Joy Dangora Erickson, PhD, is an assistant professor of education at Endicott College where she teaches courses in early childhood education, literacy and language development, and culturally responsive pedagogy. Joy's primary research interests include early childhood reading motivation and early childhood education for citizenship; her research has been featured in a variety of journals including The Reading Teacher, Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, Teachers College Record, Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, Democracy & Education, and The Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.