ABSTRACT
Public education and the justice system seem to be the only venues wherein humans receive critical information affecting themselves or loved ones in the presence of an audience and they are expected to understand and accept this information which has life altering consequences. This chapter discusses parents’ perceptions of special education meetings and stressors that may adversely influence the parents’ ability to process feedback content given the inherent limitations of short-term working memory, as discussed in the previous chapter. Characteristics that may modulate parents’ ability to understand and accept the evaluation results, such as their history of interaction with the public school, perceptions of self, and perceptions of the professional are highlighted. Afterwards, the concepts of consumerism and anomie are introduced to further help practitioners conceptualize parents’ degree of need at the time of the feedback meeting. The chapter concludes by discussing structural components of the Feedback Model that help to alleviate parents’ degree of need at the feedback meeting.
