Faculty Profile: Ranjini Mahinda JohnBull
Dr. Ranjini JohnBull is an assistant professor in educational leadership on the tenure track who became a faculty member in the College of Education in the fall 2025 semester.
What is your educational background and what brought you to ECU’s College of Education?
My parents raised us to value our education because they were both first generation college graduates, each the only of their families to attain college degrees. My father came from a rural village in Sri Lanka and my mother came from a rural community in Illinois, both growing up on farms. My father served the State of Illinois in the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs by leading workforce training programs across Illinois state, and my mother served as a high school business education teacher. Both of my parents worked to help others attain better life outcomes through education.
Naturally, they instilled the idea that my work should help people. Thus, I pursued my bachelor’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis with the intention to go into medicine, although music was my true passion. While studying music and biology, I decided to pivot to focus on music (piano and voice) as my potential career path instead of medicine. Several people mentioned that music teacher shortages existed in Missouri. That led me to my teaching positions as the first full-time music teacher at Ethel Hedgeman Lyle Academy in St. Louis city, teaching PreK-4th grade students. Then, I served as the music teacher at another school, St. Louis Charter School teaching students from K-8th grades.
After teaching in St. Louis, my husband and I applied to serve in the US Peace Corps in Uganda. I had the privilege of working in eastern Uganda and collaborating with very creative and hardworking community partners in schools and in small non-profits. I served as a school leadership consultant, teacher trainer, and strategic grants writer with our partners. It was in Uganda that I noticed the same pattern that I observed as a music teacher in St. Louis: When teachers feel well-supported by their school leaders and principals, they feel more confident and secure in meeting their students’ needs. Teachers can thrive instead of just surviving. I went on to earn my Masters of Education in Administration and Supervision and my PhD in Educational Leadership at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development in Charlottesville, VA. After graduating in 2012, I served as a postdoctoral research fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Mariale Hardiman at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in the Neuro-Education Initiative. Following my postdoctoral fellowship, I joined the faculty at the JHU School of Education teaching in the Doctor of Education program and serving as the Faculty Lead in the Mind, Brain, and Teaching specialization and graduate certificate program until 2025.
What are your primary teaching and research interests?
My research focuses on both the personal and professional development of educators. I discovered the construct of self-efficacy and teacher self-efficacy during my graduate work. Teacher self-efficacy is the belief that a person’s teaching practices can positively impact student learning outcomes. This belief is one of the most influential factors that drives teachers’ practices and predicts students’ outcomes. I was curious about this construct: What influences variability in teacher self-efficacy for working with students from different populations? Consequently, my dissertation focused on exploring the relationship between teacher intersectional identity and teacher self-efficacy.
My research still focuses on professional self-efficacy, for teachers and for scholar-practitioners. Additionally, I explore interventions that aim to support self-efficacy beliefs for students, teachers, and leaders so that everyone in a learning community feels more connected. Currently, I am collaborating with two research groups from Johns Hopkins Center for the Social Organization of Schools to explore which practices and activities will improve students’ sense of school connectedness. The hope is that students will be more likely to stay in school, persist in the face of challenges, and build skills and knowledge that will help them beyond school. The activities included in my intervention studies pull from the research on Neuroeducation research, specifically from Dr. Hardiman’s Brain-Targeted Teaching model. I also integrate the work of culturally relevant pedagogy where the work focuses on students’ assets, strengths, and creating a sense of belonging.
What excited you most about joining the College of Education?
Joining the ECU College of Education feels like a journey of coming home because the spirit of the ECU community feels so familiar. This feeling was notable because I hadn’t visited ECU before my interview. I grew up in the Midwest, in Springfield, IL in a town of approximately 100,000 people. Springfield is surrounded by farmland like Greenville and my drive from Cary, NC to Greenville feels like my drives across the Illinois plains to Springfield; you can see neat rippling rows of corn and beans across the horizon, which are most beautiful to view at sunrise or sunset.
My parents raised us to value our education because they were both first generation college graduates, each the only of their families to attain college degrees. My father came from a rural village in Sri Lanka and my mother came from a rural community in Illinois, both growing up on farms. My father served the State of Illinois in the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs by leading workforce training programs across Illinois state, and my mother served as a high school business education teacher in my high school. I learned my computer applications skills from her class. Both of my parents worked to help others attain better life outcomes through education.
When the faculty position in Educational Leadership opened here at ECU, I knew I had to apply. This was an opportunity to serve my home state of North Carolina and continue to invest in serving educational leaders internationally. After meeting the faculty members during the interviews, I felt immediately at home. The warmth and depth of care that my new colleagues shared about their passion for serving students in this region and seeing students succeed radiated through every comment and every conversation. The service mission at ECU felt like a reflection of my own parents’ hearts for service and the spirit of the US Peace Corps in building up community partnerships and development through strengths-based practices. The ECU community in the College of Education felt like a perfect fit for my personal service mission.
What do you hope your students will take away from your classes?
I hope that my students will always take away something immediately useful for their work in their professions. I design my courses with activities and assignments that use products that they can take and implement in their own workplaces. In addition to the tangible activities and products from my courses, I hope that my students will leave my courses with a deeper understanding of themselves as leaders and complex humans. I integrated multiple texts from neuroeducation literature to help everyone better understand that human behavior is often influenced by what is happening in our bodies, brains, and minds. Thus, I hope that my students will better understand their peers, students, and the systems that we all work in. With this knowledge, I hope they will come away with a better sense of how to build gracious relationships in their communities to leverage the best of people in their spheres of influence.
What’s something fun or unique you’d like people to know about you?
One of my favorite ways to get kids to smile is to sing with my mouth closed. It’s a hit every time!
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
I love spending time with family and friends. My husband and I have four daughters, and we enjoy going to the beach and boogie boarding and having family dance parties in the living room. I love cooking and baking with my kids. And I also enjoy watching soccer (go Arsenal!), watching football (go Ravens!) and travelling. When we’re together in large groups of family or friends, playing Mafia is essential. It’s been one of our traditions since we were in college and it gets everyone involved. Lastly, my personal favorite exercises are dance and Zumba classes. It’s always feels like the time just flies by!