WILL PARNELL, Ed.D., is a professor in early childhood education and a pedagogical liaison to the Helen Gordon Child Development Center at Portland State University. He also served two 3-year terms as Department Chair of the Curriculum and Instruction Department. His specialty areas are rethinking readiness in the early years, disrupting traditional early childhood research, creating learning designs, and documenting and making young children’s learning visible. Dr. Parnell currently serves as the Foundation President of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Principle Investigator on three research grants totaling 2.5 million in funding, and Founder of the Inventing Remida Portland project.
Dr. Parnell finished his doctorate in education at PSU in 2005, and has been researching Reggio-inspired practices related to making listening and learning visible and valued, and working with children’s creative expression, representational work and Remida creative reuse materials. His most recent research centers on meaning-making through early childhood education arts-based narrative-building processes that informs classroom practices. Dr. Parnell has written on and presented many journal articles and book chapters about his research. He has co-edited and authored three books: Making Meaning in Early Childhood Research, Disrupting Research in Early Childhood Education, and Rethinking Readiness in Early Childhood Education. His other scholarly research articles and book chapters focus on children, teachers, and parents' lived experiences and he is actively working with many doctoral candidates in the U.S. and Australia.
Dr. Parnell has been an educator and researcher in the field of early childhood education/teacher education since 1986 with a significant background in teaching and leadership. His background includes work in lab schools, parent cooperatives, and public-school settings and he has consulted around the globe from across the U.S and Canada to countries like China, Australia, Bulgaria, Denmark. He has also started many schools for young children, working with architects on place-making, space planning, and pedagogy in architectural design.