Culture in Special Education: Building Reciprocal Family-Professional Relationships

Kalyanpur (reading, special education, and technology, Towson U.) and Harry (teaching and learning, U. of Miami) address the issues of how the ideals of U.S. macroculture are represented in the field of special education and the resulting implications for cross-cultural communication. They argue that professional knowledge is largely acquired by an implicit process that needs to made explicit and conscious if school personnel are to become effective collaborators in a multi-cultural society. They put forth a "posture of cultural reciprocity" that they contend will facilitate processes of cultural understanding. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR