Courtney Hattan, Ph.D., Donald G. Tarbet Faculty Scholar in Education and assistant professor at the UNC School of Education, has been elected to a three-year term as secretary of the American Psychological Association’s Division 15, Educational Psychology.
The elected leadership role builds on Hattan’s involvement with the American Psychological Association and her scholarship spanning educational psychology, literacy, and teacher education. Division 15 brings together scholars working to advance research in educational psychology and its applications to teaching and learning.
As secretary, Hattan will serve as a member of Division 15’s Executive Committee and contribute to the organization’s ongoing leadership and coordination. Over her three-year term, she will be responsible for record-keeping, both during in-person and virtual meetings.
Hattan’s research centers on the interplay between what readers already know and what they understand and remember from text. Her work focuses on equitable, evidence-based instruction that helps students activate and build background knowledge as they read.
Bridging sociocultural and cognitive theories of learning and literacy, Hattan uses mixed-methods research to study reading materials used in classrooms, literacy instruction, and approaches that help students recall and apply their knowledge before, during, and after reading. She also works to develop community-informed research-practice partnerships that connect educational research with the contexts in which students and educators learn and work.
Her research has appeared in publications including Review of Educational Research, Reading Research Quarterly, and Journal of Educational Psychology.
In 2024, Hattan and Panayiota Kendeou, Ph.D., Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Guy Bond Chair in Reading at the University of Minnesota, co-authored “Expanding the Science of Reading: Contributions from Educational Psychology” in Educational Psychologist. Their work examined ways educational psychology can contribute to a broader understanding of the science of reading, including the role of knowledge in reading comprehension.
A member of the American Psychological Association since 2017, she served as editor of the Newsletter for Educational Psychologists from 2023-25 and as a member of the Committee on the Development of Early Career Educational Psychologists from 2020-23. She also reviewed submissions for the APA conference from 2017-25 and currently serves on editorial review boards for several journals in educational psychology and literacy research.
More recently, Hattan was recognized as a top reviewer for the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Educational Psychology in 2024 and the American Educational Research Association’s Review of Educational Research in 2025.