Spurred on by her own experience as a parent in the school system, former teacher Dr Rachel Leslie from the University of Southern Queensland has teased apart what she suggests is a highly problematic parent-school partnership in need of attention.
Canvassing the insights of ten Australian parents of dyslexic children in primary schools, the education lecturer and researcher says a clear thread emerged from the interviews.
“A lot of parents described how they had to initiate conversations and their contributions were very much just dismissed or not valued,” Leslie tells EducationHQ.
“And that there was a problem with power dynamics, (in) that teachers saw themselves as the experts and parents having any level of knowledge was a challenge.
“But that’s not what the intention of the parents was. The parents weren’t going in there to challenge teachers. Their goal was just to help their child.
“And so that was really difficult, I think, for a lot of teachers to see.”
Leslie is well aware that her commentary and findings may come across as a criticism of teachers, but this is absolutely not the objective, she is quick to emphasise.
Teachers are working under incredible pressures and in complex classroom environments, she acknowledges.
And this is why it’s a shame that parents’ ‘allyship’ with their dyslexic child might be seen as something to close off rather than draw upon, she suggests.
“I wonder [if it’s] because teachers don’t necessarily get taught about dyslexia in their initial teacher education?
“Did they find it quite confronting to be working with essentially a layperson, a non-expert, who had greater knowledge than they did?”
One parent in the study said while some teachers had declared they knew little about dyslexia and were keen to deepen their knowledge via external training, others were resistant to learn.
“There’s a type of teacher who needs to appear like they know all the answers, like an expert, and they’re the ones that get defensive,” she elaborated.
Parents in Leslie’s study saw failings in the system to best support their child, prompting them to assume a kind of advocacy role that was far more intense than that played by other parents.
“…parents put in an incredible amount of effort to learn about dyslexia, to learn about their child’s diagnosis, what it means for them, but also what are the best intervention approaches,” the researcher explains.
“Often these parents do not come from an education background, but they invest an awful lot of time and money learning about what are the best approaches to help their child learn.
“So, they absolutely become experts in dyslexia, but also in educating children with dyslexia…”
But this expertise was often not welcomed by the school, the study found.
Five parents gave examples of times when they had tried to share information with their child’s school in order to help influence decision making, noting they had tried several ways to share information.
“I’ve gone in so many times and politely said things and even backed it up with evidence and resources to help them understand. I’m still not getting some of the [adjustments],” one said.
Another “appeared resigned” to the fact that information she gave her child’s teacher and other staff seemed to be discarded, saying she was “sure it goes straight in the bin”.
Four participants felt that some teachers were unable or unwilling to form partnerships with external providers, such as speech therapists. Teachers’ mounting workload was identified as a barrier here, the study found.
“I’m not going to do that. I don’t have time for that,” one teacher was reported to have said.
Dr Rachel Leslie hopes her research will draw attention to the barriers that hinder the partnerships between schools and parents of children with learning disabilities.
The emotional toll on these parents was substantial, Leslie flags. As when parent-school partnerships were out of alignment, uncomfortable tensions grew.
“Many did speak about the significant level of frustration, and it was frustration in not being able to have that same goal.
“They just wanted to help their kid, and they knew that that was the teacher’s goal as well, but it was not being able to work on that together and collaboratively (that was the point of frustration).”
Exhaustion, burnout and isolation were also experienced by parents who felt the school was not responsive to their requests for modification or other supports.
“[And there was] lots of questioning themselves, you know, ‘have we done the right thing?’
“And there was definitely a loss of faith in the system as well,” Leslie says.
Yet while parents might hold the expertise, they did not necessarily wish to be perceived as having a position of knowledge or power above their child’s teacher, the researcher adds.
“I’ve become not mum anymore, (but) tutor as well. I continually help him,” one parent shared in the study. Another expressed their wish for the school to take back responsibility for supporting the needs of their child.
The fraught school-parent partnerships that participants described stands at odds with federal and state policies and frameworks “where we talk about how we should be inviting parents in to have an equal say at the table”, Leslie argues.
Some parents said they were seen to be ‘pushy’ or ‘difficult’ by teachers and other parents as a consequence of trying to work with schools to support their child.
“I think most of the teachers go running when they see me,” one admitted.
Leslie hopes her research will draw attention to the barriers – be they of policy, practice or ‘unconscious attitudes’ – that hinder the partnerships between schools and parents of children with disabilities.
“It was about telling that shared experience, and hopefully highlighting some of the ways that the parental expertise could be valued,” she says.
“It’s definitely not, and I don’t want [the study] to come across as, ‘teachers aren’t doing their job’, because I don’t think it’s that.
“I think there’s lots of cultural issues here – there’s a very big divide between (schools and parents)…”
With the pressures bearing down on schools and the huge expectations placed on teachers, schools have tended to “become a fortress” as a means of survival in the current system, Leslie proposes.
“‘We’re just going to lock things down. We’re going to do what we can to reduce our circle of control’, and when parents try to come into that, well, they’re an unknown, so [schools might be] very apprehensive.
“Maybe, hopefully, this research reassures teachers that parents just want the best for their kids and that they’re a really good source of knowledge and information.”
