Rate My Professor Jennifer Ward

Jennifer Ward is the Assistant Chair of the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education and Associate Professor of Elementary Mathematics Education at Kennesaw State University’s Bagwell College of Education. She also serves as the Elementary YCE I & II Coordinator. Ward holds a Doctor of Education and has dedicated her career to advancing mathematics education in early childhood and elementary settings. Her research specializations center on teaching mathematics to young children from birth through grade 3 through a social justice lens. She examines equity-based pedagogies, the development of STEM reasoning in social justice contexts, and strategies for supporting pre-service and in-service teachers in delivering effective early childhood mathematics instruction. Additional academic interests include early childhood and elementary mathematics, social justice and equity in education, and teacher education for elementary and early childhood levels.

Ward’s contributions to the field are reflected in her extensive publication record in peer-reviewed journals and books. Key publications include "Utilizing Trust to Examine Pre-Service Teachers’ Challenges When Learning to Implement Mathematics Tasks" (2024), "Exploring inquiry-based STEM in preschool: The treehouse project" (2024), "From Colleagues to Critical Friends: Exploring Avenues of Professional Learning to Support Equity-Based Pedagogies in Mathematics Education" (2023), "Early childhood mathematics lessons to explore, understand, and respond to social injustice" (2022), "Instructional Perseverance in Early-Childhood Classrooms: Supporting Children’s Development of STEM Reasoning in a Social Justice Context" (2022, co-authored with Joseph Dinapoli and Katie Monahan), "Communities of practice as a launchpad for social justice planning in early childhood education" (2023), "Tensions of trust in preservice teachers’ consideration of challenging mathematics tasks" (2021, co-authored with Erin Smith, Tracy E. Dobie, and Naomi Jessup), and "Academic Motherhood in Mathematics Education during COVID-19: Breaking the Silence and Shifting the Discourse" (2021). She has further contributed a chapter on autoethnography in "Mathematics Teacher Educators’ Learning through Self-Study" (2020) and co-authored "Mathematics for Social Justice: Building on Students’ Agency, Empathy, and Mathematics Ingenuity" (2024).