Taeyeon Kim Assistant Professor
Ph.D., K-12 Educational Administration, Michigan State University, 2020
M.A., Educational Administration, Seoul National University, 2014
M.Ed., Elementary Education Administration, Daegu National University of Education, 2011
B.A., Elementary Education, Daegu National University of Education, 2008
Dr. Kim joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2020 as an assistant professor. Her research examines the intersections of policy and leadership practices that promote equitable and humanizing practices in K-12 education. Specifically, her research focuses on how educational leaders negotiate policy mandates, organizational capacity, and sociopolitical contexts in a way to best serve the needs of students and communities while navigating tensions and dilemmas coming from accountability pressures. Her research draws on policy enactment, sociocultural learning theories, and transnational/comparative perspectives. In her research, she tries to re-visit and re-imagine concepts around policy and leadership by centering the voices of school leaders who advocate for equity and social justice. Her work has been published in Educational Administration Quarterly, AERA Open, Comparative Education Review, Journal of Education Policy, and others. Dr. Kim serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership.
Prior to higher education, Dr. Kim spent more than seven years in the K-12 education serving as an elementary school teacher and professional development consultant for teachers and principals in South Korea. She earned her Ph.D. in K-12 Educational Administration from Michigan State University.
Areas of Expertise
- Policy Enactment
- Leadership Development and Equity
- Educational Accountability
- Comparative Perspectives in Education
- Qualitative Research Methods
Dr. Kim teaches courses in P-12 educational leadership and qualitative research methods for doctoral students. Dr. Kim advises students in the Ed.D. and Ph.D. programs with a focus on P-12 educational leadership.
You can download her papers from the UNL Digital Commons.
- Gutiérrez, L. A., Kim, T., Kuttner, P. J., Partola, S., Niang, A., Yanagui, A., López, G. R., Hernandez, L., & Mayer-Glenn, J (2022). Community-centered school leadership: Radical care and aperturas during COVID-19. AERA Open 8(1), 1-14.
- Kim, T., & Weiner, J. (2022). Negotiating incomplete autonomy: Portraits from three school principals. Education Administration Quarterly, 58(3),487-521.
- Kim, T., & Mauldin, C. (2022). Troubling heroic discourses in social justice leadership. Frontiers in Education.
- Wright, J., & Kim, T. (2022). Reframing community (dis)engagement: The discursive connection between undemocratic policy enactment, minoritized communities and resistance. Journal of Education Policy, 37(2), 186-204.
- Kim, T., Lim, S., Yang, M., & Park, S. J. (2021). Making sense of schooling during COVID-19: Crisis as opportunity in Korean schools. Comparative Education Review, 65(4), 617-639.*
*Received the 2022 CIES East Asia SIG Best Paper Award & 2022 KAERA Outstanding Research Paper Award.
- Kim, T. (2020). What is the meaning of educational leadership in a time of policy engineering? International Journal of Leadership in Education.
- Kim, T., & Lee, Y. (2020). Principal instructional leadership for teacher participation in professional development: Evidence from Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. Asia Pacific Education Review. 21, 261-278.
Taeyeon Kim currently works on several research projects. With the Layman grant, her recent research explores school leaders’ understanding of equity in the NE accountability framework. She also examines emotional aspects of leadership learning in the context of preparing equity leaders, which is sponsored by the Center for Transformative Teaching at UNL. Her other projects explore community-engaged leadership as well as policy learning and enactment during COVID-19.
- EDAD 852: School Culture and Student Behavior
- EDAD 983: Qualitative Methods for Educational Administration Research
- EDAD 995: Narrative Inquiry (Advanced Qualitative Methods Elective)
- EDAD 999: Doctoral Dissertation