PhD Candidate, Education Leadership and Policy

Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University

Tuan Nguyen is a doctoral candidate and research assistant in the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University. He taught middle and high school math for seven years in St. Louis, Missouri before resuming his graduate studies at Peabody. He holds a dual-degree in Math and Physics from the University of Oklahoma and a Master in the Arts of Teaching from Washington University in St. Louis.

His K-12 research has two separate strands: a) teacher leadership and school improvement in a research-practice partnership, and b) teacher policies and teacher labor markets. In the first strand of his research, he has been involved in teacher leadership and school improvement work with the IES-funded National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU), a research-practice partnership aimed at linking researchers with practitioners to improve educational outcomes of traditionally underserved high school students in Florida and Texas. The second strand of his K-12 research focuses on teacher policies and the teacher labor markets, particularly looking at the factors that drive teacher attrition and retention, and the reforms and policies intended to address these issues for social equity and school improvement. His work on teacher merit pay has been covered by local and national press, including write-ups in Education Week, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Chalkbeat, and Wisconsin Public Radio. His dissertation, titled “The Theories and Determinants of Teacher Attrition and Retention,” consists of a set of three papers examining the factors of teacher attrition and retention from different perspectives.

Due to his research assistantship with Brent Evans, he also has research interests and experience in higher education. In this area, his research focuses on the distribution of financial aid and its effects on postsecondary persistence and degree attainment, particularly for underserved and disadvantaged students. In both K-12 and higher education areas of research, he has applied rigorous quantitative methods (regression discontinuity designs, difference-in-differences, regression-based techniques, and meta-analysis) to examine and evaluate the effectiveness of policies and implementations, particularly for an equitable society.