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Benefits of collaboration between parents and teachers in general and parents of special needs children in particular seem allegedly obvious, but apparently the implementation of this concept in everyday life is rather complex. Interpretations regarding parental involvement (PI) and its applied implications might differ between parents and professionals. A questionnaire aiming to assess teachers' attitudes toward the involvement of parents of children with special needs in the inclusion in Israel was developed, based on three significant areas: teachers' attitudes toward the general implications of PI, toward the role of PI in decision making and toward the communication needed with the parents. 75 statements from various questionnaires were collected and analysed by experts. After this analysis, a pilot phase was performed (i.e. the questionnaire was administered to 58 Israeli teachers). The internal reliability measure was calculated to evaluate the level of correlation between each item belonging to the same dimension. Explorative factor analysis revealed internal dimensions that connect to each other. Finally, a questionnaire with 41 statements was compiled. The construction of the questionnaire is part of more extensive research, during which the reliability and the validity of the instrument will be re-examined on a larger sample of 138 participants.

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The research deals with a Personal-Academic Coaching Program based on "The Six Stages Coaching Model" for promoting students' achievements, self-efficacy and effective learning strategies. Research literature pertaining to this research relies on Positive Psychology (Seligman, 2007), Humanistic Psychology and Self-Efficacy (Bandura, 1977) theories, and presents the Personal-Academic Coaching Model. The research examines the influence of personal academic coaching on students' achievements and the main findings of the first research stage. Statistical data shows that more than 30% of engineering students drop out in their first year which is not congruent with their academic ability. These data constituted the starting point for this research. The Program that was developed is a unique personal-academic coaching program for promoting students' learning, self-efficacy and academic achievements. All The coaches are college especially trained lecturers. The research aim was to examine the personal-academic coaching program's contribution to students' academic achievements. 407 engineering students in unsatisfactory academic status were chosen to participate in this mixed methods research. Partial findings revealed that students who participated in the personal coaching program reached higher achievements than their peers who did not. These findings reinforce the hypothesis that personal academic coaching contributes to improving students' grades and emphasizes the importance of investing in accompanying students in future programs. The validity of these findings will be examined in the second part of this research.