Soyoung Park, PhD is a faculty member and the Director of Online Programs in Early Childhood and Childhood Special Education at the Bank Street Graduate School of Education. Prior to joining the faculty at Bank Street, Dr. Park was a teacher-scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and in the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She has also worked with children with disabilities and their families ages 3-10 as an inclusion and special education teacher and interventionist. Her research focuses on transforming educational practice and policy to advance justice for young children of color with disabilities and their families. Through a range of qualitative and mixed methodologies, Dr. Park engages in community-based research partnerships with educators and families to interrogate the ways in which racism, ableism, and xenophobia manifest in educational spaces and to promote more humanizing, liberatory experiences for children, families, and teachers. Dr. Park has presented extensively on her work at a variety of regional and national conferences. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Teachers College Record, Urban Education Journal, Teaching and Teacher Education, Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, and Multiple Voices: Disability, Race, and Language Intersections in Special Education. Her book, (Re)Imagining Inclusion for Children of Color with Disabilities was released by Harvard Education Press in March 2025. Dr. Park received her Doctorate from Stanford University, her Master’s from Manhattanville College, and her Bachelors from Brown University.
Educational Background
Qualifications
PhD, Stanford University
Select Publications
Park, S. (2025). (Re)imagining inclusion for children of color with disabilities. Harvard Education Press.
Adair, J. K., Park, S., Alonzo, M., McManus, M., Odim, N., Jones, N., Lee, S., & Payne, K. (2024). Equitable access to agency-supportive early schooling contexts for young children of color. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 69, 49-64.
Park, S., Lee, S., Odim, N., & Adair, J. K. (2024). Redefining quality to center the capabilities of young children. Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, 51, 50-61.
Park, S. (2023). Reframing deficit narratives to honor the community cultural wealth of immigrant families of dis/abled children. Journal of Family Diversity in Education, 6(1), 27-46.
Park, S. (2023). Thickening borders through Least Restrictive Environment: The case of an immigrant kindergartner with autism. Multiple Voices: Disability, Race, and Language Intersections in Special Education, 23(1), 4-19.
Park, S., & Paulick, J. (2021). An inquiry into home visits as a practice of culturally sustaining pedagogy in urban schools. Urban Education Journal, 59(1), 124-154.
Park, S., Lee, S., Alonzo, M., & Adair, J. K. (2021). Reconceptualizing “assistance” for young children of color with disabilities in an inclusion classroom. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 41(1), 57-68.
Park, S. (2020). Demystifying disproportionality: Exploring educator beliefs about special education referrals for English learners. Teachers College Record, 122(5).
Park, S. (2019). Beyond underrepresentation: Constructing disability with young Asian American children to preserve the “model minority” stereotype. Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education, 13(3), 73-95.
Park, S. (2019). Disentangling language from disability: Teacher implementation of Tier 1 English language development policies for ELs with suspected disabilities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 80, 227-240.
Park, S., & Lit, I. (2015). Learning to play, playing to learn: The Bank Street developmental-interaction approach in Liliana’s kindergarten classroom. Stanford, CA: Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.
Park, S. (2014). Bilingualism and children with autism spectrum disorders: Issues, research, and implications. NYS TESOL Journal, 1(2), 122-129.
