Three multilingual immigrant South Asian Muslim families who have children with autism were interviewed to ascertain their beliefs about autism. Data were drawn from interviews and conversations recorded during 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in homes and community. Results indicate that families understood the task of raising a child with autism in religious terms. In keeping with the precepts of Islam, their overarching goal was to raise their children as normally as possible, incorporating them into ordinary social, linguistic, and religious practices at home and in the community. Parents strongly contested experts’ understandings of autism, which they believed undermined rather than promoted their children’s development. Findings have implications for multicultural teacher education and enhancing home, community, and school collaboration.
This study investigated the perspectives of 23 first-generation Asian American mothers of children with developmental disabilities. The intent was to explore the working relationships between the mothers and professionals in health care and special education in the United States. The participants in this study were from China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and India. Data were drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted over 16 months of field-work. The study revealed that mothers endured significant hardships because of communication and cultural barriers. Levels of English proficiency and acculturation as well as a variety of cultural factors were found to be the primary determinants of their perceptions of interactions with the professionals. Implications for professional practice and support for Asian American mothers are discussed.
This study examined the perceptions of three Muslim families on multilingual development in their children with autism. Findings indicate that the families' goal of maintaining normalcy in their children's life could not be attained without immersion in multiple languages. They believe that immersion in multilingual contexts helped their children acquire and expand their linguistic repertoire and enriched their familial and social relationships. Parents experienced hardships with professionals in receiving support in maintaining native-language use at home. Children who demonstrated language impairments during initial ethnographic observations showed significant progress in their multiple-language development toward the end of the study.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.