Parental Involvement in Learning Programs for Children with Special Needs in Indonesia

The practice of education in schools still needs to improve in the form of limited studies focusing on parental involvement in the learning process of children with special needs in Indonesia. This study aimed to identify the forms of parental involvement in planning, implementing, and evaluating learning programs from 2017 to 2022 using the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method. The stages of implementation using the Cooper version are (1) formulating the problem, (2) collecting data, (3) evaluating the feasibility of the data, (4) analysis and interpreting the relevant data, and (5) organizing and presenting the results. Data was collected by searching for keywords related to the concept to be reviewed on the data source page (Google Scholar, Perpusnas.go.id, and Portal Garuda). The results of this study indicate that parental involvement in learning planning is as a giver and recipient of information about the child's condition in the assessment process but has yet to be involved in determining the learning program. Meanwhile, mostly parents accompanied children when studying at home during the pandemic, despite many challenges in the learning implementation. As for the evaluation process, parents monitored their children’s progress and gave feedback to the teachers about their children’s achievements. The findings of this study indicate the need for further studies to improve school-parent collaboration in Indonesia.


INTRODUCTION
Fulfilling the right to education for children with special needs has many challenges due to different growth and development conditions from children in general. In this regard, the role of the environment is very important to support the potential development of children with special needs. The main environment where children with special needs experience interaction and spend a lot of time from birth is the family environment. In the family there are parents as well as siblings and/or other relatives who interact directly with children on a daily basis. Children experience a learning process in various aspects of growth and development from birth through a process of interaction with the family, especially with their parents.
As Tamansiswa teaches, parents are part of the tricenter of education. Parents are adults who are in the microenvironment and are directly responsible for meeting the needs of children (Darlis, 2017). Therefore, schools as institutions that provide formal education for children with special needs need to involve parents in the process of developing children's potential at school so that children's potential can develop optimally (Wardani, K. & Dwiningrum, 2021). Efforts made at school need to be followed up by parents so that the abilities of children with special needs can be formed and achieve independence in the future (Frederick et al, 2020;Aouad & Bento, 2020;Rani, K., et al, 2018). Parental involvement in learning programs can be viewed in terms of preparation, implementation and evaluation of learning programs for children with special needs in education units. In fact, the involvement of parents in learning programs for children with special needs is officially mentioned in the IDEA (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) policy in the United States which has become a reference for many countries in the world. The urgency of the presence of the role of parents in learning programs for children with special needs is in fact contrary to practice in schools.
Parental involvement in the education of children with special needs in Indonesia still encounters problems such as a lack of parental involvement caused by a lack of understanding of parents about the condition of children with special needs, parents have not been involved in making decisions regarding programs for their children, parents lack training and support to overcome community stigma against children with special needs, and parents' lack of acceptance of the implementation of education for children with special needs in inclusive settings (Sukmadi, et al., 2020;Jeslin & Kurniawati, 2020;Pratiwi: 2016;Rani, K., 2018;Mumpuniarti: 2019). These things can hinder children with special needs in achieving independence.
Meanwhile, references that can be a source for developing the practice of parental involvement in the preparation of learning programs for children with special needs in education units in Indonesia are still limited. In fact, there are no specific rules or guidelines as a technical protocol for implementing collaboration to carry out school-parent collaboration issued by the government. If there is, the guide is not easy to obtain through the search engine "google" which is familiar to the people of Indonesia to find various information.
In connection with the urgency of parental involvement and the many problems that still exist, efforts are needed to find solutions to overcome these problems so that practice in the field can be optimized and increase the success of learning programs for children with special needs in Indonesia. The first step to finding solutions to the various problems of parental involvement in learning programs for children with special needs in Indonesia is to find a complete picture of the forms of involvement that have been carried out and identify the problems that have existed so far. In this regard, the researcher intends to conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) study to find out the objective conditions of parental involvement in learning programs for children with special needs in Indonesia in special schools and inclusive schools, at all levels of education, within a certain period of time. This research is a basic research that will provide information for various applied development research. This research is an attempt to reveal the practice of the tricenter role in education for children who have a variety of growth and development conditions in Indonesia.

METHOD
This study aims to identify the forms of parental involvement in the planning, implementation and evaluation of learning programs for children with special needs in Indonesia in the last five years (2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022). Forms of parental involvement in the education of children with special needs need to be explored in order to find out a practical picture of the forms of collaboration between parents and schools that have been implemented so far in Indonesia. The results of this study will be used to determine the initial conditions of school-home collaboration in Indonesia so as to find areas that still need to be developed. Furthermore, the results of this study can be used as a basis for conducting further research that is practical in nature in solving problems related to home-school collaboration in developing the abilities of children with special needs in Indonesia. Related to the purpose of this study, researchers used the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method. SLR is a research method that aims to find and synthesize research in a comprehensive manner that refers to specific questions, using procedures that are organized, transparent, and replicable at every step in the process (Kek & Hujser in Juandi, 2021).
Data collection was carried out by searching for keywords on the data source page (google scholar, National Library website, and https://garuda.kemdikbud.go.id/) related to the concept to be reviewed. The keywords used are "parental involvement", "learning program", and "children with special needs". To broaden search results, the word "involvement" can be replaced with the word "role" and "contribution". Time to search for data is limited from 2017 to 2022. To obtain data related to research objectives, the criteria for literature that can be processed must meet the following inclusion criteria: (a) literature is the result of practical research using both quantitative and qualitative approaches (not literature studies). regarding the involvement of parents in learning programs for children with special needs at various levels of educational units, (b) literature can be in the form of scientific journal articles, theses, theses, and dissertations, (c) literature published in the period 2017-2022, (d) is qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods research, (e) in Indonesian language, (f) research locations in special schools and inclusive schools in Indonesia Analysis of the results uses an exposition approach and an analytic approach, namely by presenting data and facts and then looking for correlations between these data, then giving opinions based on logical thinking and drawing a conclusion Ulhaq, Z.S. & Rahmayanti, M. (2020). This research was conducted in stages according to Cooper (in Suhartono, 2017), namely (1) formulating the problem, (2) collecting data, (3) evaluating the feasibility of the data, (4) analysis and interpreting relevant data, (5) organizing and presenting the results . The five stages are described as follows.
1. Problem This study intends to describe the form of parental involvement in learning programs for children with special needs at the stages of planning, implementing and evaluating learning programs. Therefore, this research collects information related to the questions in table 1: What is the form of parental involvement in planning learning programs for children with special needs?
Research Question 2 What is the form of parental involvement in the implementation of learning programs for children with special needs? Research Question 3 What is the form of parental involvement in evaluating learning programs for children with special needs?

Collecting data
Data searches used the Google Schoolar search engine, the National Library of Indonesia website, and the Garda Referral Digital (Garuda) portal by typing in the keywords that had been set and the year the journal was published.

Evaluate data feasibility
Evaluation of the feasibility of the data in this study was carried out by selecting literature that matched the predetermined inclusion criteria by carrying out a checklist after reading the title and abstract of the literature.

Analysis and interpreting data
Data in the appropriate literature are then categorized based on the research question. After that, the data is displayed in tabular form consisting of column author, year, title, research subject, research method, and results. Furthermore, researchers looked for links between data and carried out meaning (discussion), as well as drawing conclusions on data related to parental involvement in planning, implementing, and evaluating learning programs for children with special needs at various levels of education units in Indonesia.

Organize and present results
The results of the analysis and interpretation of the data are presented in the form of narrative and visualization in the form of diagrams/charts

RESULT
Article searches were carried out on the Google Scholar database, National Library of Indonesia pages, and the Garuda portal with certain keywords. The article search results are described in table 2.

Database
Keywords Number of articles Google Scholar "parental involvement"; "learning program"; "children with special needs" 108 "the role of parents"; "learning program"; "children with special needs" 256 "parental contribution"; "learning program"; "children with special needs" 6 perpusnas.go.id "parental involvement"; "learning program"; "children with special needs" 1 "the role of parents"; "learning program"; "children with special needs" 3 "parental contribution"; "learning program"; "children with special needs" 3 Porta garuda.id "parental involvement"; "children with special needs" 0 "the role of parents"; "children with special needs" 8 "parental contribution"; "children with special needs" 3 Total 388 Articles collected from the Google Scholar search engine (370 articles), National Library (7 articles), and Garuda portal (11 articles) were selected to select articles that met the inclusion criteria and produced 21 articles that were worthy of discussion. The article selection process is carried out using the PRISMA flow as described in chart 1.

Chart 1. PRISMA flowchart
The demographics of the research locations of the 18 articles deserve attention because they indicate areas that have the potential for further study. The demographics of the types of educational units and locations contained in the 18 articles are presented in table 3 below.  Table 3 shows that the study of parental involvement in learning programs for children with special needs in Indonesia was carried out in special education units and inclusive education units. In the special education unit, there are 9 school locations with variations in elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school. Meanwhile, in inclusive schools there are 2 levels of early childhood education, 9 elementary schools, and 1 senior high school.
The articles that have been selected are categorized based on the inclusion criteria, read their contents in full and are classified based on research questions or Research Questions (RQ) 1-3. After reading the complete article, it was found that one article contains some of the data needed. Therefore, one article can answer more than one research question. Article categorization is described in table 4 below.  Parental involvement in the education of children with special needs in education units includes parental involvement in planning, implementing and evaluating learning programs. The results of the data synthesis in table 4 show the number of articles for each research question that will be answered in this study. In percentage terms, the number of articles is depicted in diagram 1. Diagram 1 shows that the study of the involvement of parents of children with special needs in learning programs in both inclusive schools and in special schools is dominated by research findings that reveal parental involvement in the topic of lesson planning and learning implementation (39% each). Meanwhile, studies on the topic of learning evaluation only obtained 22% and is the topic most rarely discussed in research on parental involvement in learning programs for children with special needs. The forms of parental involvement in planning, implementing, evaluating are described as follows:

Diagram 1. Percentage of number of articles
1. Parental involvement in Learning Program Planning Based on the findings in 11 scientific articles related to parental involvement in planning learning programs for children with special needs, two salient results can be categorized. First, parental involvement that has been implemented in Indonesia for the last 5 years. Second, there are deficiencies in terms of involving parents in the planning stages of learning programs for children with special needs in education units, both in special schools and in inclusive schools. The practice of involving parents of children with special needs in the learning program planning process that already exists is (1) as a source of information in identification and assessment, (2) parents receive information about the results of the assessment and programs that will be given to children, (3) there are people parents who actively ask about program needs from the school, (4) parents pay for their children's education needs at school or tutoring, (5) parents receive teacher directions on how to accompany children to study at home during a pandemic. Meanwhile, it was found that parents were still not involved enough to (1) be involved in making decisions to determine children's learning programs (2) there was a perception that parents felt that schools understood their children better and parents were not important to know about school programs.
From the data collected, it appears that the study of parental involvement in planning learning programs for children with special needs is dominated by the Inclusive Education Provider Education Unit at the elementary school level (7 schools) and the early childhood education level (2 schools). Meanwhile, a study in the special education unit only found 2 articles with one of them being at the junior high school level. In terms of the location of the research implementation, the study of parental involvement in planning learning programs for children with special needs was dominated in West Java (4 locations). While other areas are Central Java (2 locations), Yogyakarta (2 locations), East Java (1 location), South Kalimantan (1 location), and Bengkulu (1 location). This can indicate areas that have the potential for further assessment.

Parental involvement in the Implementation of the Learning Program
Based on the findings in 11 scientific articles reporting parental involvement in the implementation of learning programs for children with special needs, it is known that parental involvement in the implementation stage of learning programs for children with special needs in education units is in the form of (1) efforts to improve learning outcomes, children with special needs through the role of parents as the main companion, advocate, and teacher when learning is carried out at home, (2) the role in the learning process, in the form of mentors, companions, facilitators, motivators and directors, (3) in the context of learning at home, the role of parents is very important for the development of student learning while at home, where parents are a support system in educating their children so they can carry out daily activities related to self-health, clean living, independence and accompany autistic children to study at home, and (4) parents offer three ways to develop the potential of children with special needs at home includes developing interpersonal behavior, self-behavior and communication skills.
Meanwhile, it was found that parents still showed a low percentage of the role of parents during the learning process during the Covid-19 pandemic for children with special needs. From the data collected, it appears that the study of parental involvement in the implementation of learning programs for children with special needs is dominated by Inclusive Education Education Units at the elementary school level (7 schools) and special education units (4 schools). Meanwhile, a study in the special education unit found only 4 articles with one of them being at the junior high school level. In terms of the location of the research implementation, the study of parental involvement in planning learning programs for children with special needs was dominated in West Java (4 locations). While the other areas are Central Java (1 location), Yogyakarta (1 location), East Java (3 locations), Banjarmasin (1 location), and West Sumatra (1 location). This can indicate areas that have the potential for further assessment.

Parental involvement in the Evaluation of Learning Programs
Based on the findings in 6 scientific articles that report the form of involvement of parents of children with special needs in evaluating learning programs for children with special needs, it can be concluded that parental involvement in evaluating learning programs for children with special needs is in the form of 1) Parents monitor the child's condition, 2). Parents are involved in the initial screening of students as mapping the needs and suitability of treatment, 3). Parents build sustainability by providing stimulation and feedback, 4). Parents establish intensive communication with teachers via telephone. However, there are still schools that show low parental involvement in learning evaluation for slow learner children in inclusive elementary schools in West Java.

DISCUSSION
From a planning standpoint, parents of children with special needs have been involved in learning planning with a position as a source of information regarding the child's condition. In addition, parents are also limited to recipients of information related to assessment results, learning program plans, directions from teachers regarding accompanying children at home during a pandemic. There are schools that involve parents in determining learning activities through discussions, but only a small proportion. Even parents also have the perception that schools understand their children better and feel it is not important to know about school programs. From this it can be seen that there is still a lack of involvement of parents who are in an equal position with teachers or other children's learning program design teams to make learning program decisions. The reasons for this lack of involvement have not been explored further. However, Hamlin, D., & Flessa, J. (2018) through a systematic review study conducted in public and private elementary and secondary schools in Ontario, Canada showed that the inhibiting factors in parental involvement include parental knowledge about school system and the challenges of communicating with school staff. The non-involvement of parents in preparing learning program plans was also found in Cavendish, W. & Connor, D (2017) research at the secondary education level which revealed that most parents who were participants claimed to receive IEP (Individualized Educational Program) files via email but did not ask again about the contents of the IEP. Even some parents said that they did not understand the content of the IEP.
Based on the results of data collection, it is known that during the learning preparation process during the pandemic there was a process of transferring knowledge from the school to parents in the form of accompanying children to study at home. This shows that parents have played a role in supporting schools in developing children's potential through collaboration with teachers. This is justified by several research results from Rantauwati, H.S. (2020), Welch & Sheridan (in Adams et al, 2016 which explains that in relation to the role of parents as guardians of students at school, parents play a role in assisting schools in implementing educational programs through collaboration with teachers so that there is a transfer of knowledge and experience from teachers to parents, and vice versa learning success can be achieved by children.
At the stage of implementing learning, the role of parents before the Covid-19 pandemic was limited to accompanying children to come to school, monitoring and responding to problematic children's behavior, and being teachers at school. There are no studies that show involvement in the learning process takes place. Forms of parental involvement in the implementation of learning programs in the pre-pandemic period included parental involvement in the learning process in inclusive schools which had not been seen in a private inclusive elementary school in the city of Yogyakarta. school, waiting for children to come home from school, observing children's behavior every day and providing follow-up on children's behavior so that it becomes better as happened in Banyumas, Central Java, parents play the role of educators of children outside school hours.
After the Covid-19 pandemic hit all over the world including in Indonesia, the role of parents in implementing learning became increasingly apparent. The role of parents appears to be more prominent because it is related to the Indonesian government's policy of implementing learning at home in the form of Ministry of Education and Culture Circular Letter No. 4 of 2020 (Muhaimi & Wardani, 2022). The forms of parental involvement in the implementation of learning are as follows: parents in an inclusive elementary school in Depok, West Java, play a role in protecting and ensuring that children practice a clean and healthy life, accompanying children in learning and playing at home online or by home visit ( teachers come to the house) during the Covid-19 pandemic according to health protocols, parents manage diet, monitor children's development during the learning process at home, and accompany children in their daily activities, and make routines for children, parents encourage, teach, accompany , and motivating mentally retarded children to be able to learn self-development at home, parents provide examples and apply the habit of involving children in daily activities to form the independent character of children with autism, parents help explain difficult material, condition children in the learning process, and helping children when they have difficulty doing assignments, parents coordinate with teachers to overcome problems that arise during online learning. Coordination is carried out offline and online, parents accompany children in conducting online learning, parents develop children's interpersonal behavior by involving children to interact with the surrounding environment, namely by registering children to school, teaching children to meet new people, guiding and providing simple understanding , parents teach children to control themselves by avoiding things that cause problems, controlling emotions, doing good things, and reminding children not to get angry, parents teach communication, namely by often training children to talk to family and people around them, parents give light examples in expressing emotions and involving parents and those closest to children in daily activities, there is research which states that in an inclusive elementary school in Banjarmasin parents are very active. Every day parents ask about the child's condition and development via telephone communication, ask what needs to be fulfilled in the child's development, take and pick up the child at school and even the child's parents become school committee administrators, findings in the West Sumatra area, parental involvement in the learning process or home has a high percentage of involvement in parenting, mother's involvement is higher than father's involvement. Nonetheless, parental involvement in the learning process still needs to be improved.
Parental involvement in the learning process during a pandemic generally takes the form of (1) the presence of parents by the child's side to provide direct assistance, (2) supervision of children's routines and activities, and (3) encouragement for children to be involved in daily activities in the neighborhood. These findings support other findings which state that in distance learning during a pandemic, parents of children generally act as child learning companions, facilitators, controllers, and child motivators (Wulandari, R., 2021;Indriyani, F. & Yusnani, 2021;Lilawati, 2020).
Even though the role of parents in accompanying their children to study at home during the pandemic has increased, research by Melakarniati & Marlina (2022) conducted at two special schools in Padang, West Sumatra shows that parental participation in parenting matters still needs to be increased. In contrast to the findings in inclusive schools, which were more successful in exploring data on the collaborative practices of parents and schools in children's learning programs. This is an indication that in Indonesia there is a need to conduct more studies on parental involvement in special schools. Even though education trends in Indonesia are currently more mainstream involving children with special needs in diverse environments, the role of parents in learning programs for children with special needs in non-inclusive schools still needs to be encouraged to find effective forms of collaboration.
Research by Fitriyani, L., et al (2018) revealed that parents in a special school in the Banda Aceh area showed a lack of concern for learning programs. In her research, Fitriyani, L., et al (2018) explained further that parents were not present at receiving report cards which is an important time for parents and teachers to discuss developments and existing problems. Parents seem resigned to whatever results their child gets at school. The attitude of parents who surrender to the school is also in line with the research results of Lutfiatin, M.P. & Hamdan, S.R. (2021) which states that parents do not feel the need to understand the teaching program every year and what children learn in each subject. Parents leave the program to the school because they feel that the school understands their child's condition better.
The attitude of parents who are indifferent and leave the program to the school reflects that there is a deficiency in parents' understanding regarding the importance of participating in the learning process. In general, there are still many parents of children with special needs who do not understand the condition of their children so that many parents have difficulty raising children with special needs, parents do not understand ways to develop their children's potential (Rani, K. et al, 2018). The attitude of parents who tend to hand over the responsibility for the education of their children with special needs to the school seems to be motivated by their ignorance of the important role of parents in the program development process. As internationally through IDEA (1997) it has been stated that parents should be involved in preparing individual learning programs and developing transitional programs, and students become the center of the planning process. Parental involvement in the child's education process can have a positive influence on the child's success. In relation to the role of parents as guardians of students at school, parents play a role in assisting schools in implementing educational programs through collaboration with teachers so that there is a transfer of knowledge and experience from teacher to parents, and vice versa learning success can be achieved by children (Rantauwati, H.S., 2020;Welch & Sheridan in Adams et al, 2016). Meanwhile, to explain the phenomenon of parental surrender to the school, Hornby, G. & Blackwell, I. (2018) in their article revealed that there are four factors in building parental participation in effective elementary schools, namely individual parent and family barriers. ; child factor; parentteacher factor; and societal factors In addition, it was also found that the mother's role dominated in accompanying children to learn from home during a pandemic (Lutfiatin, M.P. & Hamdan, S.R., 2021). The more dominant role of mothers in accompanying children to study at home is a common phenomenon. Barnard & Martell (in Santrock, 2007;Lutfatulatifah, 2020) argues that the role of taking care of children and household chores in the wider community still places a lot of emphasis on the responsibilities of a mother. Lutfatulatifah (2020) explained that the dominant role of the mother in child rearing found in Indonesia is also a formation of a society that believes that there is a traditional division of roles between father and mother. Traditionally, the mother is fully responsible for the housework and childcare. While the father is responsible for family maintenance and protection. Likewise Kamila & Mukhlis (in Septiani & Nasution, 2017) revealed that Indonesia is considered a fatherless country, a country without a father psychologically because of the minimal role of fathers in family education. Meanwhile, Berns (in Septiani & Nasution, 2017) stated that the role of the father in raising children is very important. The role of the father is active involvement physically, affectively, and cognitively through the process of interaction that occurs between father and child. Berns argued that the role of the father has the functions of endowment (recognition of the child's personality), protection (protection of the child), province (ensuring the fulfillment of the child's material needs), and formation (activities that shape social skills and rules). The concept of parenting that is more commensurate in portion for mothers and fathers is the concept of shared parenting. Where joint parenting involves fathers and mothers in parenting tasks that change roles based on gender into human roles (Deutsch, F. M., 2001).
Research related to the role of parents in the implementation of learning programs has been carried out in inclusive schools in basic education units, especially in West Java. Based on this, similar studies can be carried out in other areas such as outside Java Island. The results of research from different geographic and cultural backgrounds may influence the form of parental participation. As Blackwell (2018) reports in his research that the forms of collaboration with parents can differ due to several factors such as culture, economic conditions, opportunities, beliefs, and local policies.
Based on research data collection, it appears that 5 out of 6 research results show parents play a role in evaluating student learning. In this regard, it can be concluded that parental involvement in learning evaluation is quite good. The practice of parental involvement in planning and evaluation can be seen from the research results of Nurhidayah, E.A., et al. (2021), which involves a screening process and the results are monitored and reported to parents and therapists so that the treatment given is appropriate and according to needs. Recommendations for further research are the need to look at parental involvement with organizations, non-governmental organizations, and the government regarding policies that support learning programs for students with special needs. Nonetheless, the number of studies reporting parental involvement in the evaluation process was the least (6 articles out of 18) compared to the planning and implementation studies.

CONCLUSION
The findings of this study indicate that parental involvement in planning learning programs for children with special needs in Indonesia is only limited to placing parents as sources and users of information. Efforts are still needed to encourage parental involvement to a decision-making position related to determining and developing learning programs for children with special needs. The involvement of parents in the practice of assisting children with special needs is the most common practice found in the field. During the pandemic, the role of parents as mentors for children in the implementation of learning increased drastically compared to before. Nevertheless, there are still obstacles in implementation. Meanwhile, involvement in the evaluation of learning programs is far behind compared to the other two stages of the learning process and needs to be studied further. Even so, from the practice that has been carried out, it has shown active parental participation. The results of studies of previous studies in the last five years have been dominated by studies on parental involvement in inclusive educational institutions, especially at the basic education level. Based on the findings obtained, further research is needed which aims to increase parental involvement in the decision-making aspects of learning programs, get involved in the evaluation stages, and studies in schools at the secondary and senior education levels.