Gary Bingham

Early childhood education
Early literacy and language development
Parenting

Gary E. Bingham is the interim chair for the Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education and a Hettie Floyd Lee Professor of Young Learners in Urban Settings. He’s also the director of the college’s Urban Child Study Center Center (UCSC) in the College of Education & Human Development. He is a governing board member of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Southeast Regional Education Laboratory (REL-Southeast) and a steering committee member of the Board of Regents Research on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy (RCALL) Initiative. Bingham is a former preschool teacher who received his Ph.D. in child development and family studies from Purdue University in 2002 emphasizing developmental studies.

Bingham’s scholarship examines home and school factors contributing to culturally and linguistically diverse children’s literacy and language and development. A central focus of this research is on the quality of social and instructional interactions. He is particularly interested in supporting teachers to design developmentally appropriate, meaningful, culturally relevant and intentional literacy experiences for children in early childhood settings. Foundational to this work is developing, validating and utilizing literacy assessments (particularly early writing) that support teachers’ instructional decision-making.

Bingham believes strongly in the importance of research-practice partnership-based research where the expertise and interests of community and educational partners play a central role in the design, implementation and dissemination of research. Utilizing a research-practice partnership model, his scholarship seeks to leverage research findings to support the needs of the local community and educational partners while informing policy and practice at the state and federal levels.  Bingham’s research and scholarly activities have been supported by various organizations, including the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition. His research is published in high-quality early childhood and language and literacy journals, including Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Reading Research Quarterly, Early Education and Development, Reading and Writing, and Language, and Speech and Hearing Services in Schools. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the American Education Research Journal, Early Education and Development and the Reading Teacher.