School-Parent Collaborations in Indigenous Communities

Poverty. Lack of social support. Limited access to education. High risk for health problems. Indigenous communities face an inordinate number of hardships. But when children have special needs, these problems multiply exponentially, making existing difficulties considerably worse.

School-Parent Collaborations in Indigenous Communities: Providing Services for Children with Disabilities begins with an in-depth overview of indigenous experience and psychology, and situates disabilities within the contexts of indigenous communities and education services. The pilot study at the core of the book, conducted among the Bedouins of southern Israel, shows this knowledge in action as special education personnel engage parents in interventions for their children. Going beyond facile concepts of cultural sensitivity, the model recasts professionals as cultural mediators between school and family. This practice-oriented information has the potential to improve not only the well-being of children and families, but of the greater community as well.

Featured in the coverage:

• Unique characteristics of indigenous communities and children with disabilities.
• Psychological models of reactions to disability.
• Benefits of multidisciplinary teams.
• Factors affecting collaboration between indigenous parents of children with disabilities and school professionals.
• Core principles of indigenously attuned collaboration.
• An extended case study on collaboration between parents of children with disabilities and school professionals in a Bedouin community.

School-Parent Collaborations in Indigenous Communities is a breakthrough resource for researchers, graduate students, and professionals working with special needs children in child and school psychology, international and comparative education, social work, cross-cultural psychology, public health, and educational psychology.

Dr. Iris Manor-Binyamini‏ is a Lecturer and a senior faculty member of the Department of Special Education at the University of Haifa in Israel. Her academic interests include special education in the Bedouin community in Israel, inter- and intra-community comparisons of the coping styles and strategies used by parents and siblings of adults with various disabilities and from different minority communities in Israel (the Bedouin, Druze, and Ultraorthodox Jewish communities), and the collaboration within multi-disciplinary teams in special education schools, as well as the collaboration between these teams and the parents of children with disabilities.

One of her recent publications, Parental Coping with Developmental Disorders in Adolescents within the Ultraorthodox Jewish   Community in Israel,  published in 2012 in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, was recognized by the Psychology Progress team as a Key Research Article in Psychology.

Dr. Manor-Binyamini‏ has written extensively on the Psychology of the Bedouin Community, including a  comprehensive research evaluation report: Assessing a Multidisciplinary Training Program for Professionals Working with Children with Special Needs in the Bedouin Community.