Empowering Families: Leveraging Videoconferencing to Enhance Participation in IEP Meetings

Meaningful family–teacher collaboration within individualized education program (IEP) meetings is essential to establish effective educational programming for students. However, parents and guardians (referred to as family) do not consistently report positive experiences in IEP meetings, often reporting playing a passive role in the IEP process. However, despite innumerable challenges, COVID-19 revealed an opportunity to enhance collaborative family–school partnerships within the IEP process through videoconferencing. For this reason, this paper aims to present recommendations for educators to integrate videoconferencing within the IEP process: preparation before the IEP meeting, facilitation and moderation during the IEP meeting, and follow-up and follow-through of commitments after the IEP meeting.