Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, Mary Frances Early College of Education 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; sociocultural and critical literacies; as well as special seminars dedicated to the work of some key scholars including Karl Marx, Valerie Walkerdine, and Pierre Bourdieu. 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 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 more than 40 additional doctoral students.
