Faculty
Dr. Jinyan Huang
Assistant Professor of Education
College of Education
Email: jhuang@niagara.edu
Phone: (716) 286-8259
Office Location: Academic Complex, 329E
Office Hours: Tues 10:00AM-12:00PM, Wed 12:00-2:00PM, Thurs 10:00AM-12:00PM or by Appointment
Bio
Jinyan Huang (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor in TESOL and assessment at the College of Education, Niagara University. Before coming to Niagara University, he was a linguist and desktop publisher at Lionbridge Technologies in Boston. He had also worked as a university English teacher in the People’s Republic of China for approximately 10 years.
Dr. Huang's areas of research centre on ESOL/sheltered education and assessment issues. Specifically, he is interested in the following three issues: a) what are ESOL students' learning challenges and coping strategies; b) which (levels of ) factors affect ESOL students' learning outcomes; and c) how should ESOL students be assessed (reliability, validity, and fairness issues) in schools and universities. In today's increasingly multicultural societies, these research interests have practical and policy implications. Such a focus enables Dr. Huang to concentrate on the use of his research skills in ESOL/sheltered education, item response theory (IRT), generalizability (G-) theory, structural equation modeling (SEM), and hierarchal linear modeling (HLM).
Dr. Huang’s work has been published in Assessing Writing, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, International Journal of Applied Educational Studies, the Journal for the Practical Application of Constructivist Theory in Education, the Journal of Instructional Psychology, the Canadian and International Education Journal, Education, College Student Journal, and CBIE Research.
Current Research
Dr. Huang’s current research projects include 1) Foreign language classroom anxiety: A study of university students learning foreign languages in China; 2) Examining the factors affecting the assessment of ESL graduate students; 3) Understanding Chinese graduate students' academic anxiety at North American universities; 4) Teacher perceptions of ESL students' challenges in academic English skills: A K-12 perspective; 5) Testing Chinese EFL students' English pragmatic competence in college entrance English examination; 6) Examining the causes of gender and translation differential item functioning (DIF); and 7) Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to examine the impact of student and school factors on ESL students’ achievement on a high-stakes literacy assessment. Additionally, Dr. Huang is working on his new book “Fairness in Large-scale ESL Writing Assessments” (proposal recently accepted by Cambria Press).
Current Involvement
Dr. Huang is actively involved in international, national, community and professional activities and services. He presented at numerous national and international conferences including NCME, CSSE, CAAL, CERA, NAFSA, and TESOL. He has also been invited to deliver lectures on ESOL and assessment issues by seven Chinese universities and educational organizations since 2005.
Dr. Huang is currently serving on the TESOL Journal Editorial Review Board, responsible for reviewing submissions to the journal, working with emerging authors to help develop a submission, and serving as mentors to developing scholars who wish to contribute to the journal. He is also a guest reviewer of two prestigious international journals: Modern Language Journal and Assessing Writing. Dr. Huang was recently selected as a TESOL/NCATE national program reviewer responsible for reviewing TESOL programs as part of the NCATE national recognition process.
Locally, Dr. Huang is working closely with ESL teachers in the K-12 schools. He is also serving on the Quality Council of Maple Avenue School, Niagara Falls, New York.
Educational Background
Dr. Huang earned a Ph.D. (2007) in cognitive studies (TESOL and Measurement) from Queen's University at Kingston in Canada. As part of his Ph.D. program, he studied at the Centre for Research in Applied Measurement and Evaluation (CRAME) (2004) at the University of Alberta in Canada. He earned an M.A. (2000) in TESOL and also a graduate certificate (1999) in TESOL from Brigham Young University in the United States. He received his B.A. (1989) in English Education from Hunan Normal University in the People's Republic of China.