Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities

practitioners assigned both issues and solutions
to parents (and therefore out of their
control). Further research is needed to understand
why professionals have come to form
these opinions. Rather than to criticize professionals,
it is necessary to understand how they
form their opinions, and why they feel the way
they do.
Practice. Professionals in the field have
long been concerned about observed gaps between
recommended practices and the actual
implementation of those practices (Carnine,
1997; Carta & Greenwood, 1997; Gresham,
MacMillan, Beebe-Frankenberger, & Bocian,
2000; Turnbull, Friesen, & Ramirez, 1998).
The findings of this research suggest that professionals
may be verbalizing a commitment to
family-centered principles and at the same
time taking a controlling approach that directly
contradicts their own statements. The
apparent lack of awareness that they are engaged
in this conflicting dialogue may lend
some insight into the reasons for the gap
between ideal and actual practices. An implication
of this finding is that effective professional
development might need to incorporate
some strategies to aid professionals to
identify their own conflicts in attitude and
behavior.
This study also found that professionals with
more experience appeared to recognize the
impact of their previous attitudes about parents
and to have more consistent beliefs about
partnerships with families. This suggests that
professionals’ perceptions of under-or overinvolvement
by parents (i.e., “Goldilocks”
theme) may reflect discomfort or defensiveness
on the part of less experienced professionals,
who may view family partnerships as a
threat or as a questioning of their competence.
An implication is that less experienced
professionals might profit from a more experienced
mentor who is able to model a more
non-defensive and positive attitude toward
working with families.
The message needs to be conveyed to professionals
that there is an option for parents to
not participate. Most importantly, there needs
to be initial communication, formal or informal,
that enables families and professionals to
get to know each other and to reach consensus
on expectations as preferences.
We include here, again, the definition of
Summers and colleagues (2005) of partnerships
as “. . . mutually supportive interactions
between families and professionals, focused
on meeting the needs of children and families,
and characterized by a sense of competence,
commitment, equality, positive communication,
respect, and trust” (p. 3). In
summary, the themes of this study–gap between
family-centered language and actions,
Goldilocks perception, and parental blame
converge to suggest that we have “miles to go”
as a field in implementing family-professional
partnerships.
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