Teaching, Learning & Educational Sciences

Sarah J. Donovan's professional interests include ethical, inclusive curriculum, methods, and assessment practices in secondary English classrooms. She is a former junior high English language arts teacher of fifteen years and an Associate Professor of Secondary English Education at Oklahoma State University.She wrote Genocide Literature in Middle and Secondary Classrooms (2016) and the young adult novel, Alone Together (2018). She is a co-editor for the online journal Writers Who Care. Dr. Donovan was the Books in Review columnist for The ALAN Review (2019) and serves as a state representative and board member for The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE (ALAN). She is the founder of a blog and poetry writing community for teachers, Ethical ELA, and has contributed chapters to The Best Lesson Series (Talks with Teachers, 2018), Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), Moving Beyond Loss to Societal Grieving (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom (Routledge, 2019).

Research Interests:

poetry as inquiry; teacher education; anti-bias, inclusive curriculum, methods, and assessment; young adult literature

Amy Dunn is passionate about fostering a love for reading and writing through evidence-based instructional approaches in elementary and middle school classrooms. She supports pre-service teachers as a literacy education teaching instructor in the School of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Sciences at Oklahoma State University. Additionally, she serves as the Associate Director of the Randall and Carol White Reading and Mathematics Center. Amy is currently pursuing her PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture. Her research interests include supporting children with reading and writing difficulties, increasing literacy engagement, utilizing AI to foster critical literacy skills, integrating literacy across content areas, and rural libraries.

Erin Dyke is an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies and Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professor in Rural Teacher Education at Oklahoma State University. Her primary line of research examines the pedagogies, organizing, and impacts of contemporary educator movements on educational practice and policy. Dyke has published work in this area in the Handbook of Educational Policy Research, Berkeley Review of Education, the edited volume Walkout: Teacher Militancy, Activism, and School Reform, and she co-edited a four-part special issue series for Critical Education highlighting empirical studies of and organizer interviews with educator movements from across North America. She is currently co-editing a special issue series for Workplace: A Journal of Academic Labor on teachers' work in contentious political times. With support from the Spencer Foundation, Dyke undertook a two-year community-based oral history study of the 2018 Oklahoma Education Walkouts with a team of teacher-researchers, with whom she co-authored an article in Critical Education to address underrepresented narratives and perspectives in public accounting of the event. She and her research team curated a public collection of educators' oral history narratives of their strike experiences, preserved and published with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at OSU. This research informs her 2023 book, co-authored with Brendan Muckian-Bates, Rank-and-File Rebels: Theories of Power and Change in the 2018 Education Strikes with WAC Clearinghouse and the University Press of Colorado. With co-author Dana Morrison, she is currently writing a book (Routledge, 2026) that will serve as an entryway for pre-service and early career teachers to learn about the complexities of teachers' unions and grassroots organizations. 

Dyke also engages community-based methods and oral history in her work with students and colleagues to address settler memory in U.S. curriculum and education. She collaborates with interdisciplinary scholars and communities to explore ethical and decolonial ways of teaching and learning Indigenous truthtelling of boarding school histories. She has co-presented projects related to this work at the Annual Symposium on the American Indian, Native American and Indigenous Studies annual meeting, the Oral History Association, and the International Oral History Association. She has also published ethnographic studies of liberatory curriculum and pedagogy with K-12 students and teachers in Educational Studies, International Journal of Multicultural Education, and Journal of Education Human Resources. For the past few years, she has also collaborated with electrical engineers to provide interdisciplinary curricular support for secondary school STEM educators in teaching and learning about semiconductors, including the ethics, interdisciplinary concepts, and social dimensions of teaching and learning about modern technological infrastructure.

Research Interests:

contemporary educator movements; social movement unionism; critical and culturally sustaining pedagogies; decolonial and abolitionist movements and pedagogies; trans- and interdisciplinary responses to pressing curricular challenges

I began my career as an educator after earning a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and later a master’s degree in Reading and Literacy. I taught 4th grade for 10 years before joining Oklahoma State University in 2015. As a faculty member in the College of Education and Human Sciences, I teach in the elementary education program with a focus on elementary social studies methods courses. Additionally, I mentor student teachers and work with the ExCEL program and OK-Thrive to prepare future educators for success in diverse and dynamic classrooms.

Dr. Martin-Young is a Teaching Assistant Professor for the School of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Sciences in the College of Education and Human Sciences. Her public education experience includes 23 years in 4th and 5th grades and 7 years as an elementary school librarian. After retiring from K-12, Dr. Martin-Young finished her Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University. While working on her doctorate, she worked as both a GRA and a GTA for OSU. As a teaching assitant professor, Dr. Martin-Young teaches a wide variety of courses (both online and face-to-face) in the elementary education department
Research Interests:

Dr. Martin-Young's research interests include place-based education, hidden history, children's and young adult literacy, cemeteries, and legislation concerning Oklahoma teachers.

Dr. Moore is a licensed health service psychologist and a nationally certified school psychologist with experience across school systems, private practice, and healthcare settings. Prior to her appointment at OSU, she served as faculty in the Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics Section at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She has developed expertise in autism and contributes to statewide professional development and capacity-building efforts of the Oklahoma Autism Center. She leads an early career mentorship program for Oklahoma school psychologists and has served on the board of the Oklahoma School Psychological Association since 2017 in roles including secretary, president, and communications committee co-chair.

Her research focuses on strategies to improve the implementation of evidence-based practices in schools and communities, with an emphasis on autism and developmental differences. 

Dr. Moore’s teaching includes introducing first-year students to the field of school psychology and providing training and supervision in the assessment strand. 

Dr. Shanedra Dilese Nowell is an Associate Professor of Social Studies Education at Oklahoma State University. She taught middle and high school social studies and journalism courses before moving into higher education. As part of her my work at Oklahoma State, she serves as Director of the Oklahoma State University Writing Project and as Assitant Chair of the School of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Studies.

Research Interests:

My research interests include social studies education, Holocaust education, media literacy education, content area writing, and place-based education. My publications include research on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, digital and media literacy, social media and education, and literacies in social studies.

Dr. Brian Poncy is a Professor and Director for the School Psychology Program at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on academic interventions and behavioral principles of learning, specifically in the area of mathematics. He received his doctorate at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (2006) and is a co-author of the book Effective Math Interventions: A Guide to Whole Number Knowledge. Dr. Poncy also created the Measures & Interventions for Numeracy Development (MIND), a set of open source materials to support teachers in the assessment and implementation of empirically-validated interventions to increase early numeracy and computation skills (www.factsonfire.com). He is a recipient of the 2005 Outstanding Dissertation Award from Division 16 (School Psychology) of the American Psychological Association and the School Psychology Review 2015 Honorable Mention Article of the Year.

Research Interests:

Academic Intervention, math computation intervention, & Behavioral Learning Theory

Dr. Jenn Sanders is a Professor of Literacy Education at Oklahoma State University. Her academic passions are developing teachers' knowledge of effective writing instruction and supporting the literacy learning of underserved students. She taught elementary school in rural Florida for five years and has worked with urban schools in Oklahoma, Mexico, and Belize. Her research focuses on K-12 writing instruction, writing peer tutoring, teachers' professional development, and inclusive representations in children's and young adult literature. Dr. Sanders has published three professional books: They're All Writers!: Teaching peer tutoring in the elementary writing center (Sanders & Damron, 2017); Literacies, the Arts, and Multimodality (Albers & Sanders, 2010); and most recently a co-authored book with Dr. Sarah J. Donovan titled Writer to Writer: 7 Community-building Workshops for Teaching Language Arts (2026). She has served as chair of the Notable Books for a Global Society awards, member of the Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts award committee, and co-founder of the Whippoorwill Book Award for Rural YA literature.

Dr. Sanders is committed to Global Meaning Making (Tierney, 2018). She has worked extensively with educators in Belize, collaborating on literacy and language arts professional learning and development programs and fostering sustainable change. She has also worked with educators in Puebla, Mexico as a literacy education consultant and professional development facilitator. 

In addition to her academic work, Dr. Sanders has significant leadership training and experience. She completed the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education's Standards of Professional Practice Institute, a 6-month leadership training program, and AASCU's Emerging Leaders Program. Dr. Sanders served in a variety of leadership roles, including three years as School Head for the School of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Sciences and a year as Interim Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. She served two years as Honors Director for a College of Education, Health, and Aviation and served on the Honors Committee for the University. Dr. Sanders also directed the community-oriented Randall and Carol White Reading and Mathematics Center that serves K-12 children and families with academic tutoring and served as the University's Director of K-12 charter school authorizing.

Research Interests:

Dr. Sanders' research explores K-12 writing pedagogies, writing teachers' professional learning, and inclusive representations in children's and YA literature. In addition, she is interested in university faculty teaching excellence and faculty development. 

Dr. Maria Stewart is a mathematics educator with a Ph.D. in Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum from the University of Missouri, as well as two degrees from Bowling Green State University focused on secondary mathematics education. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at Oklahoma State University. Previously she was a high school mathematics teacher in Ohio for three years. Her primary strand of research is focused on understanding the experiences of beginning teachers as they transition into the field of education. Dr. Stewart's second area of research is focused on learning how teachers develop expertise in and implement ambitious mathematics instruction.