Featured Speakers

Megan Tschannen-Moran is a Professor of Educational Leadership at William & Mary School of Education.  Growing out of her fourteen years of experience as the founding principal of a school serving a primarily low-income and minority student population in a distressed neighborhood of Chicago, she is motivated to work at the intersection of theory and practice so that schools grow in their capacity to serve all students well.  

Her research and scholarly publications focus on relationships of trust in school settings and how these are related to important outcomes such as the collective efficacy beliefs of a school faculty, teacher professionalism, and student achievement.  Her book Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools 2nd Ed. (2014, Jossey-Bass) reports the experience of three principals and the consequences of their successes and failures to build trust.  Another line of research examines teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and the relationship of those beliefs to teacher behavior and student outcomes.

Together with her husband Bob, she has published two books on coaching.  Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time 2nd Ed.(2020, Corwin) equips those who coach teachers to improve instruction, while Evoking Greatness: Coaching to Bring Out the Best in Educational Leaders (2017, Corwin) supports those who coach building level and central office leaders. Both present a person-centered, no-fault, strengths-based model for supporting professional learning.

Recently, Dr. Tschannen-Moran and her students have developed a new measure of school climate, the Vibrant School Scale, that assesses the aspirations of educational leaders, teachers, students, and parents for schools that cultivate enlivened minds (e.g., curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking), emboldened voice (e.g., democratic decision processes that include teachers, students, and parents), and playful learning.

Dr. Katherine Barko-Alva is an Assistant Professor and Director of the ESL/Bilingual Education program at the William & Mary School of Education. A former McKnight Doctoral fellow at the University of Florida, she holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction in the area of ESL/Bilingual Education. As a bilingual scholar, her research agenda is rooted in classroom practices and explores how Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) /English as a Second Language (ESL) educators make sense of language in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) K12 contexts, how to promote equitable and inclusive practices in order to serve CLD students and their families, and how to create sustainable practices to prepare DLBE/ESL in-service and pre-service teachers. With more than fourteen years of professional experience teaching as well as designing and implementing job-embedded professional development practices at the national and international level, her lived experiences as an English learner/Emergent Bilingual in U.S. schools guide the nature of her work and commitment to families, teachers, and students.

Dr. Barko-Alva was awarded the Virginia Latino Advisory Board Latinx Leadership Award in Education and the Janet Brown Strafer Award (William & Mary School of Education) recognizing her efforts for promoting equitable and inclusive learning spaces in our classrooms and community. In 2021, she received the Jefferson Teaching Award at William & Mary. At the national level, she has been selected as a member of the iCivics ESL National Advisory Council to support making civics education accessible for English learners/Emergent Bilinguals using video game platforms. She is currently a Co-Director for W&M Scholars Undergraduate Research Experience (WMSURE/2020-2023) and served as a fellow for the Center for the Liberal Arts (CLA) at William & Mary in 2019-2021. Her latest book published by Teachers College Press Columbia University (Equity in school-parent partnerships: Cultivating community and family trust in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms) examines fossilized practices within today’s educational system that marginalize and devalue the contributions and cultural biographies of families, particularly CLD families. This book creates opportunities for reflection and provides suggestions for school communities seeking to re-envision the meaning of family engagement.

Janise Parker is an Assistant Professor of School Psychology. She completed a two-year postdoctoral appointment in the school psychology program at the University of South Florida, doing both research and teaching, prior to coming to William & Mary. In addition to her current appointment, Janise is a Licensed Psychologist and Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP).

Dr. Parker's research primarily focuses on student engagement and motivation among adolescents from underrepresented groups and culturally responsive practice in school psychology. Along those lines, she has much experience collaborating with high school educators to support at-risk youth from diverse backgrounds and providing counseling support in public schools for middle and high school students.