A PRELIMINARY RESEARCH ON PARENTAL SCHOOL CHOICE IN THE EARLY INTERVENTION OF SPECIAL EDUCATION

Abstract

School choice is an important decision that every parent need to make for their school-age children, especially when it involves children with disabilities. In Malaysia, while school choice options are available to all families regardless of their socio-economic status, parents with special needs children are facing issue of limited school choices to enroll their kids for a reliable special education critically at the early intervention stage. This study is using four variables which are values/attitudes, financial capital, social capital and cognitive capital to measure the extent to which parents of special needs children engaged themselves in choosing school and whether the parents’ education and socio-economic status predict the level of their participations at the early intervention stage of special education. Everyday life information seeking (ELIS) behavior (Savolainen, 1995) was adopted as the framework in the study and a set of survey questionnaires from S G. Assefa and M. Stansbury (2018) were used for data collection. Responses from sixty-seven parents/caregivers of special needs children which representing different educational attainment were able to be collected throughout the study period. Using frequency analysis, the findings revealed that values/attitudes, financial capital and social capital are significant while cognitive capital is insignificant towards school choice decisions. The outcomes of the study are expected to become an important insight for parents and caregivers of special needs children, policymakers, schools, and future researchers relating to school choice decisions.