Jeong-Hee Kim, Ph.D.
Email: jeong-hee.kim@ttu.edu
Phone: 806-834-6075
Office: Education 201E
Jeong-Hee Kim is a Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education in the College of Education at Texas Tech University, where she currently serves as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. She previously served as Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (2020-2024).
Kim’s scholarship focuses on curriculum theory, narrative inquiry, and interdisciplinary curriculum making, with particular attention to bridging teacher education with fields such as engineering and medical education. As a 2025–2026 Fulbright U.S. Scholar in South Korea, she led a curriculum initiative at Seoul National University College of Medicine, developing and researching a narrative medicine course that integrates storytelling, the arts, and the humanities into medical education to foster more humanistic, person-centered physicians. Further she was recognized for her leadership in interdisciplinary education and research through externally funded initiatives. She served as co–Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) grant (2018–2023), for the Developing Reflective Engineers through Artful Methods (DREAM) project, a five-year interdisciplinary effort to design and implement an innovative graduate engineering curriculum that integrates reflective practice, the arts, and humanistic approaches to engineering education.
Kim’s scholarship has garnered wide national and international recognition, including multiple awards from the American Educational Research Association (AERA). As a curriculum theorist, Kim recently published Theoretical and Philosophical Foundations of Social Inquiry: Who’s Afraid of Theory?(2026, Sage), a comprehensive and accessible examination of major theoretical and philosophical traditions shaping contemporary social inquiry. Addressed to graduate students and scholars across disciplines, the book advances her longstanding commitment to making theory more meaningful, usable, and deeply connected to practice. She is also the author of Understanding Narrative Inquiry (2016, Sage), an award-winning book that received the 2017 AERA Outstanding Publication Award from the Narrative Research SIG and has been translated into Chinese.
Kim has extensive experience in teaching, mentoring doctoral students, and academic leadership. She is committed to advancing innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to education that thoughtfully bridge theory and practice across diverse contexts.
Education
- Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies, Arizona State University
- M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language (TESOL), Arizona State University
- TESOL Certificate. Queensland University, Brisbane, Australia
Areas of Expertise
- Curriculum Theory
- Narrative Inquiry
- Theoretical Foundations of Social Inquiry
- Narrative Medicine
- Interdisciplinary Research
- Philosophical Notion of Bildung
Selected Publications
Books
Kim, J. H. (2026). Theoretical and Philosophical Foundations of Social Inquiry: Who’s Afraid of Theory?. Sage. 386 pages.
Kim, J. H. (2018). Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research. Chinese Edition, Psychological Publishing Co. 430 pages.
Kim, J. H. (2016). Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. 360 pages.
(Received the AERA 2017 Outstanding Publication Award)
Google Citations:https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ardROqoAAAA
Related Interview:
http://www.methodspace.com/telling-story-narrative-inquiry-value/
Kim, J. H., Morales, A., Earl, R., & Avalos, S. (2016, eBook). Being the “First”: A narrative inquiry into the funds of knowledge of first generation college students in teacher education. New Prairie Press eBooks. Available at http://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/7
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters
(* Denotes student author at the time of publication)
*Allen, A. R., Kim, J. H., Cho,J. (2025) Telling stories Matters: An Introduction to Narrative Inquiry. In P. Habibie & R. Sawyer (Eds.), Reflexive and Reflective Approaches in Applied Linguistics and Language Education Research (pp. 80-96). John Benjamins Publishing
Leiss, J. & Kim, J. H. (2022). Against sedentary school environment: Rethinking the aims of education through physical education. The Journal of Educational Research, 115(2), 111-121.
Cho, J., & Kim, J. H. (2022). Compassionate anger as a mobilizer for social justice: feelings application in curriculum design. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54(4), pp. 466-485.
Kim, J. H., *Nguyen, N., Campbell, R., Yoo, S., Taraban, R., & Reible, D. (2021). Developing reflective engineers through an arts-incorporated graduate course: A curriculum inquiry. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 42, 1-18, 100909.
DeLucia, P., Woods, A., Kim, J. H., *Nguyen, N., Wang, E., & Yang, J. (2021). Learning to become researchers: Lessons learned from a research experience for undergraduates (REU) program focused on research in psychological sciences with real-world implications. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research (SPUR), 4(3), 10-22.
Kim, J. H., Cruz, J., Hite, R., Dwyer, J., Gottlieb, J., Greenhalgh-Spencer, H., Park, M., Smit, J., Smith, P., & Zimmerman, A. (2020). Affective writing as a promise of “yet-to-become”: Unearthing the meaning of writing through the voice of tenure-track assistant professors. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 19(5), 103-119.
*Morrison, J. A., & Kim, J. H. (2020). Resisting the “Tyranny of an Expert”: A Journey Towards Relational Research. In A. Zimmerman (Ed.), Preparing Students for Community-Engaged Scholarship in Higher Education (pp. 43-60). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-2208-0.ch003.
Kim, J. H., *Morrison, J. A., & *Ramzinski, E. (2019). Is Bildung possible in the classroom?: An exploration of autobiographical writing as philosophical exercise (askēsis) for developing one’s Bildung. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 16(3), 242-262.
Kim, J. H., & So, K. (2018) Understanding the “Other”: Rethinking multicultural education in South Korea through Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 21(1), 102-117.
Bhattacharya, K. & Kim, J. H. (2018). Reworking prejudice in qualitative inquiry with Gadamer and De/colonizing
onto-epistemologies. Qualitative Inquiry. 26(10), 1174-1183.
Kim, J. H., & Zimmerman, A. S. (2017). Bildung, Bildungsroman, and the cultivation of teacher dispositions, The Teacher Educator, 52 (3), 235-249.
Zimmerman, A. S., & Kim, J. H. (2017). Excavating and (re)presenting stories: narrative inquiry as an emergent methodology in the field of adult vocational education and technology, Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology, 8 (2), 16-28. (SCOPUS)
Kim, J. H. (2017). Autobiography as Foucauldian Askēsis: Care of the self and care of others. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 32 (2), 327-329. (SCOPUS)
Kim, J. H., & *Wiehe, A. (2016). Understanding the Other through Art: Fostering Narrative Imagination in Elementary Students. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 17 (2), 1-33. Available at http://www.ijea.org/v17n2/v17n2.pdf.
Martinie, S., Kim, J. H., & *Abernathy, D. (2016) “Better to be a pessimist”: A narrative inquiry into math teachers’ experience of the transition to the Common Core. Journal of Educational Research.
Kim, J. H. (2013). Teacher action research as Bildung: An application of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to teacher professional development. Journal of Curriculum Studies. 45 (3), 379-393
Kim, J. H., & *Abernathy, D. (2012).Understanding curriculum as a polyphonic text: Curriculum theorizing in the midst of Standardization. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 28 (1), 31-46 (Acceptance rate: 20%).
Kim, J. H. (2012). Understanding the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy: Toward a pedagogy of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44 (6), 630-648.
Macintyre Latta, M. & Kim, J. H.(2011). Investing in the curricular lives of educators: Narrative inquiry as pedagogical medium. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43 (5), 679-695.
Kim, J. H.(2011). Narrative inquiry into (re)imagining alternative education for at-risk students: A case study of Kevin Gonzales. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 24 (1), 77-96.
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