Resolving Resistance to Support Services: Special Education Teacher–Parent Negotiation on Challenging Behaviours of Children with Autism in Mainstream Chinese Elementary Schools

This study examines how special education teachers in mainstream Chinese elementary schools and parents of children with autism negotiate challenging behaviour support services, focusing on the dynamic process through which parental resistance is transformed into cooperation. Using a phenomenological approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 special education teachers and 18 parents, purposively sampled from six schools and extensively interconnected through existing service relationships. Findings reveal that parental resistance stems from divergent behavioural attributions, differential severity assessments and stigma-related fears, manifesting across behavioural, verbal and emotional dimensions. In response, teachers employ culturally adaptive negotiation strategies – maintaining parental face to reduce defensiveness, building personal relationships to establish trust, utilising objective data to reach consensus and implementing gradual changes to minimise resistance. Four mechanisms facilitate transformation from parental resistance to cooperation: visible evidence of children’s progress, peer support, substantive participation in decision-making and gradual development of professional knowledge. These findings demonstrate that in collectivist cultural contexts, effective challenging behaviour support requires culturally responsive negotiation processes that transform parents from recipients of professional directives into collaborative partners, contributing to an integrated understanding of culture, power and negotiation in inclusive education.