Education

  • Ph.D. 2018 – University of Maryland, Educational Psychology
  • M.S.Ed. 2012 – Johns Hopkins, Reading
  • B.A. 2006 – Marquette University, Political Science

Areas of Expertise

  • Literacy
  • Reading comprehension
  • Equitable instruction
  • Teacher education
  • Educational psychology
  • Rural communities
  • Mixed methods research

Background

Courtney Hattan is an assistant professor in the science of reading. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Maryland and her reading specialist degree from Johns Hopkins University. Hattan’s research interests are shaped by her experiences as a language arts and social studies teacher at the elementary and middle school levels. Specifically, Hattan’s work centers equitable and evidence-based instruction that supports students in activating and building their background knowledge during reading. She was the 2019 recipient of the Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award and was named a Reading Hall of Fame Emerging Scholars Fellow.

Research

Courtney Hattan’s program of research centers on the interplay between readers’ knowledge and what they understand and remember from text. Operating through an equity lens, Hattan bridges sociocultural and cognitive theories of learning and literacy, employs mixed-methods research designs, and seeks to build community-informed research-practice partnerships. Hattan’s work has examined reading materials commonly used in classrooms, observed literacy instruction, and evaluated various methods for helping students recall and apply their knowledge before, during, and after reading. Her research is published in outlets such as Review of Educational Research, Reading Research Quarterly, and Journal of Educational Psychology.

  • EDUC 865, College Teaching Internship
  • EDUC 796B, Independent Study Doctoral Level
  • EDUC 688, Teaching Intermediate English Language Arts, Grades 3-6
  • EDUC 697, Education Minor Capstone Course
  • EDUC 697, Minor Capstone Course
  • Top reviewer for Review of Educational Research, American Educational Research Association. (2025).
  • Top Reviewer, Journal of Educational Psychology, American Psychological Association. (2024).
  • Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. (2024 – Present).
  • Reading League of North Carolina. (2023 – Present).
  • International Literacy Association. (2018 – Present).
  • American Psychological Association. (2017 – Present).
  • Literacy Research Organization. (2014 – Present).
  • American Educational Research Organization. (2012 – Present).

Journal Article

McClean, C., Gallagher, T., & Hattan, C. (2026). An anatomy of the SoR: A systematic review of the conceptualizations and instrumental uses of the Science of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 61(2). https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.70095

Hattan, C., Baumann, J., Parkinson, M. M., & MacPhee, D. (2025). Exploring the Power and Possibility of Contextually Relevant Social Studies–Literacy Integration. Education Sciences, 15(10), 1401. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15101401

Reynolds, D., Hattan, C., & Markham, M. (2025). Fair or Foul? Interrogating the Role of Baseball Knowledge in Studies of Knowledge and Comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 60(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.575

Hattan, C., MacPhee, D., & Zuiderveen, C. (2025). Vocabulary Instruction During Elementary Classroom Discourse: Observing 1st Through 3rd Grade Teachers’ Instructional Practices. Literacy Research and Instruction, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/19388071.2025.2457679

Hattan, C., & Kendeou, P. (2024). Expanding the science of reading: Contributions from educational psychology. Educational Psychologist, 59(4), 217–232. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2024.2418048

Ward, A., & Hattan, C. (2024). Supporting In-Service and Pre-Service Teachers in Rethinking Formative Literacy Assessments. Education Sciences, 14(12), 1389. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14121389

Hattan, C., Grossnickle Peterson, E., & Miller, K. (2024). Revising teacher candidates’ beliefs and knowledge of the learning styles neuromyth. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 77, 102269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2024.102269

Bresnahan, C., Peterson, E. G., & Hattan, C. (2024). Why educators endorse a neuromyth: relationships among educational priorities, beliefs about learning styles, and instructional decisions. Frontiers in Psychology, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1407518

Hattan, C. (2024). Supporting Students’ Knowledge Activation before, during, and after Reading. The Reading Teacher, 77(6), 861–869. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2322

Reynolds, D., & Hattan, C. (2024). Baseball, Presidents, and State Test Passages: Considering Gendered Knowledge in Literacy Research, Curricula, and Assessments. The Reading Teacher, 77(6), 997–1000. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2330

Hattan, C., Alexander, P. A., & Lupo, S. M. (2024). Leveraging What Students Know to Make Sense of Texts: What the Research Says About Prior Knowledge Activation. Review of Educational Research, 94(1), 73–111. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543221148478

Hattan, C., Lee, E., & List, A. (2023). Comprehension, Diagram Analysis, Integration, and Interest: A Cross-Sectional Analysis. Reading Psychology, 44(7), 731–760. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2023.2187907

Hattan, C., & Alexander, P. A. (2021). The effects of knowledge activation training on rural middle-school students’ expository text comprehension: A mixed-methods study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(5), 879–897. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000623

Hattan, C., & Lupo, S. M. (2020). Rethinking the Role of Knowledge in the Literacy Classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1). https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.350

Hattan, C., & Alexander, P. A. (2020). Prior knowledge and its activation in elementary classroom discourse. Reading and Writing, 33(6), 1617–1647. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-020-10022-8

Hattan, C. (2020). Exploring the Effectiveness of Relational Reasoning Prompts on Middle School Students’ Text Comprehension. Reading Psychology, 41(3), 111–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2020.1726847

Hattan, C. (2019). Prompting Rural Students’ Use of Background Knowledge and Experience to Support Comprehension of Unfamiliar Content. Reading Research Quarterly, 54(4), 451–455. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.270

Hattan, C., & Alexander, P. (2018). Scaffolding Reading Comprehension for Competent Readers. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 67(1), 296–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/2381336918786885

Alexander, P. A., Singer, L. M., Jablansky, S., & Hattan, C. (2016). Relational reasoning in word and in figure. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(8), 1140–1152. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000110

Hattan, C., Singer, L. M., Loughlin, S., & Alexander, P. A. (2015). Prior Knowledge Activation in Design and in Practice. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 64(1), 478–497. https://doi.org/10.1177/2381336915617603

Book Chapter

Alexander, P., Hattan, C., & Gans, N. (2026). Teachers’ beliefs about reading, readers, reading content, and reading instruction. In Handbook of Research on Teachers’ Beliefs.

Hattan, C., Relyea, J., & Gao, Y. (2026). The knowledge-comprehension connection: Activating and building students’ knowledge during reading. In Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension.

Hattan, C., Ward, A., & Gao, Y. (2025). Learning to Read. In Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction: Vol. 3 (pp. 8–31). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003484776-3

Fong, C. J., & Hattan, C. (accepted). Towards (re)framing asset-based (counter)narratives in motivation research. In Handbook of Equity in Educational Psychology. Routledge.

Dinsmore, D. L., & Hattan, C. (2020). Levels of Strategies and Strategic Processing. In Handbook of Strategies and Strategic Processing (pp. 29–46). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429423635-3

Alexander, P. A., Grossnickle Peterson, E. M., Dumas, D. G., & Hattan, C. (2018). A Retrospective and Prospective Examination of Cognitive Strategies and Academic Development. In The Oxford Handbook of Educational Psychology (pp. 451–490). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199841332.013.23

Dinsmore, D. L., Hattan, C., & List, A. (2017). A Meta-Analysis of Strategy Use and Performance in the Model of Domain Learning. In The Model of Domain Learning (pp. 37–55). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315458014-3

Professional

  • Editorial Review Board Member, Review of Educational Research. (2025 – 2028).
  • Editorial Review Board Member, Reading Research Quarterly. (2024 – 2028).
  • Editorial Review Board Member, Journal of Educational Psychology. (2022 – 2028).
  • Editorial Review Board Member, Contemporary Educational Psychology. (2019 – 2028).
  • Program Coordinator, American Educational Research Association Division C, Section Co-Chair. (2026 – 2027).
  • Committee Member, Motivation SIG McKeachie Award Committee. (2026).
  • Committee Member, International Literacy Association, Grants Committee. (2024 – 2026).
  • Guest Editor, Reading Research Quarterly. (2024 – 2026).
  • Editorial Review Board Member, Journal of Literacy Research. (December 2023 – 2026).
  • Editorial Review Board Member, The Reading Teacher. (2020 – 2026).
  • Reviewer/Referee, American Educational Research Association conference. (2019 – 2026).
  • Reviewer/Referee, Literacy Research Association conference. (2019 – 2026).
  • Chairperson, Literacy Research Association, Area 3 Co-Chair. (2023 – 2025).
  • Editor, Newsletter for Educational Psychologists, American Psychological Association. (2023 – 2025).
  • Reviewer/Referee, Review of Educational Research. (2023 – 2025).
  • Reviewer/Referee, American Psychological Association conference. (2017 – 2025).
  • Guest Editor, Educational Psychologist. (2023 – 2024).
  • Reviewer/Referee, Educational Psychology Review. (2023 – 2024).
  • Editorial Review Board Member, Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice. (2020 – 2024).
  • Reviewer/Referee, Elementary School Journal. (2023).
  • Committee Member, AERA Division C Equity and Inclusion Committee. (2020 – 2023).
  • Committee Member, Committee on the Development of Early Career Educational Psychologists. (2020 – 2023).

University

  • Co-Organizer, Culture, Curriculum, and Teacher Education Professional Seminar. (2025 – 2026).
  • Committee Member, Faculty Search Committee, Elementary Education Program Director. (2025 – 2026).
  • Committee Member, Staff Search Committee, Communications Specialist. (2024).
  • UNC Literacy Team, School of Education. (July 2023 – 2024).
  • Faculty Search Committee Member, MAT Director search. (September 2023 – December 2023).
  • Committee Member (at ISU), Vision and Planning Committee. (June 2022 – May 2023).
  • Committee Member (at ISU), Borg Center for Reading and Literacy Advisory Committee. (2020 – May 2023).

Public

  • Guest Speaker, Curriculum Associates. (October 2023).
  • Professional Learning Developer, Pontiac 429 School District, Pontiac, IL. (August 2021 – June 2023).