Joan Kang Shin

Joan Kang Shin with students at Sinav Koleji in Ankara, Turkey, October 2013.

Joan Kang Shin, PhD a Professor of Education at George Mason University. She is the Associate Dean for Faculty Success in Mason's College of Education and Human Development and Director of Mason's Global Online Teacher Education Center (GOTEC). Dr. Shin specializes in teaching ESL/EFL/EAL to young learners and teenagers and has provided both in-person and online professional development programs and workshops to English language teachers in over 100 countries around the world. She is also an expert in online TESOL education and conducts research on building international virtual communities of practice for English teachers. In 2016, Dr. Shin was named one of the 30 Up and Coming Leaders of TESOL by TESOL International Association. In 2021, she was named as one of the top 30 English Language Specialists by the U.S. Department of State in recognition of her lasting impact on the Specialist Program and on the field of TESOL. She is currently serving on the Board of Trustees for The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF).

At Mason, Dr. Shin is PI for a number of externally funded grant projects, including Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) Global Online Courses and MOOCs through the OPEN Program funded by the Department of State and administered by FHI 360. In her career, Dr. Shin has secured over $12 million in grants primarily focused on developing global online English language teacher professional development programs.

Dr. Shin is a series editor for a groundbreaking 6-level primary English series for National Geographic Learning called Our World, which won the 2014 HRH Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Awards for Winner of Best Entry for Learners. She is also a series editor and author of a 3-level preprimary series Welcome to Our World as well as the host of a professional development video series that she designed for Our World. Her book Teaching Young Learners English, co-authored with Jodi Crandall, received the prestigious 2013 Ben Warren International House Trust Prize. She also served as series editor for an exciting 5-level English series for young teens called Impact that highlights the work of National Geographic Explorers and won the 2018 English-Speaking Union English Language Award for "Resources for Secondary to Adult Learners." She authored and hosted the Impact professional development videos that focuses on how to teach teenagers effectively in the 21st century. In 2021, she published a co-edited volume through Routledge called Contemporary Foundations for Teaching English as an Additional Language and a co-authored book through TESOL Press called The 6 Principles for Exemplary Teaching of English Learners: Young Learners in a Multilingual World. Most recently, she co-authored a professional development text with Jered Borup called Breaking Through the Screen, which was published by National Geographic Learning. 

In addition, she is an English Language Specialist for the Office of English Language Programs (OELP) in the U.S. Department of State and has conducted EFL teacher training programs with hundreds of teachers in Brazil, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Laos, Libya, Morocco, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela, Vietnam, and the U.A.E.