David Yun Dai Associate Professor Ph.D. Purdue University

David Yun Dai joined the faculty of Educational Psychology and Methodology at University at Albany, State University of New York in 2001. He received his doctoral degree from Purdue University, and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, University of Connecticut.  He also holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from East China Normal University.  Prior to his appointment with University at Albany, he worked as an assistant professor of psychology at the Central Missouri State University. He teaches courses pertaining to instruction, learning, motivation, and cognition.  In recent years, he has been engaged in classroom-based research on incorporating teaching cases and case methods in teacher education courses to facilitate teacher reflection and learning.  His practical interest is to incorporate an inquiry-based mode of learning in a variety of domains and settings.

Dr. Dai is the recipient of the Early Scholar Award in 2006 conferred by the National Association for Gifted Children.  He currently serves on the advisory and editorial boards of Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal for the Education of the Gifted, and Roeper Review.  His theoretical interests include developing a more integrative, functionalist perspective on intellectual functioning and development, including text comprehension and conceptual understanding.  He has just completed a book on the psychology of the game of Go, with a focus on the nature and development of expertise during childhood and adolescence. 

Representative Publications:

Dai, D. Y., Wang, X. (2007).  The role of need for cognition and reader beliefs in text comprehension and interest development.  Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32, 332-347.

Dai, D. Y. (2005). Reductionism versus emergentism: A framework for understanding conceptions of giftedness. Roeper Review, 27, 144-151.

E-mail: ddai@uamail.albany.edu