Yihua Hong

Yihua Hong specializes in research design, advanced quantitative methods, and evaluations of educational programs and policy. She has been intensively engaged in research and evaluations of teacher professional development and of school-based accountability both in local districts and across states.

Dr. Hong currently serves as the Project Director and/or Co-PI of multiple federally funded projects, including an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) effectiveness replication of a teacher professional development program with targeted reading instruction, an IES Development and Innovation study of a PD program for culturally responsive teaching (CuRTSEA), and a National Defense Education Program study that builds teacher capacity for transdisciplinary project-based learning (STARward STEM). Dr. Hong also leads the impact evaluation of the mid-phase Education Innovation and Research (EIR) study of the Alaska statewide new teacher mentoring program. In addition, she serves as a co-investigator of the IES efficacy study of an elementary school social and emotional learning program.

Dr. Hong’s work has been presented at national conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals such as American Educational Research Journal, AERA Open, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Before joining RTI in 2015, Dr. Hong worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago and taught English as a second language at higher education institutions in China.