Stephanie Jones

Stephanie Jones is a University of Georgia Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor who has studied some of the most pressing social issues facing children, youth, educators, teacher education, and education scholars since the beginning of her career. She teaches courses in Educational Theory and Practice, Women’s Studies, and in Qualitative Studies that immerse students in rich, creative, interdisciplinary experiences and interrogations of contexts in which children, youth, and educators learn, teach, and become. Course titles and content include social class and poverty; class-sensitive pedagogies; bodies, gender, sexuality, sex, and relationship education; feminist theories and pedagogies; children’s social lives; politics of language and literacy teaching; equity and literacy pedagogies; advanced doctoral research and writing; critical inquiry and leadership in education; early and elementary childhood education; and sociocultural and critical literacies.

Integrating interdisciplinary readings and discussions from humanism, poststructuralism, posthumanism, and the postanthropocene, Stephanie’s teaching is known for its feminist ethico-onto-epistemological approach and its theoretical and philosophical depth, as well as its surprisingly practical implications for everyday practice in life and education. Whether the course is for doctoral students on writing through their qualitative research, for practicing teachers on understanding social class and poverty and integrating working-class content into their curriculum, or for undergraduates on teaching and learning about bodies and sex education, students will be engaged in a pedagogical space that is affirming, creative, intellectually-stimulating, and applicable to both academics and life.

Stephanie’s academic and public scholarship has been published widely including in Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, American Educational Research Journal, Seattle’s Child, Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and more. Her research in justice-oriented education has been recognized nationally and internationally for more than 20 years and continues to be recognized today as her work evolves and mutates with changing times and shifting theories and philosophies. Alongside other awards, her most recent book co-authored with James F. Woglom “On Mutant Pedagogies: Seeking Justice and Drawing Change in Teacher Education” was awarded the 2017 Outstanding Book Award by the Society of Professors of Education and by the Qualitative Research SIG of AERA. Her long-term and ongoing body of scholarship in this area was a key part of the dossier for the UGA’s Early Childhood and Elementary Education Program being awarded the Wisniewski Teacher Education Award in 2016 by the Society of Professors of Education.

Dr. Jones has extensive experience mentoring doctoral students within and beyond the College of Education, working closely with students who aim to be transdisciplinary scholars and practitioners to better understand and positively impact some of the major social and political issues today including social class and class politics, poverty, race, capitalism, neoliberalism, contemporary childhood, climate change, gender politics, censorship of education and educators, gender and labor, and of course, justice-oriented education and teacher education. She has served as major professor for more than 20 doctoral students and as a committee member for about 50 additional doctoral students.

In addition to her more typical teaching, research, and outreach work, Stephanie is director or co-director of several projects that combine research, teaching, and research in both local and national contexts including the following:

The Red Clay Writing Project. Red Clay has been a local site of the National Writing Project since 2003 and has inspired many hundreds of local and regional teachers to cultivate their writerly selves, create affirming and powerful spaces for writers in K-16 classrooms and across content areas, provide leadership in their educational contexts, inquire into injustices with their students, and create a more just world. The Red Clay Writing Project is involved in multiple ongoing partnerships including close work with the Georgia Department of Education and the Deep Center for Youth in Savannah, Georgia.

The CLASSroom Project, which aims to end classism in all its forms and has worked with more than 4,000 educators in Georgia and Minnesota to support them in better understanding the forces of capitalism, economics, neoliberalism, and classism in schools and society. This work promotes multidimensional “class-sensitive” pedagogies and policies in the classrooms and schools through workshops, consulting, and graduate courses. While this “project” is no longer existing in a formal sense, the work that Dr. Jones did in collaboration with colleagues, teachers, and students continues to influence her ongoing interests and commitments.

Books:

Girls, Social Class and Literacy: What Teachers Can Do to Make a Difference (2006)

The Reading Turn-Around: A Five-Part Framework for Differentiated Instruction (2009)

Writing and Teaching to Change the World: Connecting with our Most Vulnerable Students (2014)

On Mutant Pedagogies: Seeking Justice and Drawing Change in Teacher Education (2016)

Recent publications:

The Jam: Speculative-Mutant Pedagogies, Aesthetic Education Theory, and Becoming Joy with Children in a What If World (Teachers College Record, 2025)

Transforming Trauma Through Leisure Entanglements: A Feminist, Posthumanist Tale of the Body (Leisure Sciences, 2024)

Going Public with Contested Books: State-Wide Read Alouds, Critical Feminist Posthumanism, and Activism in Turbulent Times (Journal of Children’s Literature, 2024)

Children’s Literature: Finding Our Way Out of Stuck Stories: Children’s Literature as Vibrant Matter (Language Arts, 2024)

A Light in Dark Times: In Overt Defense of Trans-Affirming Spaces in Education (Bank Street Occasional Papers, 2024)

Making Kin with Trees: Three Educators and Children Entangled with Treescapes (Bank Street Occasional Papers, 2023)

Generative AI and Composing: An Intergenerational Conversation Among Literacy Scholars (English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 2023)

Reclaiming dreams of our shared future: Decolonizing metanarratives about what can/should/will be through imaginative diegesis. (The Routledge companion to decolonizing art, craft, and visual culture education, 2023)

Progressive Neoliberalism in action: President Biden sides with Capital in mandating K-12 testing in 2021. (Progressive neoliberalism in education: Critical perspectives on manifestations and resistance, 2022)

Socially engaged art with preservice teachers: The aesthetics of making sense of community-embedded experiences. (International Journal of Education Through Art, 2022)

The pep talk: Today we do the work. (Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, 2022)

The everyday traumas of neoliberalism in women teachers’ bodies: Lived experiences of the teacher who is never good enough. (Power and Education, 2021)

When the tears just pop out of your eyes: Reconfiguring social classed literacies through a posthuman teacher education pedagogy. (Teachers College Record Yearbook Series, 2021).

Publications that are still very powerful for today:

Becoming Unstuck: Traumas of Racism and Misogyny Diffused in the Ordinary (Language Arts, 2017)

Childhood Geographies and Spatial Justice: Making Sense of Space and Place-Making as Political Acts (AERJ, 2016)

Assembling a Critical Pedagogy (Writing and Teaching to Change the World, 2014)

When the Body Acquires Pedagogy and it Hurts (Literacies, learning, and the body: Bringing research and theory into pedagogical practice, 2015)

Trauma Narratives and Nomos in Teacher Education (Teaching Education, 2012)

Speaking of Bodies in Justice-Oriented Teacher Education (Journal of Teacher Education, 2012)

Emotional Investments and Crises of Truth: Gender, Class, and Literacies (International handbook of research in children’s literacy, learning, and culture, 2013)

Selected Editorials

Jones, S. and Kurtz, M. (2023). Politics, not policy, spurred Cobb’s ouster of teacher. July 13, 2023 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-politics-not-policy-spurred-cobbs-ouster-of-teacher/RT2ROQERAZHBLNKUCTLJNZC25I/

Jones, S., Hughes, H., Brody, D. (2023). UGA writing community changes how teachers see classroom, world. June 22, 2023 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-uga-writing-community-changes-how-teachers-see-classroom-world/QHI7JUKXARARDMI3CZXGQKLISU/

Jones, S. (2023). Here are critical questions we should be asking about ChatGPT. March 17, 2023 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-here-are-critical-questions-we-should-be-asking-about-chatgpt/6ICTKD7KURHFNDCND44MLAVVIA/

Jones, S. and Brody, D. (2022). Gender, sex, and binary thinking: Talking about the body, language, and young children. June 9, 2022 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-educators-should-discuss-gender-and-sexuality-in-classrooms/QFK2GKDJMNFZRPSXL3LHC2OLBE/

Jones, S. (2021). We must protect students from storms and pandemics. August 28, 2021 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/uga-professor-we-must-protect-students-from-storms-and-pandemics/KFF7LLXXA5F2JISDTEPKZTPFNU/

Jones, S. (2021). In mandating tests, White House fails first big test. February 25, 2021 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-in-mandating-exams-white-house-fails-first-big-test/7DCBCNND2RB3NL2OQL7CXPONHE/

Jones, S. (2020). Repeat after me: Mi-sog-y-ny. Belittling and controlling women and teachers. December 16, 2020 The Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/opinion-repeat-after-me-mi-sog-y-ny-belittling-and-controlling-women-and-teachers/KQ3NBC5AM5BE7JWAKMXSVC5MHY/

Jones, S. (2020). School in a coffeeshop? A different approach to teaching and learning during a pandemic. July 17, 2020 The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/07/17/school-coffee-shop-different-approach-teaching-learning-during-pandemic/