Download or read book The Lone Unheard: African American Fathers' Experience Navigating the Special Education System written by Brandy Miller and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research has consistently shown that parent involvement positively influences students' academic outcomes (Henderson & Mapp 2002). Interestingly, studies of parent involvement focus largely on the role of mothers. This is particularly true for studies of African American parent involvement, where participants are often cast as single mothers and fathers assumed to be absent. As a result, little is known about the experiences and engagement of fathers in the education of their children - and even less is known about African American fathers. This narrative study intends to add the voices of African American fathers to this incomplete scholarly record. Given the persistently disproportionate numbers of African American children in special education, this study examines the involvement of fathers in the education of their children with special needs - with attention to their participation in their children's individual education plan (IEP) meetings. Six African American fathers participated in two in-depth interviews. Analysis of the data revealed: 1) Participants' experiences present a counternarrative to the deleterious stereotype of the absent African American father; 2) Participants' experiences also offer a counternarrative to the dominant narrative of mothers as a proxy for "parent" in discussions of parent involvement; 3) Participants' initial reactions to learning about their children's diagnosis with autism corresponds with KuÌ8bler-Ross' Grief Cycle; 4) Participants' experiences present a counternarrative to the stereotype of the dysfunctional African American family; and 5) To varying degrees, the intersection of race and gender shaped participants' involvement in their children's schools. Findings from this study inform both practice and future research.