Deirdre Hon

Deirdre Hon is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Portland. Her work focuses on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), particularly on developing educator training programs to integrate SEL into classrooms and schools.

• Collaborated with Oregon’s Teacher Standards and Practices Committee (TSPC) to create SEL Specialty Endorsement standards for Oregon Teaching Licenses
• Developed a three-course SEL series at UP culminating in the specialty endorsement
• Current research: Pre-service teacher resilience and SEL skill cultivation

Her research spans both educational practices and physiological responses to stress, with recent publications analyzing SEL frameworks and older works exploring biomarkers like oxytocin and cortisol in social contexts.

She incorporates undergraduate and graduate students into her SEL-related studies, drawing from psychology and education disciplines. Her teaching emphasizes action research, adapting SEL pedagogy through continuous data collection and analysis.