Improving Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives on Family Involvement in Teaching Children With Special Needs

Abstract

This study examines preservice teachers’ perspectives on family involvement in special education and effective teaching methods for delivering family-involvement content. Eighty-three preservice teachers provided data on pre- and postadministrations of a questionnaire. The effectiveness of two methods, a video and a guest speaker, in delivering curriculum concerning family involvement was compared. The results indicated that the participants perceived family involvement as relatively important as measured by the preadministration survey. The overall response mean values measured by two postadministrations increased after students were exposed to the course content on family involvement. Results also indicate that the two teaching methods equally contributed to improving preservice teacher knowledge. Implications for teacher education on the importance of family involvement are presented.