About

Tamara V. Young, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at NC State University. Her scholarship focuses on the implementation and impact of educational programs, policies, and practices, with particular attention to the politics of education, STEM initiatives, and facilitators and impediments to successful implementation. She has extensive experience leading and collaborating on large-scale, externally funded research and evaluation projects, including co-principal investigator roles for NSF-funded programs such as the Interdisciplinary Biochemistry Masters Program (IBMP), which examines program implementation, student supports, and outcomes aimed at expanding participation and success in STEM graduate education. Dr. Young has also served as Co–Principal Investigator on state-funded evaluations related to teacher recruitment, retention, and workforce sustainability, and collaborates with local education agencies, public school units, and nonprofit organizations to provide consultation on evaluation design and impact assessment. She teaches courses in educational evaluation, policy research, and implementation research, and her work supports the development of logic models to strengthen educational programs and policy initiatives.

Research topics

• Political science
• Sociology
• Public administration
• Psychology
• Mathematics education

Selected publications

• Middle and high school teachers' implementation reflections of photonics and optics curriculum in a qualitative study

  14th Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics: ETOP 2017 · 2017-08-16 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The purpose of this paper is to describe middle and high school science teachers’ self-reported experiences learning and adopting novel optics and photonics content. The hybrid teacher professional development program design, theoretical framework, methodology, findings, and implications related to teachers’ adoption decisions of optics and photonics content will be reported in the paper.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Promoting Career and College Readiness, Aspirations, and Self‐Efficacy: Curriculum Field Test

  The Career Development Quarterly · 2017-06-01 · 45 citations

  articleSenior author

  To address the need for enhanced career and college readiness, a classroom guidance curriculum was studied using a pretest–posttest nonequivalent groups quasi‐experimental design. Data from 163 ninth‐grade students enrolled in a low‐performing high school were analyzed via hierarchical linear modeling. The analyses indicated a treatment effect on postsecondary education‐going knowledge and career and college readiness self‐efficacy, accounting for 100% of the variance explained by classroom‐level factors and indicating potential for the classroom guidance curriculum. The findings encourage career and professional school counselors to proactively employ similar classroom guidance programs aimed at encouraging high school students to consider postsecondary education opportunities. Future research could focus on component analyses of the curriculum, broadening the target populations, using mixed‐method designs, and additional validity studies of the dependent measures.

  PublisherDOI

• Exploring the Institutionalisation of an Ethic of Care in Outbound Mobility Programs

  2016-01-01

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• Explaining How Political Actors Gain Strategic Positions

  Educational Policy · 2016-08-04 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Using data from interviews with 111 reading policy actors from California, Connecticut, Michigan, and Utah, this study explains how individuals acquire central positions in issue networks. Regression analyses showed that the greater a policy actor’s reputed influence was and the more similar their preferences were to other members in the network, the more central an actor was in a state reading policy network. The findings suggest that reading policy actors were forming relationships with other actors to gain access to influential organizations that have resources that political actors themselves may not possess—irrespective of policy preferences. In addition, the results indicate that central actors in an issue network may indeed hold the minority or majority opinion—marginalization due to divergence is not a given.

  PublisherDOI

• Teaching Introductory Quantitative Research Methods to Doctoral Students in Educational Leadership: Using Real Data to Improve Statistical Literacy

  International Research in Higher Education · 2016-03-24 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of the quantitative research method experiences of educational leadership doctoral students and explore instructors’ perspectives on teaching the course through the specific pedagogical approach of using real secondary data. Survey data confirms students favorably support the use of real data in statistics courses, despite challenges to learning statistical software and time constraints that inhibit full engagement in the analyses. Qualitative data illustrates the affordances and constraints instructors face in teaching applied quantitative methods to educational leadership doctoral students.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding the Relationship Between Urban-Centric Locale and Teachers’ Perceptions of School Leadership as a Working Condition

  Urban Education · 2016-11-16 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Using the 2012 North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey data, school demographic information, and school’s urban-centric locale census designation, hierarchical linear modeling was conducted to examine the relationship between locale and teachers’ perceptions of school leadership as a working condition and explore any variance in the relationship between school contextual factors and teachers’ perceptions of school leadership associated with locale. After controlling for school contextual factors, the results showed urban-centric locale is not a predictor of teachers’ perceptions of school leadership, and most of the variance in teachers’ perceptions of school leadership is explained by factors within, not between, schools.

  PublisherDOI

• Educational Policy Implementation Revisited

  Educational Policy · 2015-01-01 · 68 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article outlines the rationale for this special issue on educational policy implementation and provides an overview of the articles in this issue. In addition to summarizing each article, we point out how the findings from the different contributions complement, challenge, and complicate not only the findings and conclusions from other works in this issue, but also insights articulated by Honig (2006) and Odden (1991). We conclude with a discussion of the implications from these articles for educational policy implementation research.

  PublisherDOI

• Implementation of a Districtwide Policy to Improve Principals’ Instructional Leadership

  Educational Policy · 2015-01-01 · 54 citations

  articleSenior author

  This study examines principals’ experiences implementing Skillful Observation and Coaching Laboratory (SOCL), a program designed to help principals become effective instructional leaders. Guided by Karl Weick’s notion of sensemaking, this study sought to identify the components of SOCL that were implemented with fidelity and discover the factors that facilitated or impeded implementation of SOCL. Data for this multiple case study were drawn from interviews with principals, observations of principals coaching teachers, and internal documents. The results showed that content knowledge, preexisting knowledge, structural conditions, social interactions, meaningfulness, identity as an instructional leader, and positive feelings influenced principals’ implementation of SOCL.

  PublisherDOI

• Interest Groups Revisited

  2014-11-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In addition to discussing the challenges to defi ning interest group, Opfer and colleagues describe how interest groups exert infl uence over the educational policy process. They point out that interest groups employ a wide range of lobbying tactics, and contexts play an important role in the likelihood of an interest group successfully exerting infl uence over educational policy. They reason that traditional educational associations, business groups, and conservative interest groups are the most infl uential interest groups in education policy. At the conclusion of their chapter on interest groups, Opfer and colleagues describe how interest groups shape educational policy through advocacy coalitions in policy subsystems and call for additional research on the role of policy entrepreneurs in the politics of education.

  PublisherDOI

• The Ideological and Political Landscape of School Choice Advocacy

  2014-11-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In the first edition of the Handbook of the Politics of Education, Opfer, Young, and Fusarelli (2008) point out that the number of interest groups and the amount they spend on lobbying has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Yet, despite this proliferation of interest groups and their activity, Opfer and colleagues contend that interest groups remain an understudied subfield of the politics of education. They also find that the paucity of scholarship that examines interest groups in education policy typically utilizes an inclusive definition of interest groups, a characterization, according to Opfer and her colleagues, that largely relies on Thomas and Hrebenar’s (1992) definition that considers an interest group as “any association of individuals, whether formally organized or not, that attempts to influence public policy” (as cited in Opfer et al., 2008, p. 197). Opfer and colleagues argue that this use of an inclusive definition conceals important conceptual problems related to our understanding and, hence, study of interest groups, notably organizational, activity, and distinctional ambiguity.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Wayne D. Lewis

  8 shared

• Marla Sanders

  Baidu (China)

  4 shared

• Catherine DiMartino

  St. John's University

  2 shared

• Bonnie C. Fusarelli

  North Carolina State University

  2 shared

• Mengli Song

  2 shared

• Brian Boggs

  2 shared

• Andras G. Lacko

  University of North Texas Health Science Center

  2 shared

• Thomas Victor Shepley

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Education

  North Carolina State University

  2005

• M.S., Education

  North Carolina State University

  2001

• B.S., Education

  North Carolina State University

  1998