Supervisors info:
Παπαδιαμαντάκη Παναγιώτα, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Κοινωνικής και Εκπαιδευτικής Πολιτικής , Πανεπιστήμιο Πελοποννήσου
Παπασταθόπουλος Ευστάθιος, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Φιλισοφίας, Παιδαγωγικής και Ψυχολογίας, Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων
Παπαδοπούλου Καλλιρρόη, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα ΤΕΑΠΗ, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Summary:
This paper focuses on parents’ experiential impact, in order to explore their advocative role in relation to their economic and educational level. In particular, it focuses on investigating and analyzing the concept of advocacy, which is meant to be the protection of children's rights from their parents. In this paper, parental advocacy is being considered in the context of the educational process, in which it attempts to ensure equal participation and treatment of all pupils, without exception. Alongside, it sets the potential concerns and proposals that result from this research. A qualitative study was carried out on a sample of nineteen (19) parents whose children were diagnosed with dyslexia by an institutional assessment body, in one of the four Regions of the Municipality of Attica, according to the Legislation on Special Needs Education and Training (Law 3699/2008).
The research was based on the thematic analysis of the interview content, utilizing the type of semi-structured interview. The concept of parental advocacy was established, along with the factors, furthermore, the conditions that form the parental role and action were analyzed.
The prominent view establishes that parental advocacy is a basic value, as a part of parental obligations. Some of the parents questioned, consider parental advocacy as a means of exercising pressure to the provided educational system and a way of administrating the diagnosis. On the other hand, a minor percentage supports that it is exclusively a school community project.
However, the experience of even one individual parent verify that the exercise of parental advocacy is a unique opportunity for equal cooperation with education providers, in accordance with the learning difficulties that the student faces.
Parents’ educational and economical status seems to strengthen their defensive role, without being the basic starting point. The exercise of parental advocacy is determined by the degree of parents’ awareness of their role, the type of the diagnosis and most of all, by the cooperative conditions with the educators. The entire sample interviewed reports elements of hostility, related to the non-recognition of student’s educational rights based on the diagnosis, and elements of discrimination in teaching modes. Even more, it focuses on practices related to the clinical-medicine approach of disability, conflicting to their struggle, which seems to enforce the idea of inclusion in the learning process.
Finally, the diversity in the form and ways of exercising parental advocacy is recorded, so as to ensure multiple support. On the whole, parents focus on the student’s self-defense and the family members’ mutual support. It seems that they stay alert, demanding constant update, in order to support their struggle for schools with no exclusion for the children with special educational needs.
Keywords:
Parental Advocacy, Integration, Diversity, Discrimination, Inclusive Education, Self-defense
