Christian Williams

By Christian Scannell

This review examines the relationship between life adversities, parental well-being, parental self-efficacy, and social support as potential factors mediating parent-child relationships and children’s outcomes. Generally, research on adversity has focused on children’s experiences and the long-term impact of adversity on development and health trajectories. More recently, a focus on resilience and growth after adversity has received increasing attention. Existing literature has identified how parents can best support their children through adverse events and suggested parenting programs that emphasize skill-building to parent children who have experienced adversity. Yet often overlooked is the critical impact of adverse events on the parent and how this may interfere with the cultivation of an environment of support and increase stigmatization due to unmet parenting expectations. While parenting occurs in context, it is often judged based upon societal expectations of childrearing practices and optimal outcomes with little understanding of the factors that contribute to parenting behaviors. The experience of adversity has the potential to impact parental sense of competence and parenting practices. However, parental self-efficacy and social supports can play mediating role in the experience of adversity and parenting stress. The integration of these contextual factors allows for the development of expectations that are best suited to meet the needs of vulnerable family systems.

Part of the book: Parenting

By Christian Scannell

In a time where many students and their families are grappling with uncertainties and educators are faced with uniquely complex challenges in the delivery of effective instruction, the ability to create educational communities that respond to the needs of all learners is crucial. There is increasing emergence of technology and pedagogy that have facilitated connections to the classroom never seen before. Yet, educators and school communities need to respond to this time of uncertainty with the lens of trauma sensitive instruction, the creation of meaningful teacher-student relationships, and building the resilience necessary for students to thrive in the ever-shifting landscape of education. This descriptive paper explores strategies for implementation including creating safe spaces for learning, addressing disparities in learning opportunities, preventing academic disruption, and using a proactive approach to address stress and trauma in the classroom. The multitude of teaching modalities available has paved the way for a transition to fluid education but the need to do so with intentionality cannot be ignored. The transition to remote and hybrid learning may change the landscape of education forever, and with it comes the responsibility to ensure high expectations for student success are balanced with compassion, and rigidity is replaced with flexibility.

Part of the book: Teacher Education in the 21st Century

By Christian Williams

Open pedagogy is an approach to instruction that places the student as a partner in the learning environment moving beyond traditional methods of instructional delivery that center the instructor as the expert. Open pedagogy allows for student contributions to the classroom that move beyond traditional instructional methods such as disposable assignments and educator led classroom discussions that are created by faculty to provide students with a learning experience. Instead, open pedagogy facilitates a student-centered learning environment that engages students as co-creators of learning and allows them to play a role in the facilitation of the learning environment. This paper focuses on the role of open pedagogy in community engaged service learning and is based on a quasi-experimental research study that explored student perceptions of community engaged service learning with and without an open pedagogical approach. The results report student satisfaction with the experience, perceived value, and the likelihood that they would take a course that combines these pedagogies in the future.

Part of the book: Active Learning