The Power of Parent Education: Transition Planning for Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities

Abstract

Abstract Due to the underrepresentation of Asian students with disabilities in the USA, only a dearth of studies have focused on this population, and none have focused on training Asian families to be engaged in transition planning. There is a need to note that the number of Asian students with disabilities continues to grow in several disability categories, such as autism. To address this research gap, this chapter discusses how a train-the-parent trainer program prepares Chinese immigrant families to be engaged in the transition planning process and empowers them to be leaders and advocates, so they can offer support to other Chinese families of students with disabilities in the community. Although a train-the-trainer model has been used frequently in other areas of special education and is found to be very effective, this is the first program that focuses on training a parent population and those whose primary language is not English.