Da'Shay Templeton
Assistant Professor, California Lutheran University
Ford Fellow. AERA Fellow. PEO International Scholar.
Education
- Ph.D., Higher Education (major) & Quantitative Methodology (minor),
- Honors: summa cum laude
- M.A., English,
- Teaching of Composition Certificate,
- Teaching of Post-Secondary Reading Certificate,
- Honors: summa cum laude
- B.A., English,
- Honors: magna cum laude
- Lower-division transfer requirements met at a California Community College
My nana was educated (and so primarily equipped) to raise children. After her husband abandoned her, she had to flee Puerto Rico with her seven children to a Los Angeles project. My mother dropped out of junior high, and when she was sixteen, she had me. In another life, in another America, in a first-world country where governments dedicate much of their substantial capital to public education, she would have been a trauma surgeon. She worked swing shifts as a hospital clerk and devoured all the informal knowledge available to her. We were many: seventeen people in a three-bedroom trailer, asleep on beds, couches, and pallets. My cousins, younger siblings, and I ate cereal for breakfast, free cafeteria food for lunch, and Top Ramen for dinner. My nana made arroz con guandules and pollo guisado for us on special occasions. Sometimes, she’d slice up a mango and hand it out to us like a sacred offering. We’d savor it, skin and all.
There was loss, pain, and terror, too, because those are characters in any novel of poverty. Some of us dropped out of school. Some of us had children when we were children. Some of us were stolen/imprisoned/killed. One of us went to college. I went—singularly focused on pulling my people out of poverty by becoming an educator and catalyzing systemic change in education. My commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is deeply rooted in both my lived experiences and my professional trajectory as a scholar, educator, and mentor.
My educational journey began in global majority schools that were poor, policed, and public. However, like most poor folk, I experienced high mobility in my youth, and so for a brief time, I attended an all-White American open enrollment school in a wealthy neighborhood. The quality of education was so egregiously superior that it was like being in an alternate reality. I still had roaches crawling out of my backpack, but for a brief time, I was exposed to a higher caliber of public education. I want(ed) to bring that opportunity back home to my people.
I hold multiple socially subordinated identities. As such, I grasp the nexus of systemic exclusion that marginalized students endure in every American institution. And yet, I am one of the few who have experienced academic and professional success. Nevertheless, I believe in the transformational capacities of educators to improve the livelihoods of generationally disenfranchised communities. To that end, I strive to sell my students on the subject matter, leverage their lived experience, and, ultimately, animate the promise of educational equity to advance the arc of justice.
Image: Los Angeles skyline at sunset with tall buildings and palm trees in view. Busy freeway traffic flows below with streaks of light from moving cars.
Research
My research examines how social psychological processes—particularly implicit bias, threat perception, and moral judgment—interact with educational policies to shape disciplinary decision-making in K–12 and higher education. I investigate how educators, administrators, and the public interpret student behavior and make consequential judgments about punishment, credibility, and belonging, often under conditions of ambiguity. Through experimental and mixed-methods approaches, my work identifies how identity-based perceptions related to race, gender, and disability contribute to disparities in school discipline and broader patterns associated with the school-to-prison nexus.
A central aim of my scholarship is to bridge psychological theory with education policy and leadership practice. By examining how bias operates within institutional decision-making, I seek to inform evidence-based interventions that promote more equitable disciplinary systems. My research also extends to higher education, where I explore how policy structures and decision-making processes influence access, persistence, and opportunity for racially minoritized and historically excluded populations.
I am committed to producing research that is both rigorous and accessible. Whenever possible, I prioritize publishing in open-access venues and engaging in public scholarship, including policy briefs and practitioner-oriented writing, to ensure that my work reaches educators, policymakers, and communities beyond the academy.
My research has been supported by competitive national funding, including awards from the Spencer Foundation, the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine through the Ford Dissertation Fellowship. Through this work, I aim to advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of psychology, education, and policy while contributing to more just and equitable educational systems.
2024, California Lutheran University’s Graduate School of Education Small Research Grant, $1,000
2023, California Lutheran University's Faculty Development & Inclusive Excellence Grant, $1,500
2023, California Lutheran University's Hewlett Grant, $1,000
2023, Federation of American Scientists' Civil Rights Data Science Impact Fellow (Finalist), $160,000
2022, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Ford Dissertation Fellowship, $28,000
2022, American Education Research Association's Research Grant, $27,500
2022, American Education Research Association's Minority Dissertation Fellowship, $25,000
2022, International Philanthropic Education Organization's PEO Scholar Award, $20,000
Research Publications
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
Templeton D. & Korchagin R (2026). Handcuffed for 15 min: public perceptions of restraint and seclusion in schools: an experimental study of race and disability. Frontiers of Psychology, 16. 16:1646644. 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1646644
Templeton, D., Gordan, T. & Korchagin, R. (2026). “If We Don't Tell Our Stories, They'll Erase Us”: Understanding the Criminalization of Disabled Black American Activists. Diversity & Inclusion Research, 3(2). https://doi.org/10.1002/dvr2.70049.
Templeton, D., (2025). The Laying on of Hands: Anti-Black and Anti-Gender-Expansive Biases in Public Perceptions of School Personnel Performance Ratings. Educational Researcher, 54(6). https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X251368365.
Templeton, D., (2025). Bureaucratic representation may lead to less discriminatory outcomes for American Indian and Two Spirit youth: Evidence from an online experiment on school criminalization. AERA Open, 11. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584251338847
Templeton, D. (2025). The U.S. public disapproves of corporal punishment in American schools…for some kids more than others: Evidence from an online experiment on (school) criminalization. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 1-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2025.2488746.
Templeton D., Korchagin R., Valla B., Ford JR. (2025). When Parent–Teacher Collaboration Turns Violent: Corporal Punishment in American Schools and Subsequent (Secondary) Trauma. Children 12(6):684. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12060684
Templeton, D., Korchagin, R., & Valla, B. (2025). Left Behind in Lockdown: How COVID-19 Deepened the Crisis in K-12 Physical Education. Children, 12(5), 603. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12050603
Templeton, D. (2025) [Forthcoming]. Gender Expansive Students and the School-to-Prison Nexus. In Roberts, L. (ed.), The Sage International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender (Vol. #, pp. #-#). Sage Publications, Inc.
Templeton, D. (2024). The Immovable Veil of Black disability: An introduction to Black disability racial threat theory and its application to school criminalization. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2024.2398474
Templeton, D. and Korchagin, R. (2024). Exercising Educational Equity Using California's Physical Fitness Data: A call for more school physical fitness programs, data, and research. Frontiers of Education. DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1433466.
Jenkins, L., Marks, L.R., Perez-Felkner, L., Verma, K., Templeton, D., Thomas, J. (2024). Applying the Bystander Intervention Model to Racial Microaggressions in College Students. International Journal of Bullying Prevention. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-024-00216-x.
Marks, L., Jenkins, L., Perez-Felkner, L., Templeton, D., & Verma, K. (2024). Social Cognitive Predictors of Bystander Intervention in Racial Microaggressions among College Students. Race and Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-024-09412-2.
Wright, J., Gaozhao, D., Dukes, K., & Templeton, D. (2022). The power of protests: An experiment of Black Lives Matter protest presence and citizens’ perceptions of the police. Public Administration Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13498.
Holton, A., Perez-Felkner, L., & Templeton, D. (2022). How do institutional type and transfer affect contemporary college students' degree attainment. Community College Journal of Research and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2022.2156633.
BOOK CHAPTERS
Perez-Felkner, L., Fluker, C., & Templeton, D. (2024). Interventions at minority-serving institutions beyond HSIs: A critical mixed methods analysis of Latinx students in diverse contexts. In L. Perez-Felkner, C. Fluker & C. Rodriguez (Eds.). Latinx students in engineering (1st ed.). 10.36019/9781978838703-008.
POLICY BRIEFS & OP-EDS
Templeton, D. (2025). Rebuilding K–12 Physical Education after COVID-19. https://scholars.org/contribution/rebuilding-k-12-physical-education-after-covid.
Templeton, D. (2025). Empowering Disabled Black Youth Through Equitable Education Policies. Scholars Strategy Network. https://scholars.org/contribution/empowering-disabled-black-youth-through.
Templeton, D. (2025). Corporal Punishment Is Losing Ground — But Some Still Favor It for Certain Kids. 74. https://www.the74million.org/article/corporal-punishment-is-losing-ground-but-some-still-favor-it-for-certain-kids/
Templeton, D. (2025). Improving student health through physical fitness in California schools. Scholars Strategy Network. https://scholars.org/contribution/improving-student-health-through-physical.
Templeton, D. (2025). End corporal punishment in Mississippi schools. Scholars Strategy Network. https://scholars.org/contribution/end-corporal-punishment-mississippi-schools.
Templeton, D. (2025). California needs a fitness revolution. EdSource. https://edsource.org/2025/california-schools-need-a-fitness-revolution/732149.
Teaching
In my 15 years as an educator, I have successfully taught at non-profits, prisons, minority-serving institutions, and white-serving institutions. It has been my privilege to collaborate with students who are 1.5-generation, disabled, emergent bilingual, first-generation, imprisoned, living in poverty, neurodivergent, and racially minoritized; students across age groups and degree levels, including contemporary, undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral learners; and those with families and full-time jobs. I prioritize comprehension (not memorization) and improvement (not perfection) by, for example, incorporating scaffolded assignments, multiple revision opportunities, and collaborative grading systems. I leverage equitable pedagogical practices such as community building, targeted self-disclosure, purposeful reductions in power dynamics, as well as center contributions from scholars who are disabled, international, and racially minoritized. I incorporate multiple opportunities for formative and summative assessments of both my students and myself. Throughout the semester, I provide students with timely, actionable feedback to support reflection and growth, and I give students the opportunity to critique my instruction via exit slips and a midterm course evaluation, which I use to adapt each course in real time. Centralizing course content and current contexts, I facilitate conversations that embolden students to (re)negotiate their self-paradigm and teaching philosophy and demand a complex commitment to advocacy that all educators ought to possess.
Contact Me
Email: dtempleton at callutheran dot edu