The myth (of the bad parent) is pervasive and its power should not be underestimated for it can lead well meaning teachers to treat perfectly able parents with suspicion.’

(Hannon 1995)

Before looking at the present study in more detail it is necessary to consider some of the general issues surrounding research on parents and teachers. The first point is that much of the research is rooted in the concerns of educationalists and inevitably involves institutional or school based perspectives on a given question or issue. Ribbens (1994) in commenting on research into families points out that most of it is concerned with publicly defined social policy issues or professionals’ concerns and little of it is from the perspective of family members themselves. A similar situation is found when the extensive literature on special needs education or for that matter education in general is examined. More recently, influences from social research and the introduction of approaches such as ‘grounded theory’ have emphasised the importance of researching issues from the perspective of the individual involved. In grounded theory for example it is argued that the researcher should have as few preconceived questions as possible in order to allow the participants to define what the issues are from their perspective. Another influence has been the disability rights movement which has emphasised the importance of disabled people speaking for themselves. This has led to publications such as a workbook for teachers on disability and equality in the classroom prepared by a teacher with disabilities and a parent with disabilities (Rieser and Mason 1990). It has also led to a number of ‘telling it how it is’ books where disabled people talk directly about their lives. Early examples of this are a collection of accounts by women with disabilites entitled Images of Ourselves (Campling 1981) and Conversations with Non-Speaking People (IPCAS 1984). An issue that arises in looking at children with special needs or disabilities is to what degree their voices are heard and to what degree their parents’ voices are heard. The general tenet behind such approaches is that children and

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