Parental Goal-Setting and Special Education in the People's Republic of China

The special education system of the People's Republic of China (PRC) struggles to meet the needs of its large population of students with disabilities. For a variety of cultural, political, and historical reasons, special education services tend to be limited, and have developed slowly in the PRC. As a result, the primary responsibility for educating a child with a disability often falls to the parents. For practical purposes, improving parental capacity to address the educational needs of children with disabilities has the potential for being the most efficient way of improving outcomes for children on a large scale. Very little is known about specific parental behaviors likely to impact student outcomes. Goal-setting has been robustly identified in the Western literature as a crucial element for success for populations with special needs. This qualitative multiple case study provided an exploratory description of the goal-setting behaviors of Chinese parents of students with special needs. Participants were parents of children ages 3-10, with intellectual, developmental, and multiple disabilities living in large urban centers in the Northeast region. Study results showed participants identified goals with a variety of features in terms of focus, specificity, and temporal characteristics. They identified internal and external factors which impacted decision making during the goal setting process. Parental perception of goal alignment within the community at various levels corresponded to the estimate of the quality of specific support systems. The results are intended to guide future inquiry into critical parental behaviors influencing outcomes, and provide a starting point for discussion of how educational providers may best use specific information about parenting behaviors to support the development of parental capacity.