Concerns of Parents and Teachers of Children with Autism in Elementary School

Background: Numerous conceptual articles attest to the importance of parents and teachers openly communicating about their concerns regarding their children and coming to a consensus on which are the most important to address and how to address them. For children with autism, establishing and maintaining a collaborative partnership between families and schools has been encouraged on theoretical grounds, but rarely operationalized. The limited research in this area suggests that teachers and parents of children with autism may not collaborate to the extent warranted. Barriers to effective partnerships may include a lack of agreement about children’s concerns, an inability to communicate about these concerns, or both.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to examine whether parents and teachers agree about their concerns for elementary children with autism and 2) to examine whose concern is discussed when these parents and teachers are observed communicating with each other.

Methods: Participants were 39 parent-teacher dyads of children with autism in kindergarten-through-fifth grade autism support classrooms. Each parent and teacher was interviewed separately about their concerns and then observed together in a discussion about the child.

Results: Parents’ primary concerns involved deficits in social interaction (28%), problem behavior (26%), and academics (18%). Teachers’ primary concerns were about problem behaviors (31%), followed by an equal concern for deficits in social interaction (18%) and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behaviors (18%). Parents’ secondary concerns involved problem behavior (36%), academics (18%) and social interaction (15%). Teachers had an equal secondary concern for deficits in social interaction (26%) and problem behavior (26%), followed by academics (20%). When given an opportunity to communicate their concerns, 49% of the parent-teacher dyads discussed problems that neither reported as their primary concern, and 59% discussed problems neither reported as their secondary concern.

Conclusions: Our results indicated that parents and teachers generally agreed about their concerns when asked to report on multiple concerns. However, when they talked with each other, parent-teacher dyads discussed concerns that neither reported previously. Our findings are inconsistent with prior investigations that have shown that parents and teachers do not share the same concerns.  It is likely that our findings differ from previous research because we asked parents and teachers to report on multiple concerns, whereas prior studies have only focused on one main concern. There are at least three possible reasons why parents and teachers may have discussed neither person’s concerns. First, parents and teachers may not have been comfortable with each other because of a potential adversarial relationship. Second, parents and teachers may not know how to effectively negotiate with each other in choosing a topic of concern. It is also possible that parents and teachers do not remember their concerns when they feel pressured, especially when being observed by a researcher. These findings suggest that intervention efforts should focus on targeting parent-teacher communication, rather than agreement, to facilitate home-school collaboration.