Dr. Karyn Allee is doing what she can to make public education access, opportunities and outcomes more equitable for children. An associate professor of elementary education in Mercer University’s College of Education, her work and research center around play-based learning and developmental support for future teachers.
After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in teaching at the University of Florida, Dr. Allee worked for Orange County Public Schools for 14 years. She taught in kindergarten through third grade classrooms for several years before moving into roles facilitating professional development at the school level and then the district level. She also did corporate education work related to curriculum, instruction, assessments and professional development for about a decade, earning a specialist degree in education leadership from Stetson University along the way.
In 2016, she continued her education at the University of Central Florida, where she earned a graduate certificate in urban education and a Ph.D. in elementary education. She joined the faculty at Mercer’s College of Education in fall 2019.
“I wanted to be able to do meaningful research, but I also really loved teaching, and I was looking for a place to do both,” Dr. Allee said. “I really just love the opportunity to teach and research in a higher ed space. It challenges me; it pushes me. The work feels important. There is an immediate impact but also a long-term impact”
Play-based learning in elementary schools has become less common in the last 30 years, as teaching approaches emphasizing standardized testing and milestones have been implemented. However, the benefits of play-based learning are supported by research in the fields of learning sciences, neuroscience, cognitive development and psychology, Dr. Allee said.
“In a lot of ways, what we are doing now has been well-intentioned but has created some unintended consequences and, in some ways, further disadvantaged students, rather than closing opportunity gaps,” Dr. Allee said. “I’m really trying to get empirical data that (play-based learning) is not only an important and functional learning tool in classrooms but that it is also an equity lever. For children who come to school with whatever degree of disadvantage … this approach is a more effective way to get kids caught up.”
Dr. Allee believes a shift in thinking, methods and metrics are needed to improve student outcomes.
“If we look at National Assessment of Educational Progress scores as the nation’s report card, we have seen some increases in student outcomes when we look at students overall, but the gaps, if you look at subpopulations of students, have remained consistent and predictable,” she said.
Teacher development is another passion for Dr. Allee. With teacher shortages and shortened training requirements, teachers often need additional support to deal with increased stress, expectations and burnout.
As she leads master’s courses in the College of Education, Dr. Allee strives to provide future educators with the skills, knowledge, resources and experiences they need to tackle the challenges of this field. She mixes learning objectives with practical, hands-on approaches that engage children. She works with her students on ways to meet content and pedagogy requirements and manage classrooms while also prioritizing children’s social-emotional learning.
As co-director of Mercer’s doctoral teaching program, she supports the research and work of graduate students who can help to build educator capacity in the future. Through her work in the classroom, she aims to prepare future teachers to advocate for their students and make wise decisions for them.
“I’ve been an educator for 30 years. I come from a long line of educators. There’s still something there that is important, that feels like a calling,” she said. “I really believe that as educators, we have to advocate for our students, and by extension, their families in the P-12 space.”
With Mercer provost seed grant funding, Dr. Allee recently launched an online project called the Joyful Learning Collaborative that she hopes will become a space for educators to support one another. Her vision is for it to be a place where teachers share their research, resources, ideas and experiences and discuss challenges.
“The goal is that with more teachers involved in it and more people interested in it, it will at some point become exponential and go beyond the Atlanta area and beyond Georgia and be a national resource that can connect people with each other from a teaching perspective but also from a scholarly perspective,” she said.
Dr. Allee has presented her research on instruction and student learning on a number of platforms since coming to Mercer, including conferences hosted by the American Education Research Association, the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching. Later this fall, she will co-present a workshop on active, playful learning and collect data from attendees at the National Association for the Education of Young Children conference with Mercer Assistant Professor of Elementary Education Dr. Annemarie Kaczmarczyk and give a presentation at the Georgia Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages conference with College of Education Ph.D. graduate Stephanie Moore.
In addition, she and four Mercer doctoral students are working on a case study with a Florida teacher. They have been selected to present at the 2026 Georgia Educational Research Association conference and have applied for the Eastern Regional Educational Research Association conference.
“My career goal — it started as a kindergarten teacher in that Title I school in January of 1995 — is to finally make public education access and opportunities and outcomes equitable for all children,” she said. “And I don’t know that I will accomplish that, but I intend to do my level best to do everything that I can.”
