Chapter 10: Bridging Education and Neuroscience to Support Transformation in Teaching and Learning: A Design-Based Approach

In this chapter we will describe how a research practice partnership (Penuel & Gallagher, 2017) with multidisciplinary perspectives is being used to support learning and development. In particular we explore how exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) impacts young children’s academic and social development. Beginning in Fall 2018 we began following a cohort of 70 four and five-year-old children, continuously assessing their early neurocognitive, language/literacy, numeracy, attentional, executive function/self-regulation, and social-emotional development in schools and classrooms. This interdisciplinary design integrates behavioral assessments, brain measures, and naturalistic observations of classrooms and homes to capture a holistic picture of each individual child nested within his/her specific contexts of development to identify pedagogical efforts that could alleviate negative impacts of ACEs. In this chapter we describe how we engage in a research practice partnership in collaboration with district administrators, principals, early education teachers of children 4 to 8 years old, and community partners to support young diverse learners to mitigate ACEs and support early learning opportunities that are nurturing, supportive, and appropriately challenging.