
Shelley JonesRoyal Roads University | RRU · College of Interdisciplinary Studies
Shelley Jones
Doctor of Philosophy
About
47
Publications
14,364
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
349
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 2013 - July 2015
August 2009 - August 2013
Education
September 2003 - June 2008
Publications
Publications (47)
Children have the right to a voice, to education, and to education about their rights, as outlined in Article 12 and Article 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Child rights-based education can support children to be empowered with critical agency and exposed to connection to the wider world, better equipping them to bec...
h i g h l i g h t s Educators are interested in learning about gender and education policies and how to implement them. Educators can create culturally, linguistically, and contextually-responsive LTRMS promoting gender equality. Traditional pedagogies (e.g., song, dance, drama, storytelling) can engage students in gender-responsive learning. Educa...
This paper reports on stage four of a longitudinal study (2004-) with women in Uganda, exploring the long-term relationship between post-primary education and empowerment. 13 of the 15 participants from the original study participated in this Feminist Participatory Action Research project and shared understandings of how/if they understood the inte...
This paper reports on an action research study that took place during a one-week professional development course focused on establishing gender equality in primary schools, held in a Teachers’ College in Southern Tanzania (June/July 2015), in which 28 educators and administrators participated. I draw upon Sarah Ahmed’s (2005) theoretical framework...
This paper reports on the fifth stage of a longitudinal study (launched in 2004) which has investigated the challenges and opportunities for girls related to secondary school in a rural Ugandan context, as well as the ways in which education has impacted and continues to play a role in their lives as women. Employing a decolonizing Feminist Partici...
Globally, we have much to learn about fulfilling international child education rights, particularly in times of crisis, as evidenced during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Although the right of children to know their rights is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other documents, such as the African Charter on Ri...
This Feminist Participatory Action Research project with a cohort of women in Uganda explored how they understood the SDGs in relationship to their lived realities. A postcolonial feminist lens was used to engage with critical ethnographic policy theoretical perspective to consider the research questions: 1) Which SDGs are the most important to you...
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are meant to “…[end] poverty and other deprivations …[through] strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth” (United Nations, n.d.). Presumably, those who are most impacted by poverty, inequality, and injustices should be prioritized within all ele...
This paper reports on stage four of a longitudinal study (2004) with women in Uganda, exploring the long-term relationship between post-primary education and empowerment. 13 of the 15 participants from the original study participated in this Feminist Participatory Action Research project and shared their understandings of how they understood the in...
For children to know how to fully participate in and most effectively lead the world they will inherit, they must learn how to critically engage with it and be knowledgeable about foundational rights and instruments that support such engagement. Together, critical literacy, which encourages the examination and inter-rogation of the underlying assum...
This longitudinal study builds upon an ethnographic case study, conducted from August 2004 – August 2005, which investigated the challenges and opportunities for girls related to secondary school in a rural Ugandan context, as well as the ways in which education impacted their emerging identities (Jones, 2008). This stage of the study, conducted fr...
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) compels member states to ensure that children understand and can exercise their rights and have opportunities to meaningfully participate in decisions that affect them. As children spend a significant portion of their time in schools, teachers have particular responsibilities, as duty...
This longitudinal study builds upon an ethnographic case study, conducted from August 2004 – August 2005, which investigated the challenges and opportunities for girls related to secondary school in a rural Ugandan context, as well as the ways in which education impacted their emerging identities (Jones, 2008). The 15 girls who participated in the...
This longitudinal study builds upon an ethnographic case study, conducted from August 2004 – August 2005, which investigated the challenges and opportunities for girls related to secondary school in a rural Ugandan context, as well as the ways in which education impacted their emerging identities (Jones, 2008). The 15 girls who participated in the...
Education is critical to the promotion, cultivation, and actualization of gender equality (Aikman & Unterhalter, 2007; Wilson, 2004). Educators who are expected to cultivate gender equality in their classrooms, are themselves shaped and influenced by gender, and associated gender constructs, roles, responsibilities and assumptions of their sociocul...
This paper reports upon an arts-based participatory action research project conducted with a cohort of 30 teachers in rural Northwest Uganda during a one-week professional development course. Multimodality (Kress & Jewitt, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) was employed as a “domain of inquiry” (Kress, 2011) for social semiotics (meaning-making withi...
This article reports on a collaborative action research project, conducted in a pre-primary school in South Central Uganda, which explores the opportunities for children to draw upon and integrate their home and community based knowledge and experiences through mother tongue (MT) instruction and resources. We use the funds of knowledge (Moll, Amant...
A draft of an evaluative framework for assessing schools' commitment and progress towards achieving gender equality.
Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) states: “[Children have] the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child” (UNICEF, 1989, Article 12). However, many children do not know about t...
This paper discusses findings from a feminist participatory action research study conducted in the West Nile region of Northern Uganda with a group of 35 educators who attended a one-week intensive professional development course focused on promoting gender equality in schools. Through a theoretical and methodological framework of multiliteracies a...
This paper discusses findings from a feminist participatory action research study conducted in the West Nile region of Northern Uganda with a group of 35 educators who attended a one-week intensive professional development course focused on promoting gender equality in schools. Through a theoretical and methodological framework of multiliteracies a...
This presentation will report on a collaborative action research study, led by Safina Mutumba and supervised by Shelley Jones, which investigated the challenges and opportunities of developing and using Mother Tongue (MT) stories to facilitate early MT literacy development, meet prescribed curricular objectives and outcomes, and enhance child-centr...
Sustainable Development Goal 4 – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities – can only be achieved if gender equality and access to education in a language children understand is realized. In contexts, such as Northwest Uganda, where gender inequality is entrenched and pervasive, children need oppor...
Although gender parity has been effectively achieved with respect to enrollment at the primary level in Tanzania (United Republic of Tanzania Education Sector Development Program (ESDP) 2010; UNESCO, 2015) gender disparities persist at the secondary and tertiary levels (ESDP, 2010; UNESCO, 2015). Girls’ low levels of participation and performance i...
Children of pre-primary and primary school age construct their gendered identities from experiences with the world around them (Freeman, 2007). In contexts, such as North West Uganda, where serious gender inequalities persist, systemic, normative, entrenched gender inequalities and messages are often perpetuated in classroom and school environments...
Authentic literacy activities engage children with meaningful reading and writing (Duke, Purcell-Gates, Hall, & Tower, 2006), but little investigation has been conducted into the relationship of the kinds of writing children enjoy and the authenticity of the writing activity and experience. This paper reports findings from a study that investigates...
This paper presents findings from the third stage of a longitudinal, qualitative study involving nine female participants from a class cohort in a secondary school in rural Uganda. Since 2004–05, this study has tracked the progress of these young women’s lives, and the present aspect of the study explores the ways in which they have found that post...
While the HIV/AIDS epidemic has wrought havoc in the lives of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, access to information about the causes, symptoms, and treatment of the disease remains a challenge for many, and particularly for young people. This article reports on an action research study undertaken in a rural Ugandan village in 2006. Twelve...
This paper makes the case that policies, such as the National Strategy for Girls' Education in Uganda (NSGE), intended to achieve gender equity in education for girls in developing countries, have limited relevance to, and impact on girls' actual educational experiences. Recent considerations of girls' education acknowledge that gender equity withi...
Structural inequities, violence and oppression render young women in rural Uganda highly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. Their decision-making powers, control over their bodies and sexuality, and access to sexual health resources are critically limited or wholly absent. Yet, prevailing HIV/AIDS programming, notably the President's Emergency Program for AID...
Community libraries in developing countries can be important sites of knowledge exchange and acquisition for women with little or no formal education living in communities characterized by extreme poverty and gender inequities. As locally managed and operated institutions, specific needs identified by community members shape their mandates, activit...
This Ugandan-based study examined how visual modes of communication provide insights into girls' perceptions of literacy, and open broader dialogues on literacy, women, and development. Twenty-nine primary school girls used drawing and 15 secondary school girls used photography to depict local literacy practices in relation to their own lives and e...
This article makes the case that current conceptions of sexual health literacy have limited relevance to the Ugandan context because they assume that knowledge of unsafe sexual practices will lead to changes in behavior and lifestyle. Drawing on a longitudinal case study with 15 Ugandan schoolgirls in rural Uganda from August 2004 to September 2006...
English in Africa After the Cold War. Alamin M. Mazrui.Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas. Sinfree Makoni, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha F. Ball, Arthur K. Spears (Eds.).
This dissertation represents a year-long (August 2004-August 2005) ethnographic case study of 15 adolescent schoolgirls attending a secondary school in a poor, rural area of Masaka District, Uganda which explores the challenges, opportunities and potential for future identities that were associated with secondary level education. This study include...