- Athens, Georgia
Stephanie Jones
The University of Georgia, College of Education, Faculty Member
- Education, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Teacher Education, Literacy, Social Class, and 19 moreCritical Geography, Critical Literacy, Children and Families, Neoliberalism, Feminist Geography, Feminist Theory, Economic Geography, Space and Place, New Materialism, Ethnography, Girlhood Studies, Early Childhood Literacy, Critical Pedagogy, Literacy Studies, Social Mobility, Embodiment, Sociology of Education, Comics/Sequential Art, and Psychosocial Studiesedit
- Josiah Megs Distinguished Teaching Professor
Mary Frances Early College of Education
Institute for Women's Studies
Educational Theory and Practice
Qualitative Studies Programedit
United States President Joe Biden ran on a platform that included support for unions, racial justice, youth rights in schools, and public education. He has assembled the most diverse cabinet in history with appointments of the first... more
United States President Joe Biden ran on a platform that included support for unions, racial justice, youth rights in schools, and public education. He has assembled the most diverse cabinet in history with appointments of the first indigenous woman, first openly gay man, and has surrounded himself with women and Black and Latinx people. These moves reflect what Fraser (2017) calls progressive politics of recognition, but she asserts that hegemonic neoliberalism prevents both parties from critiquing capitalism resulting in the perpetuation of economic inequality and persistent crises. In other words, progressive neoliberalism may sound like a contradictory phrase, but it illuminates the way neoliberal ideologies and policies have infiltrated progressive leadership and undermines the very aims they claim to pursue. In this chapter I present one decision that Biden made to uphold the K-12 mandate for state testing as a way to illustrate progressive neoliberalism in action. Specifically, I argue that this decision reveals unwavering support for capitalism that likely guided his decision-making and thus undermined any potential for justice or equity. I draw upon Marx's (1990) and Harvey's (2018) arguments that the capitalist mode of production creates a system in which decisions are made either on the side of capital or labor to indicate Biden's choosing the side of capital.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide a transcript of a dialogue among literacy educators and researchers on the impact of generative aritficial intelligence (AI) in the field. In the spring of 2023, a lively conversation emerged on the... more
The purpose of this paper is to provide a transcript of a dialogue among literacy educators and researchers on the impact of generative aritficial intelligence (AI) in the field. In the spring of 2023, a lively conversation emerged on the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy (NCRLL)'s listserv. Stephanie initiated the conversation by sharing an op-ed she wrote for Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the rise of ChatGPT and similar generative AI platforms, moving beyond the general public's concerns about student cheating and robot takeovers. NCRLL then convened a webinar of eight leading scholars in writing and literacies development, inspired by that listerv conversation and an organizational interest in promoting intergenerational collaboration among literacy scholars. Design/methodology/approach-As former doctoral students of two of the panel participants, webinar facilitators Grace and Victoria positioned themselves primarily as learners about this topic and gathered questions from colleagues, P-16 practitioners and those outside the field of education to
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Three educators in one small U.S. city in the south draw on feminist posthumanisms, childhood geographies, and place-based education to write about their own kin-making with trees and their work with children in three very different... more
Three educators in one small U.S. city in the south draw on feminist posthumanisms, childhood geographies, and place-based education to write about their own kin-making with trees and their work with children in three very different treescapes.
Link: https://www.bankstreet.edu/research-publications-policy/occasional-paper-series/ops-50/making-kin-with-trees/
Link: https://www.bankstreet.edu/research-publications-policy/occasional-paper-series/ops-50/making-kin-with-trees/
Research Interests: Human Geography, Teacher Education, Posthumanism, Early Childhood Education, Outdoor Education, and 9 moreReggio Emilia, Elementary Education, Childhood studies, Place-Based Education, Feminist Posthumanism, Healing, Feminist new materialism, Forest Schol and Early Years Education, and Geography of Childhood
This article draws from a three-year ethnographic study of girls and their mothers in a high-poverty, predominantly white community. Informed by critical and feminist theories of social class, I present four cases that highlight... more
This article draws from a three-year ethnographic study of girls and their mothers in a high-poverty, predominantly white community. Informed by critical and feminist theories of social class, I present four cases that highlight psychosocial tensions within the mother-daughterteacher-researcher triangle and argue that white, middle-class female teachers and ethnographers need to be particularly reflexive when working with children across the social class divide.
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This essay asserts that the Cobb County School District is incorrectly interpreting Georgia's 2022 ban on divisive concepts to fire a teacher for reading the children's picture book "My Shadow is Purple." They argue that the teacher's... more
This essay asserts that the Cobb County School District is incorrectly interpreting Georgia's 2022 ban on divisive concepts to fire a teacher for reading the children's picture book "My Shadow is Purple." They argue that the teacher's pedagogical decisions are actually affirmed by the Georgia "divisive concepts" law named Protect Students First Act and that misconceptions about the law are fueling fear and self-censorship of teachers. However, the authors believe these misconceptions are informed by polarizing rhetoric and not the text of the law itself.
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A graphica/comics piece for Seattle's Child about rethinking schooling in the pandemic. A focus is on outdoor education, place-based education, and equity and justice-oriented education.
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Artificial intelligence is already entangled with children's and youth's lives. ChatGPT is just another iteration of artificial intelligence in our lives, albeit a worldchanging one. While this model has caused a panic about students... more
Artificial intelligence is already entangled with children's and youth's lives. ChatGPT is just another iteration of artificial intelligence in our lives, albeit a worldchanging one. While this model has caused a panic about students "cheating" on assignments, I largely stand with folks who have written about the importance of teaching with the program and rethinking what it means to be together in a shared classroom space. Children and youths are already living their lives with artificial intelligence. The very presence of artificial intelligence like Alexa, Google, TikTok video creation, voice-to-text, autocorrect, Snapchat filters, Spotify playlists, drawing apps, and Siri fundamentally alters their existence. But this is not what I'm panicking about. Artificial Intelligence changes work and replaces workers while making billions. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence model created by Open AI that claims to be "creating safe artificial general intelligence that benefits all of humanity." ChatGPT is only one model created by a company that is projected to generate $1 Billion in revenue in 2024. Benefitting humanity is a lofty claim that many technology companies make, but we should be very skeptical and critical about such claims.
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This is a graphica (cartoon/comics) piece exploring some of the revolutionary pedagogies and educational philosophies that have emerged through extremely difficult and oppressive historical contexts. It's a pep talk for all of us as we... more
This is a graphica (cartoon/comics) piece exploring some of the revolutionary pedagogies and educational philosophies that have emerged through extremely difficult and oppressive historical contexts. It's a pep talk for all of us as we live through the global coronavirus pandemic and uprisings against systemic racialized violence.
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A teacher’s ability to feel successful – some might even say good – in today’s education system relies on a particular conception of academic success. We argue neoliberalism, as it operates in education, is a normalized trauma enfolded in... more
A teacher’s ability to feel successful – some might even say good – in today’s education system relies on a particular conception of academic success. We argue neoliberalism, as it operates in education, is a normalized trauma enfolded in the individual and collective bodies of women teachers producing overwhelming feelings of never being good enough while also not feeling entitled to do what is right – in the moment – for the children they teach. But this is not new; women have historically been positioned as others through whom educational directives should flow without question. Using the lived experience of the first author, teaching in the south-eastern United States, we describe some of the tolls neoliberalism has on the physical and emotional well-being of the woman teacher body in the search of being good enough. We argue it is time for teacher education to become a feminist project where women have access to the intellectual and analytical tools to make sense of what is being done to them and to give testimony and be a critical witness of these everyday traumas that are being inflicted upon them, their students and others collectively in schools.
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On Point Radio Show, WBUR Radio on education 7 months into the pandemic in the U.S. Teachers, students, families, and finding ways to be innovative in a system that is easily swayed by private corporation's interests (e.g. big tech... more
On Point Radio Show, WBUR Radio on education 7 months into the pandemic in the U.S. Teachers, students, families, and finding ways to be innovative in a system that is easily swayed by private corporation's interests (e.g. big tech companies).
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Interview on On Point, WBUR Radio about education in the early months of the pandemic.
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Now is the time to create outdoor and community-based education that connects youth to place, incorporates their interests and current events, and pushes for social, political, and environmental justice. We can do this.
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A critical response to the national editorials repeating the mantra that students will be "behind" because of the pandemic.
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An essay for the Atlanta Journal Constitution on crisis schooling during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States.
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This chapter draws on theories of new materialisms that assume the discursive (language, ideology, emotions) and the material (physical space, material objects, bodies) are always entangled and act together to produce phenomena. We use... more
This chapter draws on theories of new materialisms that assume the discursive (language, ideology, emotions) and the material (physical space, material objects, bodies) are always entangled and act together to produce phenomena. We use these theoretical concepts to persuade readers that the ways we perceive, judge, and discriminate based on social-class difference are literacies that we acquire and produce across time and space. The authors argue that these literacies are acquired by the body through our material-discursive intra-actions and are often felt viscerally, even when we don't have access to language appropriate for articulating what we know. We use vignettes from teacher education courses to support a call for tending to the body, space, social-classed texts, and emotions in the design of curriculum and pedagogy aimed at approaches to teaching and learning that are sensitive to social class. Randall was just five years old when he sat with Stephanie (first author) in the kitchen area of the informal learning space that was housed in his neighborhood. He visited this space, known as the Playhouse, after school every day that it was open, typically about three days a week. He hadn't gone to school on this day, and so he arrived quite early, while Stephanie was cutting up vegetables and fruits and doing other things to get the space ready for a couple of dozen children to pour through the doors searching for snacks and friends, ready to pick up their projects where they left off or to change course entirely and start something new. Stephanie sliced the big bunch of cucumbers that she had picked up at the local food bank and listened to Randall as he talked about things he liked and didn't like, things he wanted to do and didn't want to do. As the conversation carried on, Randall began talking about things that worried him.
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Graphica piece exploring teacher education's history as intellectual and academic and/or job training.
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A blog post written for Harvard Education Publishing Group
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Research Interests: Teacher Education, Space and Place, Critical Pedagogy, Teachers' professional development, Feminist Pedagogy (Women s Studies), and 4 morePublic Space, Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, Place-Based Education, and Teacher education, Pre/Inservice developing teacher identity, disposition, and philosophy statements, TE curricula and pedagogy as a content area of study, critical pedagogy & methodologies
Op-ED for the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the "magic" of the Red Clay Writing Project and the National Writing Project for teachers to immerse themselves in writing and cultivate their writerly selves in a powerful community.
Research Interests: Creative Writing, Teacher Education, Writing, Teachers' professional development, Teachers’ Approaches to Literacy Teaching and Learning for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students, and 3 moreLiteracy Professional Development for Teachers of Urban School Students, Literacy Education, and language and literacy education
Drawing on our documentation of transforming an informal learning centre (the Playhouse) in a multilingual, working-class neighbourhood, this paper presents significant and deliberate material-discursive changes at the Playhouse that... more
Drawing on our documentation of transforming an informal learning centre (the Playhouse) in a multilingual, working-class neighbourhood, this paper presents significant and deliberate material-discursive changes at the Playhouse that produced unpredictable shifts in belongings among young children. More specifically, this paper entwines our place-making experiences with theories of feminist new materialism, to explore the object as a material-discursive apparatus in the production of literacies, particularly literacies of race and class. Implications for careful analysis of the racialized and classed literacies produced through the materiality of educational spaces suggest that when we entangle ourselves with material-discursive apparatuses, through play and otherwise, we acquire such literacies and that issues of accessibility always involve the more than human. Turning into the driveway of the community centre, the material remnants of play served as a sort of tableau vivant of the activities from the day before. Bookcases, plastic crates, broken flowerbed edging and old white window security bars were assembled in some of the spaces typically reserved for parking.
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In this article, Stephanie Jones and Hilary E. Hughes suggest that particular discursive lessons are readily available in justice-oriented teacher education which might influence a pedagogy that crowds out responsiveness, the experience... more
In this article, Stephanie Jones and Hilary E. Hughes suggest that particular discursive lessons are readily available in justice-oriented teacher education which might influence a pedagogy that crowds out responsiveness, the experience of the student, and the role of gender and feminism in teacher education. They contend that changing the place of teacher education to include unpredictable community settings requires pedagogical responses that defy predictable storylines and ready-made discursive lessons common in teacher education. The lessons learned contribute to justice-oriented teacher education and an emerging trend for including community-based experiences in teacher education, and highlight the importance of feminist storylines for the incommensurability of misogyny and racism for teacher education.
Link to Harvard Educational Review for paper:
http://hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/0017-8055.86.2.161?af=R&code=hepg-site
Link to Harvard Educational Review for paper:
http://hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/0017-8055.86.2.161?af=R&code=hepg-site
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This is an invited revisiting of Grass Houses, an article published in JoLLE in 2008 about social class and children's literature.
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A graphica chapter in an edited volume. Full reference: Woglom, J.F. & Jones, S. (2016). Playground futurities: Enacting freedom through Reggio, a neighborhood, and relational aesthetics. In P.C. Gorski, R.M. Salcedo, & J. Landsman... more
A graphica chapter in an edited volume. Full reference:
Woglom, J.F. & Jones, S. (2016). Playground futurities: Enacting freedom through Reggio, a neighborhood, and relational aesthetics. In P.C. Gorski, R.M. Salcedo, & J. Landsman (Eds.) Talking back and looking forward: Poetry and prose for social justice in education (pp. 103-112). New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Woglom, J.F. & Jones, S. (2016). Playground futurities: Enacting freedom through Reggio, a neighborhood, and relational aesthetics. In P.C. Gorski, R.M. Salcedo, & J. Landsman (Eds.) Talking back and looking forward: Poetry and prose for social justice in education (pp. 103-112). New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, Teacher Education, Research Methodology, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, and 11 moreFeminist Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze, Comics/Sequential Art, Felix Guattari, Pedagogy, Critical Literacy Studies, Arts-Based Research, Comics and Graphic Novels, Arts-Based Educational Research, Relational aesthetics, and Advanced Research Methodology in Social Sciences
This post-qualitative research analyzes the spatialized practices of young people within a working-class community and how those guided the opening and facilitating of a local community center. Seeing place-making as a social and... more
This post-qualitative research analyzes the spatialized practices of young people within a working-class community and how those guided the opening and facilitating of a local community center. Seeing place-making as a social and political act, the authors were inspired by Heath's classic study and argument that children's education might be better served if educators understood and built on their community-based language practices. Writing through theories of new materialism, spatiality, and children's geog-raphies, we build an argument for spatial justice by considering the ways educational scholars and educators might understand and build on child-ren's community-based spatial practices.
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http://hepg.org/blog/teacher-education-still-needs-feminism
A blogpost on Harvard Education Publishing "Voices in Education" that calls for feminisms to be more central to the work in teacher education.
A blogpost on Harvard Education Publishing "Voices in Education" that calls for feminisms to be more central to the work in teacher education.
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A preview of 27 pages of the book "On Mutant Pedagogies: Seeking Justice and Drawing Change in Teacher Education," a graphica book exploring philosophy, pedagogies, and change in teacher education.
Research Interests: Ontology, Feminist Theory, Teacher Education, Bodies and Culture, Social Justice, and 11 moreTeacher Research, Gilles Deleuze, Feminism, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Gender and education, Comics and Graphic Novels, Feminism and Social Justice, Marxist and Materialist Feminism, Women and Gender Studies, and Visual Research Methods
https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/doing-arts-thinking/on-mutant-pedagogies/ This book is bold, innovative, and a key contribution to the fields of teacher education and qualitative research in this time of theoretical... more
https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/doing-arts-thinking/on-mutant-pedagogies/
This book is bold, innovative, and a key contribution to the fields of teacher education and qualitative research in this time of theoretical and philosophical mutating through the work of key posthuman thinkers. In one text, this book illustrates (literally) complex concepts important to posthuman inquiry including intra-action (e.g. Barad), becoming (e.g. Deleuze & Guattari), and relational aesthetics and the aesthetic subject (e.g. Guattari). It “reports” on empirical research conducted in the context of a feminist teacher education course, assembling analyses of the many ways that history, geography, discourse, materiality, and lived encounters produced what became possible and not possible in that space. In this way, the text itself shows readers how material-discursive forces produce newness and indeed, how the creators’ approach to being and becoming differently through their arts-infused modes of inquiry fundamentally changed their “research.”
Advance praise of the book include reviewers from across the U.S. and beyond that say it is a “ground-breaking,” "sheer transgressive brilliance," "trailblazer," “transforming,” and “stunning” book that guides the reader to see that “neither method nor methodology is fixed” in justice-oriented education.
A sample chapter can be downloaded at Sense Publishers' website.
This book is bold, innovative, and a key contribution to the fields of teacher education and qualitative research in this time of theoretical and philosophical mutating through the work of key posthuman thinkers. In one text, this book illustrates (literally) complex concepts important to posthuman inquiry including intra-action (e.g. Barad), becoming (e.g. Deleuze & Guattari), and relational aesthetics and the aesthetic subject (e.g. Guattari). It “reports” on empirical research conducted in the context of a feminist teacher education course, assembling analyses of the many ways that history, geography, discourse, materiality, and lived encounters produced what became possible and not possible in that space. In this way, the text itself shows readers how material-discursive forces produce newness and indeed, how the creators’ approach to being and becoming differently through their arts-infused modes of inquiry fundamentally changed their “research.”
Advance praise of the book include reviewers from across the U.S. and beyond that say it is a “ground-breaking,” "sheer transgressive brilliance," "trailblazer," “transforming,” and “stunning” book that guides the reader to see that “neither method nor methodology is fixed” in justice-oriented education.
A sample chapter can be downloaded at Sense Publishers' website.
Research Interests: Feminist Theory, Teacher Education, Ethnography, Posthumanism, Critical Posthumanism, and 8 moreSocial Justice in Education, Feminist Pedagogy (Women s Studies), Arts-based methodologies, Arts-Based Research, Comics and Graphic Novels, Poststructuralist Theory, Arts-Based Educational Research, and Critical Literacy
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Students huddle during tornado warnings, largely without masks because of the lack of leadership in the state to protect children and teachers in schools.
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University of Georgia professor Stephanie Jones says President Joe Biden is wrong to compel states to give standardized tests this year as required by federal education law. Several states, including Georgia, had sought waivers that would... more
University of Georgia professor Stephanie Jones says President Joe Biden is wrong to compel states to give standardized tests this year as required by federal education law. Several states, including Georgia, had sought waivers that would have allowed them to forgo tests this year due to the disruptions to schools from COVID-19. Jones is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice. She teaches courses on teachers as writers, feminist theory and pedagogy, social class and poverty. You can read earlier blog pieces by her on COVID's impact on education here and here. This device gives 37 million snorers their sleep back.
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Surely by now, many of you have heard about the Wall Street Journal opinion essay by Joseph Epstein, a name I had never heard before his very public display of first-rate misogyny. This person (aided by a major media outlet) not only... more
Surely by now, many of you have heard about the Wall Street Journal opinion essay by Joseph Epstein, a name I had never heard before his very public display of first-rate misogyny. This person (aided by a major media outlet) not only targeted an incoming "First Lady" (we can deal with the history of that sexism elsewhere), but a dedicated and accomplished woman educator. I won't waste any time defending Dr. Biden's credentials or accomplishments, because while the essay targeted her as an individual, we can too easily be distracted and divided by getting lost in the details of individual merit when the problem is actually a system of power that Epstein is attempting to reassert and uphold (but here's a good essay defending Dr. Biden if you're looking for that). I also don't need to know Epstein as an individual to understand full well what he's up to…every woman has experienced belittling by men. Some of those men have been in our own families, friend groups, workplaces, they have even been our partners; and they have even been strangers on city buses, in grocery stores, at the post office, or on the highway. Some of those men are online acquaintances, jabbing their desperate insults from keyboards located all over the globe.
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Two UGA researchers say outlawing such discussions can devastate children Two UGA researchers say outlawing such discussions can devastate children In a guest column, two University of Georgia researchers discuss how to talk to young... more
Two UGA researchers say outlawing such discussions can devastate children Two UGA researchers say outlawing such discussions can devastate children In a guest column, two University of Georgia researchers discuss how to talk to young children about gender or sexuality in the classroom, issues they say are important for schools to address rather than ignore. Stephanie Jones is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia who teaches in the Mary Frances Early College of Education and in the Institute for Women's Studies. A doctoral student in the University of Georgia Department of Educational Theory and Practice with an emphasis in early childhood education, Dylan Brody is a veteran preschool educator who conducts research on childhood and play.
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Op-Ed for the Atlanta Journal Constitution on the issue of mandatory "reporting" of suspected neglect or abuse.
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Pressure on testing creates pressure for cheating
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An op-ed about the current production of anxiety in schools among teachers and young people.
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An op-ed by Stephanie Jones about low morale among teachers and students.
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Bob Fecho and Stephanie Jones call for critical creativity in formal education.
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Alfredo Gaete and Stephanie Jones have a final word on the ongoing debate over neoliberal education reform policies in Chile and connections to the U.S.
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Alfredo Gaete and Stephanie Jones respond to critics of their critique of the "Chilean Miracle" in education reform.
