ABSTRACT
Teachers are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of individual students with behavioural and learning difficulties, especially when they come from different cultural backgrounds from those of their students. It is even more difficult when they try to meet students’ needs independently of parents and caregivers in their school communities. Parents are finding it more and more stressful and frustrating to be held responsible for their children’s behaviour and learning at school when they have neither the authority nor the strategies to intervene at school (Glynn, Fairweather & Donald, 1992). Parent involvement in their children’s education more frequently embodies parents participating either in fund-raising, clerical assistance and other teacher-support activities or, alternatively, participating as elected representatives on school Boards of Trustees. Although important and worthwhile, these forms of participation do not provide an effective means of sharing information about the behaviour and learning of individual students. They do not provide the means for parents and teachers to co-operate and collaborate and to reinforce and build on learning that occurs in both home and school settings.
