Tiffany M. Nyachae

Professional Bio

Tiffany M. Nyachae earned her doctoral degree in literacy education: curriculum, instruction, and the science of learning at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Currently, she is assistant professor of education and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State, College of Education, where she teaches undergraduate courses on literacy and graduate courses on critically conscious and humanizing research, Ethnic Studies, and the learning sciences. As a Black Feminist pedagogue and a transdisciplinary, community-engaged scholar, Tiffany’s lived experiences and complicated historical connection to this land foreground her justice work in various contexts, for the purposes of reimagining schools, our world, and overall social transformation.

Informed by her experiences as a middle school teacher, Nyachae's research focuses on: (a) supporting urban teachers committed to social justice through "race space" critical professional development; (b) social justice literacy workshops for youth of color; (c) and extracurricular programs and curriculum for Black girls. Her research interests also include social justice teaching and education, critical dialogue, radical listening, critical literacy, critical multimodality, Black feminism, Black girlhood, critical race theory, racial literacy, teacher learning, student learning, critical qualitative research methodologies, design-based research and learning environments. Her publications have appeared in journals such as Urban Education, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Multicultural Learning and Teaching, Gender and Education, and Qualitative Inquiry.