Sun (Youngsun) Moon

Sun (Youngsun) Moon is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education in the Department of Learning and Instruction in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo. She holds a Ph.D. in Education from UC Irvine, with training focused on literacy development and quantitative methods.

Her overall research centers on literacy development, with a focus on the foundational skills that support students’ reading and writing across diverse linguistic and educational backgrounds. Specific interests include: how reading and spelling interact in development, taking alternative approaches to scoring for more nuanced understandings, and how assessment data can be used to better understand and support students’ literacy growth over time.

She also has experience and interest in language assessment, psychometrics, and advanced quantitative methods, which she uses to answer nuanced questions about student learning and achievement. Ultimately, her goal is to translate research into tools and practices that improve how we assess and support students’ literacy development.

• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University, Graduate School of Education (2026)
• Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, School of Education (2025)
• M.A., Korea University, English Education (2019)
• B.A., Korea University, College of Education (2016)

• Timothy & Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award; International Literacy Association; 2026-07-01;
• Stanford Impact Labs Postdoctoral Fellowship; Stanford Impact Labs; 2026-05-30;
• Doctoral Dissertation Grant Honorary Mentioning; The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF); 2025-12-02;
• Pedagogical Scholars Fellowship; Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation, UC Irvine; 2024-08-30;

• Zajic, M. C., Hebert, M., Hines, H., Moon, Y., & Lovett, B. J. (2026). Does composition mode matter? Comparing students’ handwriting, keyboarding, and speech-to-text dictation performance. Reading and Writing, 39(2), 461-484.
• Moon, Y., & Kim, Y. S. G. (2024). Do the relations of vocabulary and attentional control with word reading and spelling change as a function of development and spelling scoring method?. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 246, 106019.

• Moon, Y., & Kim, Y. S. G. (2026). Developmental relations of Spanish and English spelling in emergent bilinguals between grade 1 and grade 3: exploring scoring methods and instructional contexts. Reading and Writing, 1-31.
• Graham, S., Cao, Y., Kim, Y. S. G., Lee, J., Tate, T., Collins, P., Cho, M., Moon, Y., Chung, H., & Olson, C. B. (2025). Effective writing instruction for students in grades 6 to 12: A best evidence meta-analysis. Reading and Writing, 38(4), 1-46.

• Silverman, R., Blum, A., Irey, R., Murray, T. S., Toyama, Y., Moon, Y., ROAR Developer Consortium, & Yeatman, J. D. (2026, April 11). Rapid online assessment of reading, language, and comprehension suite: Technical manual. Stanford University. https://roar.stanford.edu/comprehension/

• Moon, Y. (Chair), Yeatman, J. D., Ma, W. A., Townley-Flores, C., Jimenez, M., & Murray, T. (2026, April). Leveraging research-practice partnerships to develop open-access and scalable reading assessments: Rapid online assessment of reading [Symposium]. AERA Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, United States.;
• Moon, Y., & Kim, Y.-S. G. (2026, April). Examining child and word factors for English spelling development: A longitudinal study [Paper presentation]. AERA Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, United States.;
• Moon, Y., Murray, T., & Yeatman, J. D. (2026, February). Developing a group-administered phonics assessment [Paper presentation]. Innovations in Assessment: Technology-Enhanced Measures for Diverse Learners Panel, Pacific Coast Research Conference, Long Beach, CA, United States.;
• Moon, Y., Steiss, J., Wang, J., & Collins, P. (2024, April). Effectiveness of a writing intervention in history classrooms: Do they vary by teacher- and student-factors? [Roundtable presentation]. AERA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, United States.;
• Moon, Y., & Kim, Y.-S. G. (2022, July). Investigating the directionality of relations between word reading and spelling: Do they differ according to how spelling is scored? [Paper presentation]. SSSR Annual Meeting, Newport, CA, United States.;