Jillian Vancoughnett

Bio

Jillian Vancoughnett is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, engaged in a narrative inquiry into the experiences of parents who have a special needs child in school.  Jillian has been a special education teacher for 12 years, taking pride in building meaningful relationships with the families she serves. Jillian has a keen interest in parent engagement, welcoming and hospitality, and the ethics of care within the school community. Jillian is the mother of three young children.

Proposed Research

In my proposed research, I will investigate the experiences of parents who seek meaningful and authentic engagement in the school programming of their intensive need early learners. I am interested in the following questions: How are parents actively engaged in their child’s programming? Who is responsible for engaging parents at the school level and how is this responsibility lived out? How are parents given their rightful place and voice in determining their child’s schooling and education? 

I plan to walk alongside school/family teams in community schools as I engage in this narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry is about inquiring in in-depth ways into stories as a form of research. These stories look for common threads that can be woven together to create a new picture. Narrative inquiry has an inherent duality. Story is both the phenomenon and the method (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). It is a qualitative method of research that draws upon field texts, including stories, journals, field notes, letters, conversations, family and teacher stories, and useful artifacts, combined with life experience, to address a research question. The result of such processes is to paint an intimate understanding of the voice and place of parents in their young children’s schooling experiences.