Jihae Cha

Jihae Cha is an Assistant Professor of International Education at the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Her research interests examine the intersection of education quality, sense of belonging, gender, and psychosocial well-being, and the ways in which they influence students’ academic motivation, persistence, and transition in forced displacement caused by armed conflicts and natural disasters. Jihae’s recent research project uses narrative inquiry and participatory action research in navigating a sense of identity/self and belonging among populations with refugee backgrounds in the United States. For the past decade, Jihae has been actively involved in multiple research projects that examined urban refugee education, teacher professional development, accelerated education, and early childhood education with the focus on East African countries. Moving away from deficit discourses that emphasize the vulnerability, passivity, and powerlessness of displaced populations, Jihae research focuses on taking a balanced approach that explores both challenges and opportunities that exist in education for students with refugee backgrounds.