Kyoung Jin Kim, Ph. D., is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Administration. She received a Ph. D. in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining UNT, she was an assistant professor at Arkansas State University, Ball State University, and Wheelock College. In addition, she was a Clinical Assistant Professor at Boston University. Her teaching in higher education has a wide range of both undergraduate and graduate courses including child development, principles of early childhood education, foundations in communication and collaboration with families, professionals, and communities, teaching, and curriculum in diverse early childhood settings, practicum courses, action research, nurturing children’s social competence, environmental processes, and assessment, learning with/from children, advanced studies in early childhood education, and documenting young children’s learning and development.  

All of her teaching experiences inspired her research. Providing a high-quality program for young children is her central interest. She researched program quality in education, teacher evaluation, teacher efficacy in working with diverse families, and professional development to assess teacher quality. Curriculum-wise, she examined many effective programs on different instructional approaches on diverse subject matters such as math, science, art, and critical literacy. Lastly, as diversity is another streamline of her research, she examined racial diversity through role-playing as well as reflected on her own experience as an immigrant mother and teacher educator focusing on diversity and working with immigrant children and families. Her scholarly works have been published in journals such as the International Journal of Early Childhood, Journal of Research in Early Childhood, Journal of Research in Early Childhood, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Early Childhood Development and Care, and Early Childhood Education.