; 95% CI: 1.55, 5.12). In homes of mothers with elevated depressive symptoms, the television was more likely audible during meals (OR: 1.91; 95% CI: 1.05, 3.48) and mothers were less likely to eat with children (OR: 0.48; 95% CI: 0.27, 0.85). There were no associations between maternal depressive symptoms and encouragement or discouragement of food in laboratory eating interactions. Conclusions: Mothers with elevated depressive symptoms demonstrated less responsive feeding practices than mothers with lower levels of depressive symptoms. These results suggest that screening for maternal depressive symptoms may be useful when counseling on healthy child feeding practices. Given inconsistencies across methodologies, future research should include multiple methods of characterizing feeding practices and direct comparisons of different methodologies

Emotional Expressiveness during Peer Conflicts: A Predictor of Social Maladjustment among High-Risk Preschoolers

Preschool boys' emotional displays during conflicts with mixed-sex peers were related to individual differences in peer sociometric status and teacher ratings of disruptive behavior. Participants were 60 4- to 5-year old boys from low-income families who were videotaped with a small group of classmates in a Head Start preschool classroom. Conflicts were identified and emotional displays were coded from videotape. Results indicated that conflicts were more negative in emotional tone at the end than at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, children tended to mirror each others' emotional displays at the end but not the beginning of the preschool year. In addition, gleeful taunting, a form of emotional aggression, more strongly predicted negative peer nominations and teacher ratings than anger, suggesting that anger may be a more socially accepted form of emotional expression during conflicts among preschool-age children. Implications and directions for future research and interventions are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44589/1/10802_2004_Article_225311.pd

Professional Characteristic Development of Occupational Therapy Students in Traditional vs. Hybrid Pathways

The development of professional characteristics is crucial to becoming a well-rounded, competent occupational therapist. An exploratory sequential mixed method design was used to determine if there was a difference in the growth of professional characteristics of students in a three-year entry-level Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD) program who attended a traditional on-campus program compared to a hybrid program. Ten second and third-year occupational therapy students from the traditional and hybrid pathways participated in a focus group related to cultivating professional characteristics. The themes that evolved from the focus group included: teamwork/team player, time management, communication, self-awareness, critical thinking, and leadership. The themes were then used to create survey questions related to the development of professional characteristics. Twenty first-year, 23 second-year, and 25 third-year students completed the survey. Twenty-seven of the 68 survey participants attended the program in the traditional pathway, and 41 of the 68 survey participants attended the hybrid pathway. Outcomes from the survey data suggest that there are significant differences in professional characteristics between traditional and hybrid students in the areas of listening (p-value = 0.024) and assertive communication (p-value = 0.003), in which traditional students rated their agreement of the development of these characteristics higher than the hybrid students. The results of this study emphasize the importance of professional occupational therapy education regardless of the delivery model (hybrid or traditional) to help mature professional characteristics in students and prepare them for clinical practice

Biobehavioral Indices of Emotion Regulation Relate to School Attitudes, Motivation, and Behavior Problems in a Low-Income Preschool Sample

Effective emotion regulation may promote resilience and preschool classroom adjustment by supporting adaptive peer interactions and engagement in learning activities. We investigated how hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) regulation, cardiac reactivity, and classroom emotion displays related to adjustment among low-income preschoolers attending Head Start. A total of 62 four-year-olds completed a laboratory session including a baseline soothing video; emotion-eliciting slides/video clips, and recovery. Salivary cortisol, heart rate, and vagal tone were measured throughout. Independent coders used handheld computers to observe classroom emotion expression/regulation. Teachers rated child motivation, persistence/attention, learning attitudes, and internalizing/externalizing symptoms. Results reveal associations between biobehavioral markers of regulatory capacity and early school adjustment.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73847/1/annals.1376.043.pd

Vital lines drawn from books: difficult feelings in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Are You My Mother?

This article examines the representation of a transnational archive of queer books in Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoirs Fun Home and Are You My Mother? for the insights it provides into role of reading in making sense of the often difficult “felt experiences” of lesbian life. In both memoirs, books serve an important narrative function in the portrayal of Alison’s lesbian identification and its complex emotional entanglements with the lives of parents who are trapped – killed even, in the case of the father – in the wastelands of patriarchy and heterosexual expectation. The article argues that in this complex family dynamic in which “sexual identity” itself is a problem and emotions remain largely unspoken, books act as fragile conduits of feelings, shaping familial relationships even as they allow Alison to contextualise her life in relation to historical events and social norms. Reading books allows her to understand the apparently U.S.-specific history of her family in relation to a wider queer history in the West