|
Abstract
|
In 2018, Child Abuse & Neglect released a special issue titled, "Highlighting education and learning in the context of childhood abuse, neglect, and related stressors" (Dube, 2018a), which focused on the association of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with educational outcomes. Drawing from that special issue, we identified a need to further examine the complexity of learning-related processes and mechanisms to promote positive learning in the face of trauma and adversity across the lifespan. Therefore, the purpose of this special issue is to expand on the "Nexus of Health and Education" (Dube & McGiboney, 2018) and include a stronger consideration of the potentially malleable learning-related mechanisms in formal and informal learning environments among children who experienced adversity.
Recognizing education as a well-established social determinant of health (Dube & Rishi, 2017), the goal of the 2018 special issue in Child Abuse & Neglect was to understand the underlying contribution of adversity (e.g., child maltreatment, early life stress) on indicators of negative educational or academic outcomes across the life span (Dube & McGiboney, 2018). Examples of consequences included decreased school readiness among early learners (Panlilio, Jones Harden, & Harring, 2018), decreased school engagement (Font & Cage, 2018), increased absenteeism rates in high school (Hagborg, Berglund, & Fahlke, 2018), increased communication problems between foster homes and school for children with disabilities (Mires, Lee, & McNaughton, 2018), and decreased likelihood of graduating secondary (Lemkin, Kistin, Cabral, Aschengrau, & Bair-Merritt, 2018) and post-secondary school (Morton, 2018) to name a few.
These studies are important in their own right as they provided the field with a lens for understanding how trauma and adversity can influence learning and academic difficulties. Moreover, this body of research provided the field with the rationale for why multi-generational trauma-informed practices are needed in educational settings (Dube & McGiboney, 2018). However, understanding the transactional processes that occur within the learning context requires a deeper examination to identify points of implementation for trauma-informed prevention and intervention efforts. Moreover, these points of implementation need to account for mechanisms of learning that are important in mitigating the negative consequences of adversity and supporting children's strengths despite adversity. Therefore, the field needs a unified approach to building learning environments that can support students from all backgrounds and experiences in a safe and nurturing manner (Panlilio, Ferrara, & MacNeill, 2019). Through the current special issue, we bring a collection of articles together using a conceptual framework (see Fig. 1) adapted from Panlilio and Corr (2020) to address this prevailing gap.
Language: en |