About

Sharon Chang is an Associate Professor of Teaching and the Program Director for Bilingual/Bicultural Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds a Ph.D. in Multicultural Education from the University of Washington, an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from the same university, and a B.Ed. in Education from National Taiwan Normal University. Her scholarly interests include Culturally Responsive Teaching, Language Education, and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory. Her research focuses on bilingual education, immigrant education, race and ethnicity, and teacher education, with a particular emphasis on supporting bilingual preservice teachers' development, critical language awareness, and inclusive bilingual teaching practices. She has contributed extensively to the field through peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and book reviews, exploring topics such as translanguaging pedagogy, identity formation in bilingual teachers, and the impact of bilingual education policies. Her work reflects a commitment to advancing equitable and culturally responsive educational practices for diverse learner populations.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Mathematics education
• Medicine
• Medical education
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Learning from our struggles as formative intervention researchers through critical incidents: A self-study of two teacher educators

  Learning Culture and Social Interaction · 2026-02-05

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Ongoing quality critical reflection is required for qualitative educational researchers to attend to their own reflexivity. This self-study is an examination of two formative intervention researchers who are both teacher-educators conducting Change Laboratory (CL) work in the United States (first author) and formative intervention in Brazil (second author). The first author adapted and employed the CL methodological framework as a professional learning course lab to work with preservice teachers. The second author explored formative intervention practices with in-service teachers. Both formative interventions were intended to support the participants' teacher development as they engaged in their practices. Using analytical narrative vignettes generated from the critical incidents, the authors identified three pairs of individual-collective dialectical tensions, as understood in cultural-historical activity theory: the planning nature of volitionality and vulnerability, the implementation stage of fear and hope, and the reflective stance of the puzzled and the patched. Finally, the implications of using self-study in formative intervention methods were addressed. To conclude, externalizing dialectical tensions in critical incidents is a psychological task that formative intervention researchers can undertake to increase reflexivity.

  PublisherDOI

• US–Chinese bilingual education after the sunsetting of the Lau Consent Decree: a documentary case analysis of <i>Speaking in Tongues</i>

  Current Issues in Language Planning · 2025-04-02 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Wo Ai Ni Mommy: conversation analysis of a documentary case study of a Chinese transnational adoptee’s American identity development

  International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism · 2025-11-23

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Unpacking Urban Teaching Residents’ Mental Constructs: Supporting the Professional Identity Development of Teachers of Color

  Journal of Teacher Education · 2025-08-25

  article1st authorCorresponding

  When teachers of color professionalize their teaching, they encounter tensions between their personal and professional identities, causing dissonances. This study examined 36 teaching residents of color and their professional identity development in one northeastern urban teacher residency (UTR) program in the United States. We used narrative research to explore how participants constructed themselves as teachers in their stories. We analyzed program archival data through the lens of perezhivanie , a mental model that individuals establish to resolve dissonances. Narrative analyses of admissions essays, interviews, journals, and autobiographies revealed that participants’ personal histories inform their equity pedagogy. Specifically, participants constructed their own professional identities in the UTR program via cultural filters shaped by their life experiences being historically minoritized, particularly to (a) develop their teacher-selves to construct practical knowledge and (b) transform their personal-selves to foster equity pedagogy. The implications for supporting the professional identity development of teachers of color are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Augmenting bilingual preservice teachers’ articulation of teaching in a Change Lab:

  Outlines Critical Practice Studies · 2024-09-12 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The funds of knowledge of bilingual preservice teachers (BPSTs) are undervalued in the U.S. predominantly White teacher education space. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate and integrate the overlooked knowledge and epistemologies of BPSTs into teacher preparation. To do so, we conducted a secondary analysis of Play-Doh pictures and narrative generated by the BPSTs from a multi-year change laboratory (CL) intervention, which took place in one graduatelevel practicum seminar, enabling the participants to tell their stories and express their voices in multimodal ways. By applying Rabardel’s notion of instrumentality to preservice teachers’ imaginative work with Play-Doh, the study describes how the art-mediated instrumental approach supported BPSTs to co-reflect on their articulation of teaching. Implications of using culturalhistorical research to study teacher education are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Agency and Transformation: Motives, Mediation, and Motion

  Mind Culture and Activity · 2024-10-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Enrichment, empowerment, and emancipation: Chinese and Latinx immigrant parental investment in U.S. bilingual education

  International Multilingual Research Journal · 2024-01-07 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Immigrant parents have varied yet comparable language ideologies, perspectives, and experiences. In this qualitative case study, 67 immigrant parents were interviewed, 37 Chinese and 30 Latinx, whose children were enrolled in Mandarin–English and Spanish–English bilingual after-school programs at two urban public elementary schools in the U.S. Northeast megalopolis. Critical discourse analysis of the interview transcripts revealed parents' encompassing beliefs in bilingual education as a sociocultural investment in learning Chinese and Spanish. The study identifies three types of sociocultural investment: enrichment, empowerment, and emancipation. Enrichment is premised on the immigrant parents' expectations of additive bilingual development in their child's education. Empowerment is rooted in the immigrant parents' agentic motivations to instrumentalize their child's non-English language and provide cultural capital for immediate and transnational contexts. Emancipation emerges from immigrant parents' experiences of liberation from subtractive bilingualism, limited educational experiences, and negative associations of ethnolinguistic identity institutionalized by the dominant (White) English-speaking society. These findings indicate that the cultures and languages transmitted through immigrant parents' sociocultural investment in bilingualism are equally transmissible through investment in bilingual education. (176 words)

  PublisherDOI

• Bilingual teachers’ personal theorizing through art-mediated visual metaphors

  Cogent Education · 2024-07-20 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This qualitative study examined a group of 41 bilingual preservice teachers who participated in a multi-year professional learning course lab project. The project implemented the change laboratory (CL) methodological framework during the same semester that the participants were teaching students in their field placements. The data analyzed for this study were obtained from one CL session of a Play-Doh activity, which was conducted across three cohorts. The narrative research methodology was employed, applying the lens of social imagination to analyze the data. During the activity, participants used Play-Doh to construct their visual narratives collaboratively and individually, presenting emic beliefs and desired practices as related to teachers’ personal theorizing, highlighting bilingual preservice teachers’ own cultural ways of being, knowing, and doing from their transnational communities. The findings indicate that art-mediated visual narratives can aid bilingual preservice teachers in materially and symbolically developing their professional agency. Implications for the role of art mediation in teacher education research are also discussed. By collectively understanding these personal and professional transformations, bilingual preservice teachers validate their experiential reality and establish co-mentored learning sources for one another, changing mainstream teacher preparation practices in predominantly White postsecondary contexts. (191 words)

  PublisherDOI

• Refracting historical contradictions in U.S. bilingual education: Reflections on the Asian American and Pacific Islander teacher shortage in the post-pandemic world

  Bilingual Research Journal · 2024-01-02 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The post-pandemic world has witnessed a surge in linguistic racism; anti-Asian stigma has not only altered bilingual education but also created tensions for immigrant families and teachers from Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. In this conceptual article, Vygotsky's concept of perezhivanie is employed to examine the historical contradictions of anti-Asian stigma refracted in educational contexts. Narratives and vignettes from publicly available Internet archival data are used to illustrate the contradictions. The author then offers reflections on the AAPI teacher shortage as related to these refractions and recommends the establishment of a more equitable pipeline for bilingual AAPI teachers.

  PublisherDOI

• Why do People Stay? A Study on Factors Influencing Employees Retention in the Logistics Industry

  International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences · 2024-10-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Employee retention remains a significant challenge within the logistics industry, particularly in the bustling hub of Klang Valley.Despite its vital role in global supply chains, high turnover rates and shortages persist indicating a necessity for research in this area.This research addresses this need by examining the factors influencing employee retention in logistics companies within Klang Valley.Drawing upon Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory, this study investigates the effect of communication satisfaction, learning and development opportunities, meaningful work, and recognition and rewards on employee retention.Using the quantitative method of convenience sampling, online questionnaires were distributed to employees in logistic companies within Klang Valley.The study collected and analyzed 391 responses.The findings show positive significant relationships of all variables with employee retention.Reward and recognition emerges as the most significant predictor of employee retention.Logistics companies are advised to focus on creating a robust reward system and cultivating a culture of appreciation.This is because employees that are valued and recognized are more likely to remain loyal and committed to their organization.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• T. C. Marshall

  University of Mississippi

  6 shared

• S. Y. Cai

  6 shared

• J.W. Dodd

  6 shared

• Renuka Mahadevan

  University of Queensland

  5 shared

• A. Bhattacharjee

  5 shared

• Y. Zhang

  Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital

  4 shared

• Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán

  4 shared

• Chuan‐Ming Hao

  Huashan Hospital

  4 shared

Labs

• Teachers College, Columbia University Bilingual/Bicultural EducationPI

Education

• Ph.D., Multicultural Education

  University of Washington

• Other, Curriculum and Instruction

  University of Washington

• Other, Education

  National Taiwan Normal University