I am a first year doctoral student in the International Education program. Coming from a family of educators, the value of education was instilled in me at a young age. I earned a BA in English Teaching from The University of Montana, and I started my professional career as a high school English Language Arts teacher for at-risk youth.

After teaching in the US for a few years, I had the opportunity to move to Nepal to work with a girls’ education organization and later design the curriculum and teach English Literature for a local school starting an International Baccalaureate program. During this time, I also helped design and implement a teacher training pilot program. This began shifting my interest from the classroom to education programming, and I went on to earn my M.Ed. in International Education Policy from Harvard University.

Following my masters, I worked for World Education supporting and advising basic education and early grade reading projects and was based in Cambodia for much of this time. During my time advising projects, I found myself questioning certain structures and processes within the international development sector and often felt that I wanted a greater level of expertise to bring to the programs I supported. I began a PhD to explore some of these questions and further develop my theoretical knowledge and research skills. As I study, I am also advising a small pilot early grade reading project in Nepal. I’m excited to be able to apply what I am learning through my courses and the vibrant community at UMass towards this project.

My research interests are in literacy and teacher behavior change, primarily in development programming. I am also interested in how coaching and mentoring models can improve teacher effectiveness. While I haven’t taught in formal classrooms for quite some time now, I find that my “teacher lens” has often influenced how I design, evaluate, and interact with education development projects; and it similarly helps guide my research – all with the aim of enhancing teaching and learning practices and improving student learning outcomes. [9-18]

Email: jldouglas@umass.edu