Biography

Hani Morgan

Hani Morgan is a professor of education at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). As an undergraduate student at Rider College, now Rider University, he majored in philosophy and developed a strong interest in education when he read John Dewey’s philosophy of education. Shortly after graduating from Rider, Morgan accepted his first teaching position for a K-8 school in Trenton, New Jersey, where he taught for two years. He then moved to New York City to attend graduate school. Achieving a high GPA in philosophy at Rider helped him to be admitted to one of the world’s leading colleges of education—Teachers College, Columbia University—where he finished two postgraduate degrees. When Morgan attended Teachers College, he continued to be interested in different philosophies of education but also developed interests in international education, technology, and curriculum theory. His first master’s degree from Columbia’s Teachers College was in curriculum and teaching, and his second master’s degree was in international education.

Shortly after finishing his studies at Columbia, Morgan moved back to New Jersey to work for ETS as an assistant examiner for the Principles of Learning and Teaching Praxis Test. He then started his doctoral studies at Rutgers University and specialized in foundations of education. During his years at Rutgers, he taught two rhetoric courses for the English Department at the College of New Jersey. After finishing a doctoral degree from Rutgers, Morgan returned to ETS to work as a reader for the School Leaders Licensure Assessment Exam. He then spent two additional years teaching in Florida at the elementary level before accepting his current position with USM. At USM, he has taught a variety of courses including Foundations of Multicultural Education, Problems in Educational Research, Social Studies Education in Elementary Schools, Management and Organization of Diverse Classrooms, Research in Reading, and High School Curriculum. He also served for 5 years as the editor of the Focus on Technology column for Childhood Education, the award-winning, peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), a global community of educators and advocates who offer perspectives on the education of children. In 2022, he received the University Excellence in Teaching Award from USM. He was also elected president of the Society for the Study of Curriculum History in 2022.

Morgan is the author of The World’s Highest-Scoring Students: How Their Nations Led Them to Excellence. He also co-edited The World Leaders in Education: Lessons from the Successes and Drawbacks of Their Methods and authored two chapters in this book. In addition, he authored a book chapter in Learning the Left: Popular Culture, Liberal Politics, and Informal Education from 1900 to the Present, 7 encyclopedia entries in The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, and 4 book reviews. His other scholarly work includes over 60 academic articles he authored and co-authored in journals such as Childhood Education, Educational Horizons, Multicultural Education, and The Reading Teacher. He has presented his research for international, national, and regional organizations, including the American Educational Research Association, the Comparative & International Education Society, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Association for Multicultural Education, and the International Reading Association. Some of the projects he has worked on in the past include research on bullying, handheld computers, technology use in Egypt at the primary level, and culturally authentic children’s books. He was awarded a grant from the Spencer Foundation to do some of his research on culturally authentic children’s books.