Joby Gardner

College of EducationLeadership, Language & CurriculumChair, Department of Leadership, Language & Curriculum and Director, Program in Curriculum StudiesFacultyFull Time
Contact
joby.gardner@depaul.edu(773) 325-4528
Office
2247 N. Halsted St. Office 347 Chicago, IL 60614

BIO

Education

  • PhD, Stanford University
  • MA, Louisiana State University
  • BA, Hamilton College

Courses Taught

  • CS 764 Youth Development, Ideology, Culture, and Society
  • CS 751 Curriculum for Human and Community Development
  • CS 580 Research Seminar in Curriculum Studies
  • CS 488 Curriculum Design
  • CS 470 Teachers as Leaders
  • SEC 363 Introduction to Secondary Teaching as a Profession

Research Interests

  • Resilient youth and communities; schooling in detention; youth civic participation; youth participatory action research (YPAR); teacher and educator leadership; alternative education

Selected Publications

  • Gardner, J.; Noel, Jr., T; Michel, R. Bigelow, S., Hub, Q; Estrada, M. (forthcoming). Community-based justice work to prepare urban teachers, counselors, and educational leaders. The Urban Review.
  • Wilson, A., Owolabi, N., Gardner, J., Bigelow, S., Tanner, D., Randall, M., & Gillom, C. (2025). Growing roses through concrete: Justice-centered praxes in P-20 schools. Educational Studies, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2025.2595463
  • Elliott, S., Bradbury, J. & Gardner, J. (2014). Finding the cracks: Progressive, democratic education in an era of standardization. Schools: Studies in Education, 11(2), 180-209. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/678217
  • Gardner, J., Tovar-Murray, D., & Wilkerson, S. (2014). The poverty of “poverty”: Remapping conceptual terrain in education and counseling beyond a focus on economic output. In S. Haymes, M. V. DeHaymes, and R. Miller (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States (503-511). Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-67344-0
  • Worthman, C., Gardner, J., & Thole, M. (2011). The three R’s and high school writing instruction: Bridging in- and out-of-school writing to reach “struggling writers.” Pedagogies: An International Journal, 6(4), 312-330. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2011.604903
  • Noel, T., Gardner, J., Sylvester, A. (2024). Our mission is uplift: Afrofuturism and collective work for liberation in Black homeschooling organizations. On the horizon: The International Journal of Learning Futures. https://doi.org/10.1108/OTH-03-2024-0012
  • Gardner, J., Wilson, A., Bigelow, S. (2023). And still we are not free: The school-prison nexus in higher education. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2023.2189184
  • Gardner, J., Klonsky, A., Clemens, I., Gallardo, S., Harris, R., Rosario, N., Torres, B., Torre, M.E. (2022). Back in on the outside: racialized exclusion at Chicago’s school/prison nexus and the promise of student voice. Urban Education, 59(4), 1078-1105. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859211068465
  • Tian, Q., Bigelow, S., Noel Jr, T., Gardner, J., & Michel, R. (2020). Endeavoring a critical and thoughtful response during and beyond COVID-19: Community-Based Justice Work in a Catholic University. Journal of Catholic Education, 23(1), 205-213.
  • Gardner, J. (2011). Placed blame: Narratives of youth culpability. Urban Education, 46(4), 588-601. doi.org:10.1177/0042085911399792
  • Gardner, J. (2011). Keeping faith: Faith talk by and for incarcerated youth, The Urban Review, 43(1), 22-42. doi.org:10.1007/s11256-009-0149-7
  • Gardner, J. (2010). Democracy’s orphans: Rights, responsibility, and the role of the state in the lives of incarcerated youth. Youth & Society, 42(1), 81-103. DOI:10.1177/0044118X09336268
  • Gardner, J. (2010). Beyond “making it” or not: Future talk by incarcerated young men. Urban Education, 45(1), 75-102. DOI:10.1177/004208590935215​0