“Fandoms in the Classroom:” Transforming education through student interests

(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – AUGUST 13, 2024) Keeping school-aged children engaged in the classroom can be a challenge, and it’s one many educators are trying to navigate while staying true to their lesson plans and desired results. Others, like Assistant Professor Karis Jones, are working on alternatives to strict curricula that can be changed based on the interests of their students. 

Providing that alternative is the key goal of “Fandoms in the Classroom,” a new book by Jones, who teaches in the School for Graduate Studies. Jones focuses her research on issues of equity in literacies, learning, and writing across disciplinary, fandom, and gaming spaces.

“We wanted to reimagine what English classroom instruction can look like if we dynamically build a curriculum starting with diverse youth’s interests and practices,” Jones said. “This book is the culmination of over seven years of research, teaching, and practice refining these ideas with real students in real classrooms.”

Jones and her co-author, Scott Storm, are both former public school teachers in the New York City school system. Through those roles, Jones said she saw firsthand the equity problems in how English curriculum is taught. As Jones began writing this book, she noticed how little schools capitalize on students’ interest in fandoms despite research that shows building on those interests creates more engaging learning environments and improves student learning.

“Our work details how classrooms designed to study and hybridize multiple interpretive communications, including fandoms and disciplinary spaces, can be transformative,” Jones said. “We show how supporting youth to surface problems across various communities helps them learn situated literacy practices in meaningful and impactful ways.”

Jones said she and Storm are long-time collaborators, first designing a fandom-centric class for high school students called “Fandom Kingdom” In 2019. Jones said she wanted to dive further into this research and create a model for educators to reinvigorate students in the classroom.

“We both care deeply about research-to-practice connections and wanted to write this educator-focused book as a practical guide for bringing this model to a variety of learning contexts,” Jones said. “As we worked together, we foregrounded both critical ideas about student-focused learning as well as step-by-step guides for adapting this kind of transformative practice in many types of contexts.”

By using “Fandoms in the Classroom” as a guide, Jones said educators will have a step-by-step process to build learning spaces that support navigating fandom and disciplinary literacies while focusing on roadblocks they might encounter along the way.

“It addresses how classrooms doing critical fandom work can address social justice issues across both fandom and disciplinary communities,” Jones said.

The book will be released in October 2024 from Myers Education Press. Teachers, schools, and libraries can pre-order with the discount code: MEP25 for 25 percent off.