Meet Melanie Muskin: PhD
Part of an ongoing series featuring our newest PhDs
When advisor Cynthia Coburn thinks about Melanie Muskin's mind, she thinks of “a wire shooting off tons of sparks” — in this case, research ideas ranging from teacher sabbaticals and quitting videos on TikTok to her dissertation topic, early childhood educators' online community.
"Through all this energy and creativity, there is a through line: a deep concern, empathy, and activism around working conditions for teachers — for early childhood educators, K-12 educators, higher education educators, including graduate student workers, adjuncts, and even professors,” Coburn said.
Muskin's work explores how educational systems can better support the well-being and professional growth of teachers and school leaders. Before entering academia, she worked as a teacher and school leader in early childhood and elementary settings in New York City. “Across both research and practice, my goal is to strengthen the connection between what we know about human development and how we nurture it in classrooms,” Muskin said.
- Dissertation: “Early Childhood, Social Media, and the Digital Reweaving of Communities of Practice”
- Advised by Cynthia Coburn and Terri Sabol
- Committee: Coburn, Claudia Haase, Sabol
Advisor Terri Sabol, associate professor of human development and social policy, said Muskin showed "a steadfast commitment to centering and highlighting the early childhood workforce," which is at the heart of the field of human development and social policy.
“She also understood that this kind of work happened in a context in which early childhood educators are typically among the most underfunded of professional fields, earning around $15 an hour, with high turnover," Sabol said. "It was such a pleasure as a mentor to work with someone who is so committed to telling the stories and honoring the strengths of the people she studies, despite the difficult context in which they work.”
Muskin recently received a Search Institute Summer Scholars Fellowship, which supports researchers interested in positive youth development and careers in applied research.
An instructor at Vassar College, she earned the American Educational Research Association Teachers' Work/Teachers Unions Outstanding Student Paper Award for her study "Quitting with a Crowd: An Exploration of Teachers' Resignation Stories on TikTok." She contributed a chapter to the book Experiences of Child-Free PK-16 Educators: Bias, Perspectives, and Assumptions on the taboo of being child-free in the field of early childhood education.
From the beginning, Muskin could “develop a researchable question, bring theory into play, develop an actionable research design, and write up her findings beautifully,” Coburn said. As she moves into her new role as a teacher educator at Temple University in Philadelphia, “her career is going to be one to watch, as she brings these skills, creativity, and deep empathy to her future research and teaching.”