Wonkyung "Won" Jang is an assistant professor in the Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum at The University of Oklahoma, specializing in language and literacy development and learning during early childhood. He is interested in uncovering how variations in children's physical, social, and linguistic environments contribute to language development and in applying this knowledge to the development of interventions that target increasing teacher and parent speech. His research also examines how innovative statistical and computational techniques can better capture individual differences in language development among children with diverse developmental, cultural, linguistic, and educational needs.
Jang received his doctoral degree in Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 2022. He earned a Master of Science degree in Statistics and a Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics en route to his Ph.D. For the past decade, Jang worked as a teacher and a university-based researcher focused on Early Care and Education (ECE) and explored how ECE stakeholders can embrace the power of “Big Data” to help children overcome developmental challenges, provide the simple joy of play, and tackle pressing social justice challenges. He was honored by the UNC's Office of the Provost with its Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the highest campus-wide recognition for teaching excellence. He was also honored by the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators with its NAECTE Foundation Doctoral Scholarship.
