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. A former classroom teacher and literacy specialist in schools that served historically marginalized children, Nash is first and foremost committed to humanizing and generative collaborations between classroom teachers and teacher preparation programs.

Nash’s research, teaching, and service centers on culturally sustaining and humanizing early literacy practices, highly effective teachers, and transformative approaches to teacher preparation.

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, published by Teachers College Press, was co-authored with classroom teachers.

Nash has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant awards from 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.  In 2022, Nash was awarded the Early Literacy Teacher Educator of the Year by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Nash is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English - Executive Board of the Early Childhood Education and Assembly American Educational Research Association - Critical Perspectives in Early Childhood Education SIG. 

In 2022-2023, she served on the Provost's Literacy Taskforce to realign coursework and field experiences with state requirements, and also as the Coordinator of the Literacy Innovation Leaders initiative within the UNC system.

Dr. Nash's Curriculum Vitae