Department of Child Development, Literacy and Special Education

Dr. Kindel Turner Nash is the Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood Literacy in Reich College of Education's Department of Child Development, Literacy, and Special Education at Appalachian State University. She has held faculty and program director positions in language, literacy, and early childhood education at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Nash’s research, teaching, and service centers on culturally sustaining and humanizing early literacy practices, highly effective teachers, and transformative approaches to teacher preparation. A former classroom teacher and literacy specialist in schools that served historically ignored children, Nash has always grounded her scholarship in humanizing and generative collaborations with classroom teachers and school leaders.

Since moving to North Carolina, Nash has taught undergraduate and graduate literacy courses for teachers and teacher candidates at Appalachian State. She has provided professional learning in Watauga and Henderson County Schools, at the Academy at Middle Fork, (Appalachian’s lab school), and to teachers across the state through the Science of Reading Fellows, a professional learning opportunity provided by the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation. Additionally, Nash serves on a special committee with Asheville City Schools’ leaders to support Black multilingual students.

She has edited two books based on her classroom-based research and authored more than thirty journal publications. Her third and latest book, Culturally Sustaining Practices for PreK-3rd Classrooms: The Children Come Full, co-authored with classroom teachers, was recognized as an Edward Fry Book Award finalist by the Literacy Research Association (2023).

Nash has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant awards from numerous sources, including the U.S. Department of Education and the Spencer Foundation.

She has delivered keynote and presidential addresses for the University of Virginia, the American Educational Research Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, Sarah Lawrence College, Meredith College, California State University, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Nash was awarded the Service Award for Reading Education by the Local Investment Commission of Kansas City, Missouri for her work in moving campus-based literacy coursework into community settings (2015).

In 2022, Nash was named the Early Literacy Teacher Educator of the Year by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Click here for Dr. Nash's CV.