Family science and students: Pedagogical connections that transform our lives

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Katherine R. Allen
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12793

EDITORIAL

Family science and students: Pedagogical connections

that transform our lives

Students are the heart and soul of the academic enterprise. Many scholars have found the

motivation and reward for sustaining an academic life through the unparalleled experience of

joining learners within the classroom and beyond. Students provide a healthy dose of reality

about how society is changing and how instructors must change as well. Students offer a pri-

mary window into the needs, commitments, and necessary correctives of real-world experience;

by attending to their opinions, emotions, concerns, and other realities, instructors contributeto

a transformative process in the lives of students that also promotes change in their own lives

and in the institutions where they work. When we embrace education as a process of mutual

teaching and learning, new knowledge can see the light of day. That is a lesson learned over

and over again in the transformative experience of teaching and learning as articulated by the

most intuitive and knowledgeable teachers who have shaped critical pedagogy (e.g., Freire,

1970/1997; hooks, 1994; Palmer, 1998; Shor, 1996) and informed the teaching and learning

practice of family science for decades.

The articles by Fitzpatrick (2022) and Wiersma-Mosley and Garrison (2022) provide excel-

lent examples of the hope for racial equality and the educational practices that promote social

justice and inclusion. Both articles offer ways to diversify the curriculum with a critical eye

toward complex knowledge that does not reduce lived experience to stereotype. They address

professional preparation in the service of improving individual and family lives, which is the

very purpose of transformative family life education (Allen & Lavender-Stott, 2020; Ballard &

Taylor, 2022; Russon et al., 2022). These two articles expand understanding of all families

through the ethical practice of microinclusive teaching (Fitzpatrick) and through diverse inter-

cultural service learning opportunities that address the needs of individuals and families who

are often on the margins of society (Wiersma-Mosley & Garrison).

Fitzpatrick (2022) explores the range of intentional and unintentional microaggressive com-

munication practices that land on the recipient (regardless of the sender’s level of awareness) as

insulting and disparaging and, in the worst cases, as bullying. In place of the insidious yet dan-

gerous microaggressive practices that disproportionately target individuals and families with

multiple intersections affected by racism, sexism, and classism—among other systems of

oppression—Fitzpatrick advances an alternative teaching method, of microinclusion, thereby

providing workable solutions to the harmful practices that have hurt our students, neighbors,

and family members. Microinclusion brings respectful, open-minded, and responsive

approaches to working with and creating connections among diverse groups of students.

Wiersma-Mosley and Garrison (2022) demonstrate through their pedagogical research with

undergraduates that actually working with diverse populations in service learning, which offers

a high-impact experience, rather than just reading about diverse groups, led the service-learning

students toward significant growth in their intercultural understanding. The service-learning

opportunity elevated student sensitivity beyond the typical kind of lecture and class discussion

that are often featured in classrooms, providing real-world tools to develop self-awareness and

to understand power and privilege differentials within self, other, and society. Another benefit

Received: 1 October 2022Accepted: 10 October 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12793

© 2022 National Council on Family Relations.

2104 Family Relations. 2022;71:2104–2106.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare