William Kerns

Service Assistant Professor/ Coordinator for the English Secondary Education Progaram

As coordinator of the English Secondary Education program, I believe in the promotion of reflective practice and in building relationships between universities, K-12 schools, and communities. My research includes investigating the meaning-making of undergraduate preservice ELA teachers to shed light on ways that teacher educators can explicitly help preservice teachers to understand the connection between reflective practice and effective teaching. Additionally, I am interested in exploring ways that an understanding of strong literacy instruction can inform instruction in language arts classrooms. This includes an exploration of multimodal methods for teaching literature and composition.

Specializations:

· Methods of Teaching Language Arts

· Methods of Teaching Literacy

· Adolescent Literacy

· Composition

· Composition pedagogy

Selected Publications:

· Kerns, W. (2024). The impact of policies that promote the science of reading on English teacher preparation. In J. Gallo, C. Parsons, & H. Hallman (Eds.), Designing English Language Arts teacher education pedagogy for innovation and change (pp. 137-149). Rowman and Littlefield.

· Semingson, P., Kilpatrick, C., & Kerns, W. (2023). Connected" conversations: A retrospective on virtual ESL service learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. In J. Keengwe (Ed.), Handbook of research on innovative digital practices in higher education (pp. 1-15). IGI Global.

· Kerns, W. & Walls, B.P. (2022). Classroom management in urban schools: The need for meaningful field experiences and mentoring. International Journal of Teacher Education and Professional Development, 5(1), 1-17.

· Semingson, P. & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S157-S169.

· Kerns, W. (2021). Promoting anti-racist dialogue through Holocaust education. In R.S. Savitz and N.A. Vines (Eds.), 2020 Yearbook of the American Reading Forum (pp. 65-80). American Reading Forum.

· Kerns, W. & McCaleb, A. (2020). Writing workshop: A chance for literacy to come alive. The Missouri Reader, 43 (2), 26-28

· Semingson, P., Owens, D., & Kerns, W. (2020). “Connected” literacies: Virtual storybook reading and digital writing during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In R.E. Ferdig, E. Baumgartner, R. Hartshorne, R. Kaplan- Rakowski, & C. Mouza (Eds.), Teaching, Technology, and Teacher Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Stories from the Field (85-88). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

· Kerns, W.A. (2019). Quality assurance within synchronous online instruction. In J. Yoon & P. Semingson (Eds.), Educational technology and resources for synchronous learning in higher education (pp. 211-228). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.