Dani Parker Moore

Dr. Dani Parker Moore is an assistant professor of Multicultural Education and the Director of the Schools, Education, and Society Minor at Wake Forest University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on multicultural education, community engagement, and educational psychology.
Dr. Parker Moore’s research interests span qualitative research methods, social justice education, community participatory action research, and parent/caregiver engagement in both school and community contexts. Her work focuses on preventing summer learning loss and evaluating the effectiveness of culturally sustaining pedagogies implemented by Servant Leader Interns in the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools program, with generous support from the Spencer Foundation.
Her scholarship also investigates the experiences of essential worker parents and caregivers as they navigated the challenges of facilitating online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through rigorous qualitative research, Dr. Parker Moore addresses educational inequities and seeks to foster social action. She is skilled in methodologies such as semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations, surveys, and focus groups. Additionally, she co-edited Mentoring Students of Color: Naming the Politics of Race, Social Class, Gender, and Power (2019).
As the founding Executive Director of the Wake Forest University Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School, Dr. Parker Moore leads a free, six-week summer literacy program for K-8 students. The program is dedicated to empowering youth to thrive academically and socially, cultivating a belief in their capacity to contribute meaningfully to their communities, nation, and the world through hope, education, and action.
In recognition of her service, Dr. Parker Moore received the Faculty Service Excellence Award from Wake Forest’s Office of Civic and Community Engagement in 2020. In 2022, Wake Forest University recognized her for the Martin Luther King Jr. “Building the Dream” award. In 2024, Parker Moore was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from The School of Education at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.