Daryl Dugas, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Educational Psychology

Department

Learning Innovation, Leadership and Technology

Research Interests

As a teacher educator and identity scholar, I am interested in the intersections between developmental theory and the lived experiences of pre-service and early career teachers. My curiosity around this issue developed from the literature on emerging adulthood, which has demonstrated that the transition to adulthood has become more ambiguous and prolonged in recent decades, such that most people in their 20s describe themselves as only “sort-of” adults. I wondered if this ambiguous transition had specific impacts on teachers, and my dissertation research presented evidence that first-year teachers who don't feel completely adult or who believe that others in schools don't see them as adults, express greater dissatisfaction with their classroom management than those who consider themselves more fully adult.

In recent years, I have built my research agenda around programs I've developed in collaboration with colleagues here at NIU to support the holistic development of our students (and future teachers). These programs have included:

• BELONG in STEM, an NSF-funded program to support the persistence of low-income STEM majors to graduation. I supported the creation and facilitation of peer support groups to increase students' sense of belonging and networks of support.
• Noyce Science Teaching Program, an NSF-funded program to support STEM teaching candidates' ability to teach in high-needs schools. I created and lead support groups for teachers during their first two years of teaching post-graduation.
• Building Reflective Anti-Racist Voices in Education (BRAVE), a workshop series for middle-level teaching candidates to learn and reflect on racism, bias, and how to enact culturally-responsive practices in their future classrooms. I co-developed and co-facilitate the full workshop series.

Education

• Ph.D. University of Chicago, Comparative Human Development
• M.S.Ed. Northern Illinois University, Educational Psychology
• B.S. Benedictine University, Chemistry

Frequently Taught Courses

• EPS 452/552: Classroom Management for Adolescent Students
• EPS 406/507: Issues in Human Development and Learning in the Middle School and High School Years
• EPS 701: Professional Practices in Educational Psychology
• EPS 710: Seminar in Lifespan Human Development

Recent Publications

• Dugas, D., Junco, E., & Werderich, D. (in press). BRAVE conversations: Building anti-racist pre-service teacher workshops as a model for peace praxis. In Peace as a transcultural language: From global agendas to local realities.
• Payne, M. R., LaDue, N. D., Dugas, D., Winitkun, D., & Schmidt, S. (2024). “I feel listened to and heard”: How social support fosters a sense of belonging for low-income STEM majors. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, doi: 10.1002/tea.21977
• LaDue, N. D., Zocher, E., & Dugas, D. (2024). “It just makes it feel like you're not alone”: A qualitative study of a social support group for high-achieving, low-income STEM majors. Journal for STEM Education Research, online. doi: 10.1007/s41979-024-00116-1.
• Dugas, D. (2021). The identity triangle: Toward a unified framework for teacher identity. Teacher Development, published online.

Recent Presentations

• Dugas, D. (2025, July). The use of an online group to support scholars' persistence in the first year of teaching. Workshop presented at 2025 Noyce Summit, Washington, DC.
• Dugas, D., & Junco, E. (2025, April). Analysis of email as a modality for disrupting “color-blind” classroom management beliefs. Paper presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Denver, CO.
• Dugas, D., & LaDue, N. (2024, November). Facilitating sense of belonging using peer groups. Workshop presented at the 2024 S-STEM Scholars and PI Meeting, Chicago, IL.
• Dugas, D., Khadija, S., Payne, M, & LaDue, N. (2023, June). The role of an online peer group in supporting undergraduate student flourishing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Poster presented to Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood, San Diego, CA.