This article was downloaded by: [Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg]On: 15 November 2014, At: 00:30Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Early Child Development and CarePublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gecd20

Parental Perspectives onCurriculum Priorities for theirYoung Children with DisabilitiesLevan Lim a , Tan Al Girl a & Marilyn M. Quah aa National Institute of Education, Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity , SingaporePublished online: 07 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Levan Lim , Tan Al Girl & Marilyn M. Quah (1998) Parental Perspectiveson Curriculum Priorities for their Young Children with Disabilities, Early Child Developmentand Care, 144:1, 91-99, DOI: 10.1080/0300443981440110

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443981440110

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purposeof the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are theopinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francisshall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs,expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arisingdirectly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Early Child Development and Care, 1998, Vol. 144, pp. 91-99 © 1998 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V.Reprints available directly from the publisher Published by license underPhotocopying permitted by license only the Gordon and Breach Publishers imprint.

Printed in Malaysia.

Parental Perspectives on CurriculumPriorities for their Young Childrenwith Disabilities

LEVAN LIM, TAN Al GIRL and MARILYN M. QUAH

National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University,Singapore

(Received 1 July 1998)

Many parents of children with disabilities in Singapore have enrolled their children inschool settings. Local literature is however lacking on what parents would like theirchildren to learn at school. This pilot study examined parental perspectives on howmuch they valued three different curriculum skill areas for their young children withdisabilities: functional academics, functional life skills, and social relationship skills. Inaddition, parents were asked to indicate whether they expected priority skill items withinthe three curriculum areas to be performed with assistance or independently. Resultsindicate differences in the parents' ratings of the curriculum skill areas. Parentalexpectations of their children's performance of priority skills across the curriculum areasalso differed. Implications are discussed concerning parental input into curriculum,teachers' collaboration with parents to address curricular issues, and directions forresearch and practice.

Key words: Atypical young children, parents, curricular perspectives, disabilities

Parent preferences should be considered in educational decisions regarding theirchildren with disabilities (Nietupski & Hamre-Nietupski, 1987). When parent per-spectives on what should be taught to their children with disabilities are considered,it is more likely that parents feel involved and motivated in being partners withteachers in addressing educational matters. In addition, since deciding what toteach is influenced by the values and experiences of the individuals involved,teachers and parents can take the opportunity to understand and clarify eachothers' ideas of what is appropriate education. For children with disabilities andtheir families to reap the benefits of a good educational experience as early aspossible, parent preferences should be sought when these children are at a youngage.

The literature on parent preferences of curricular content for their children withdisabilities is limited. Existing literature has examined parent preferences in termsof three main skills areas: functional life skills (e.g., toilet use, brush teeth, and pay

91

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

92 L LIM et al.

for items in community-based sites such as grocery stores and restaurants); functionalacademics (e.g., spell words, name the alphabet, read books, and print numbers);and social relationship/friendship skills (e.g., greet others, share games or toys ormaterials, and have a conversation with a nondisabled peer) for various levels ofdisability. Hamre-Nietupski, Nietupski, and Strathe (1992) investigated the educa-tional preferences of 68 parents of students with moderate and severe/profounddisabilities in terms of the relative value they placed on functional life skills, socialrelationship/friendship skills, and functional academics. These authors found thatthe parents of students with moderate disabilities rated functional life skills mosthighly while parents of students with severe/profound disabilities rated social rela-tionship/friendship skills most highly. In another study, Hamre-Nietupski (1993)surveyed parents of 192 students with moderate and severe/profound disabilities todetermine what percent of a typical school week should be spent on functional lifeskills, academic skills or social relationship/friendship skills. Parents of students withmoderate disabilities showed a preference for their children to engage the largestpercentage of the school week in learning functional life skills, followed by academicskills, and then social relationship skills. Parents of children with severe/profounddisabilities wanted their children to spend the most time learning functional lifeskills, then social relationship skills, followed by academic skills.

The findings of these two studies revealed that though the parents indicated theyvalued all three curricular areas, they showed clear preferences that were influencedby their children's disability level. Limitations in terms of generalizability of resultsinclude the fact that the parents surveyed in the two studies came from oneparticular state in the United States (Iowa). The age range of their children wasrelatively wide (from 6 to 21 years old). Another limitation, noted by the authorsof these studies was that parental priorities might have been affected by whetherthe skills were to be performed independently or with assistance. The level ofperformance expected by parents of the skills can be an important clue to howparental priorities are shaped by their expectations and vice-versa.

In Singapore, special schools cater to the majority of educational needs of chil-dren with disabilities (see Quah, 1990 for a description of special education inSingapore). In these schools, young children with disabilities are provided thenecessary early intervention educational services (Quah, 1997). Parental involve-ment in developing educational programmes is generally encouraged in the schools,(more so currently with the younger children than in the past), but local researchliterature is lacking on what parents would like their young children to learn atschool. This pilot study examines parental perspectives on how much they valuedifferent curriculum skill areas for their young children with disabilities. In addition,parents were asked to indicate whether they expected priority skill items within thecurriculum areas to be performed with assistance or independently. The two majorquestions of interest were:

1. Are there differences in how parents of young children with disabilities valuefunctional life skills, social relationship skills, and functional academics?

2. Are there differences in parental expectations of skill performance level ofvalued functional life skills, social relationship skills, and functional academics?

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

YOUNG CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES 93

METHOD

Sample

Caregivers of 34 children (13 female and 21 male) were interviewed. The averageage of the children was 5.25 years old (between three and seven years old), andthey all lived at home with their caregivers. The interviewees were 24 (70.6%)mothers, 8 (23.5%) fathers, and 2 (5.8%) other primary caregivers (e.g., grand-mother) . All the children attended local special schools for students with disabilities.Of the children, 13 (38.2%) were classified as having mild disabilities, 17 (50.0%)with moderate disabilities, and 4 (11.8%) with severe disabilities.

Instrument

A copy of Hamre-Nietupski et al. (1992) survey instrument was modified to establishconcept equivalence (Malpass & Poortinga, 1986) for the Singaporean context. Thelanguage used in the instrument was adapted for local parents without changingthe original meaning of the items. English is widely used in Singapore. However,there was a need to adapt certain terms and phrases particular to the local context(e.g., in item #17, the term "city bus" was extended to include the commonly knownsubway term, and in item #12, the term "sundry" was added to grocery stores). Termslike elementary and high school were also changed to primary and secondaryrespectively. There were 21 items in the instrument which could be rated along a4-point Likert scale with the descriptors of "very unimportant"(l), "not impor-tant" (2), "quite important" (3), and "very important" (4). These descriptors were alsochanged to reflect local use of degrees of importance. A native Singaporean re-searcher in the area of disability was asked to validate the instrument's linguisticsuitability. For items rated "important" and "very important", parents/caregiverswere asked to indicate whether they would like them to be performed with assistanceor independently.

Procedure

Researchers asked inservice teachers of young children with disabilities to selectrandomly and then interview parents of their pupils they were teaching. Theresearchers taught the protocol of administering the instrument to the inserviceteachers. All data were collected between March and November of 1997.

Data Analysis

Cronbach's alpha was computed to determine suitability of the instrument. TheCronbach's alpha reliability was high, 0.90, indicating that the instrument wassuitable for the Singaporean sample of parents. Factor analysis was performed tofind out whether the individual skills suggested under the three curricular areasof the original instrument conformed to local parents' perceptions. Mean, standarddeviation, skewness, and kurtosis of each item was examined. As none of the items

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

94 L LIM ef al.

were found to possess a value of skewness and/or kurtosis 1.64 and above, the itemswere subjected to factor analysis. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sam-pling adequacy was 0.67. From factor analysis, there were four interpretative scalesfound: functional academic skills, social relationship skills, self-help functional lifeskills, and community-based functional life skills. The Cronbach's alpha for the fourscales were high, ranging from 0.80 to 0.95. The paired t-test for two related samples(parametric) and the Mann-Whitney U test (non-parametric) were used to uncoverdifferences between the scales. The frequency of parental preference for each itemwas also examined. The independent two-sample t-test and the Mann-Whitney testwere performed to investigate whether parents of children with mild and moderatedisabilities rated the four scales and expectations of skill performance differently.We did not perform the same analysis for the parents of children with severedisabilities because the sample size for this group was too small (four parents).

RESULTS

The mean values of the four types of skills revealed that parents indicated theirhighest priority for self-help functional life skills, followed by social relationshipskills, community-based functional life skills, and functional academic skills. Theresults of the paired t-test showed that parents valued the teaching of self-helpfunctional life skills, such as brushing teeth and using the toilet, significantly higherthan the other types of skills. There were low correlations among the four typesof skills (see Table 1).

Factor loading and descriptive statistics for the individual items belonging to eachtype of skills are displayed in Table 2. Parental expectations of their children's skillperformance differed across the four curriculum areas. Parents' expectations ofindependent performance matched the prioritized value they place on the fourtypes of skills. It is noteworthy to mention that when parents were asked by theteachers to state the expected performance level of the skill items, the teachersreported that parents were not sure what to provide as answers and consequentlyleft either columns (with assistance or independently) blank. This pattern wasevident for parent ratings on valued community-based functional life skills, aca-demic skills, and social relationship skills. The teachers reported that the parentswere less hesitant in stating the expected level of competence for their childrenin the self-help functional life skills, especially for the individual items of brushingteeth and toileting.

Parents of children with mild disabilities generally rated the four skill areas higherthan parents of children with moderate disabilities. The independent two-samplet-test however did not show a significant difference in the ratings of the skills asrated by parents of children with mild versus moderate disabilities. The non-parametric Mann-Whitney test confirmed this finding. In terms of parentalexpectations of skill performance for individual items, parents of children with milddisabilities had significantly higher expectations for independent performance thanparents of children with moderate disabilities for seven items of which six were

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

Table 1 Results of Paired-T-Test and Paired Correlation of the Skill Scales

Alpha Eigen- % Mvalue variance

Functional Skills: Functional Skills: Social RelationshipSelf help Community based Skills

SD Paired Paired Paired PairedT-test Correlation T-test Correlation Paired Paired

T-test Correlation

Functional Skills: 0.80 2.08 9.9 3.53 0.57Self help

Functional Skills: 0.86 2.56 12.17 3.11 0.69Community Based

Social Relationship 0.87 3.41 16.25 3.12 0.51Skills

-2.73** 0.07

-3.32*** 0.16

Academic Skills 0.95 8.09 38.51 3.05 0.70 -3.07*** 0.14

-0.05 0.13

-0.47 0.40* -0.58 0.45**

o

m

H

>CD

dmCO

*/><0.05, **/><0.01, ***/><0.005; Alpha = Cronbach's Alpha

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

96 L LIM et al.

academic skills (#8, 10, 16, 18, 19 and 20) and the remaining skill, a social rela-tionship skill (#2). The percentage difference ranged between 20-50%.

DISCUSSION

The parents/caregivers surveyed valued the teaching of self-help functional lifeskills significantly more than community-based life skills, functional academics, andsocial relationship skills. In addition, their expectations of how valued skills wereto be performed on the part of their children were considerably higher for the self-help functional life skills compared with the other skills.

These findings have important implications for teachers in the special schoolscatering to the needs of young children with disabilities. First, it is important forteachers to take into account parent preferences for what they would like theirchildren to learn at school because parents do have clear preferences. Though itis general practice in special schools in Singapore to involve parents during inter-disciplinary education planning meetings, it would be interesting to find out fromthe teachers involved in the education of the young children whose parents/caregivers were interviewed, the relative skill emphases in their curricula.

Second, factor analysis of skill items rated by parents/caregivers showed four asopposed to three distinct types of skill clusters for the modified version of Hamre-Nietupski et al. (1992) instrument used in this study. Items for functional life skillswere found to belong to either one of two separate skill clusters: self-help andcommunity-based. The self-help skills such as brushing teeth and toilet use can beconsidered more home-based activities. The community-based functional life skillsrefer to skills that are conducted outside the home and in the community, suchas paying for item in a store, ordering meals, and taking the bus. The question raisedhere is why were home-based functional life skills valued significantly more andreceived higher performance expectations than community-based functional lifeskills? While the self-help skills are necessary for hygiene and health reasons andshould be of a high priority, community-based functional life skills as well as socialrelationship skills (which was valued relatively less) do offer greater opportunitiesfor community integration and child interaction with others in society.

Parents may perceive the self-help life skills as requisites for more effectivecommunity-based life and social relationship skills. That is, parents may desire theirchildren first to master these self-help skills before the community-based life andsocial skills. This skill priority is likely to reduce parental stress. Future research inthe Singaporean context can clarify whether the relative value of the different skillareas changes for parents as the children grow older.

When parents were asked to state the expected performance level of the skillitems, they showed more uncertainty about how to answer this question for socialrelationship skills, functional community-based life skills, and functional academicsthan the self-help functional life skills. This uncertainty was revealed in the higherincidence of unanswered items for those three types of skills (i.e., teachers reported

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

Table 2 Factor Loadings and Descriptive Statistics For Skills

Functional Skills-Self Help• To brush teeth (#7)• To use the toilet (#3)• To make simple foods (#4)

Functional Skills-Community Based• To take a bus/MRT (#17)• To work in community business (e.g. MacDonalds, 7—11) (#13)• To order and pay for meals in a restaurant/

food center/hawker center (#1)• To find and pay for items/things in grocery/sundry shops (#12)

Social Relationship Skills• To play games during free time with a nondisabled pupil (#2)• To greet other pupils by smiling, signing or pointing to

a symbol, or saying a greeting (e.g. hello) (#21)• To smile, laugh or share conversation at meal time with

a non-disabled pupil (#15)• To ask a nondisabled pupil to sit together for a meal

(e.g. lunch) (#5)• To work together with non-disabled pupils his/her age (#9)• To choose a non-disabled pupil his/her age to play with at

the playground (#11)

Academic Skills• To solve maths addition problems (#6)• To name alphabet letters (#16)• To complete maths or reading exercises/worksheets (#10)• To write numbers (#8)• To spell words (#14)• To name shapes (#20)• To read the words in books (#18)• To share a book/tape in the library with a non-disabled pupil (#19)

FactorLoading

0.940.880.70

0.960.660.83

M

3.653.763.18

3.302.793.15

SD

0.650.610.76

0.771.000.74

WithAssist.

11.814.750.0

29.411.832.4

Inde-pend.

NoAnswer

(in percentage)76.476.532.4

52.947.150.0

11.88.8

17.6

17.641.217.6

0.82

0.57

0.86

3.18

3.15

2.8

0.72 29.4

0.71 14.7

0.69 20.6

52.8

52.9

41.2

17.6

0.670.74

3.153.59

0.610.61

17.611.8

61.873.5

20.614.7

o

QO

om

32.4

0.920.59

3.003.06

0.700.69

20.623.5

50.044.1

29.432.4

CD

38.2

0.850.870.860.630.850.800.980.84

2.823.202.943.353.032.943.152.94

0.720.840.780.690.900.810.960.81

26.517.638.226.523.520.632.429.4

41.250.026.547.144.147.138.238.4

32.432.435.326.532.432.429.432.4

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

98 L LIM et al.

parents appeared unsure of what to answer in terms of expected performance levelfor these items). Parents were more certain in stating the expected level of com-petence for their children in the self-help functional life skills, especially for theindividual items of brushing teeth and toileting. The implication here is for specialeducation teachers to work closely with parents to validate parental wishes and alsoto inform them of the importance of considering community-based life skills as well.Similarly, teachers can also work closely with parents to consider the other skill areasof social relationship and functional academic skills. In addition, teachers can helpparents to set realistic goals on the level of expectations for performing all the skillareas.

There are several limitations to this study. One limitation refers to the inter-raterreliability of the data collected. Teachers in special education classrooms cateringto the needs of young children with disabilities were randomly selected to partici-pate in this study. These teachers were asked to interview parents of childrenenrolled in their classrooms. Though teachers were asked to follow a standardprotocol in administering the instrument through interviewing parents, it is notknown how differently the actual interviews were conducted by the teachers (e.g.,the level of probing). Other limitations include the small sample of parents ofchildren with severe disabilities and ways parents may have interpreted the indi-vidual skill items. Parents may see some skill items as involving some other listedskill item. For example, paying items or ordering meals (functional life skill) couldbe seen as being accompanied by greeting (social relationship) or reading (aca-demic) skills. Such perceived interrelatedness of skills can affect the ratings ofparent preferences and expectations as they may perceive the community-basedskills to involve multiple skills and hence are more complicated to teach than thehome-based skills, especially for young children with disabilities.

The major contribution of this study lies in its incipient research documentationof parental preferences concerning curriculum priorities in Singapore. Until now,there have virtually been no empirical studies examining this issue in the specialschools for young children with disabilities. This study provides evidence that localteachers can use to prepare curricula that reflect valued input from significantmembers of their students' families. This "added" value in preparing and teachingpreferred skills can translate to better cooperation and collaboration between homeand school efforts to reinforce skills taught.

References

Hamre-Nietupski, S. (1993). How much time should be spent on skill instruction and friendshipdevelopment? Preferences of parents of students with moderate and severe/profound disabilities.Education and Training in Mental Retardation, 28, 220-231.

Hamre-Nietupski, S., Nietupski, J. and Strathe, M. (1992). Functional life skills, academic skills, andfriendship/social relationship development: What do parents of students with moderate/severeprofound disabilities value? Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 17, 53-58.

Malpass, R.S. and Poortinga, Y.H. (1986). Strategies for design and analysis. In W.J. Lonner and J.W.Berry (Eds.), Field methods in cross-cultural research (pp. 47-83). CA: Sage Publications.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014

YOUNG CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES 99

Nietupski, J. and Hamre-Nietupski, S. (1987). An ecological approach to curriculum development. InL. Goetz, D. Guess, and K. Stremel-Campbell (Eds.), Innovative program design for students with dualsensory impairments (pp. 225-253). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

Quah, M.L.M. (1990). Special education in Singapore. International Journal of Disability, Development andEducation, 37, 137-148.

Quah, M.L.M. (1997). Family-centred early intervention in Singapore. International Journal of Disability,Development and Education, 44, 53-65.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

30 1

5 N

ovem

ber

2014