Jill Ordynans, Ph.D., currently serves as Associate Professor and Chair of the Education Department at Touro NYSCAS, where she manages the Honors Teacher Preparation Pathway (TPP) and is co-PI of the Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP). Beginning as a classroom teacher, Jill has over 20 years of experience in the field. With a commitment to advancing equitable and inclusive learning experiences for all students, she has led a team of researchers in the development, implementation, and assessment of reading comprehension programs and spent years training and advising early career special educators in providing intensive literacy intervention for students in pre-K through high school. Jill has consulted on literacy projects with the education research teams of Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Curriculum Associates researching program effectiveness and contributing to publications on this work. She is passionate about teaching psychology and education to undergraduate and graduate students while pursuing her research interests in teacher self-efficacy, agency, and practice. Empowering students to follow their own interests and achieve their own goals is what keeps her fully committed to this work.

Areas of Expertise

Literacy instruction and intervention, teacher beliefs and motivation, reflection, and culturally responsive practice

Education

• Ph.D., Cognitive Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
• M.A., Curriculum and Instruction, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• B.S., Early Childhood and Elementary Education, Jacksonville State University

Recent Publications

The Power of Teacher Voice: Developing agency, advocacy, and efficacy amid COVID-19, The Teacher Educator

Meaning Making and Self-Efficacy: Teacher reflections through COVID-19, The Teacher Educator

Why reflection Is important in teaching, TeachThought

Putting the Self in Self-Efficacy: Personal factors in the development of early teacher self-efficacy, Education and Urban Society

Self-Efficacy Is a Story: Teachers’ possible selves in a pandemic world, Journal for Multicultural Education

Close Analysis of Texts with Structure (CATS): An intervention to teach reading comprehension to at-risk second graders, Journal of Educational Psychology

An intervention to improve comprehension of cause/effect through expository text structure instruction, Journal of Educational Psychology