ERIC Number: EJ689609
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 18
Abstractor: Author
Reference Count: 0
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0002-4805
Parental Vigilance and the Discursive Construction of Local School Policy
Foster, Leanne
Alberta Journal of Educational Research, v50 n2 p151-168 Sum 2004
This article examines how a small group of high-socioeconomic status (high-SES) parents organized community opposition to the integration of a special-needs student into a grade 3 classroom in an urban elementary school in Ontario. Using data gathered in a participant observation study, this article shows how parents came to believe that existing special education policy placed the individual needs of the special education student over the needs of the collective. It explicates parents' subsequent efforts to enter into a social discursive process to challenge the policy and ultimately co-construct unofficial integration guidelines specific to the local school. In forcing the school board to explicate special education policy and practice, the parents underscored the nature of schools as contested sites of policy negotiation and established themselves as players in the policy development arena. Furthermore, this article highlights the importance of both history and local context in policy development and implementation and suggests that special education initiatives are best conceptualized as nested in local communities. The article concludes with a suggestion for future research on special education policy and community responses to integration.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Grade 3, School Policy, Boards of Education, Participant Observation, Special Education, Parent School Relationship, School Community Relationship
Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G2G5, Canada. Tel: 780-492-7941; Fax: 780-492-0236.
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Grade 3
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: N/A

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