Charlene Montaño Nolan, Ph.D.
she/her/hers, Assistant Professor Early Childhood Education
Office
Location
Bremerton, Building 11, 116A
Hours
Virtual office hours are available by appointment for students, prospective students, and community partners.
About
Charlene Montaño Nolan is Assistant Professor in the WWU-ECE Bremerton BAE program. Charlene approaches teacher preparation as a process of cultivating agentic and inspired adult learners who build on and expand their pedagogical content knowledge and practices to better serve young children, families, and communities. Her scholarship focuses on developing equity-oriented theories of human learning that build upon diverse family and community leadership, teacher innovation, and child creativity and interest.
Charlene earned her Ph.D from the University of Washington, with her dissertation entitled New Terrains for Familiar Places: Reconceptualizing Families Engaged in Educational Changemaking. She has diverse teaching and professional development experiences, including as an early childhood educator (birth to age five), a college instructor, and as a program “co-designer” with working teachers and families. She also has extensive experience in designing informal science-based learning programs for urban, Indigenous youth.
Charlene enjoys learning outdoors and discovering how nature and culture support robust and meaningful educative experiences for children and adults.
Courses Taught:
- ECE 434 Environments for Early Learning
- ECE 430 Creativity and Play in Early Childhood Education
- ECE 439 Curriculum Planning in Early Childhood Education
- ECE 495 Preschool Internship
- ECE 498 Seminar
- SCED 480 Science Methods and Curriculum
- SCED 490 Science Practicum