Making the IEP Process More Inclusive: Supporting Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families (Pre-recorded)

Despite some of the efforts currently in place throughout educational systems to follow IDEA mandates to ensure that parent participation is encouraged, there continue to be some factors that influence the overall participation of parents in the IEP process. These factors may negatively impact the overall educational outcomes of student’s success in their educational journeys. Some of the factors that have been reported to prevent the active participation of culturally and linguistically diverse families have been language barriers, accessibility to attend meetings, and feeling unwelcomed and disempowered (Burke & Goldman, 2018; Goss, 2017; Rossetti & Burke, 2019). The purpose is to examine current barriers that impact overall culturally and linguistically diverse family engagement and collaboration during the IEP meeting as well as to provide recommendations that may help deconstruct these barriers in order to aid with increasing collaboration between culturally and linguistically diverse families and educational teams during IEP meetings.