Wintre Foxworth Johnson

Wintre Foxworth Johnson’s scholarship lies at the nexus of sociocultural literacy studies, critical race scholarship, and critical pedagogies for and with young children. Her research has two primary aims: investigate the sociopolitical development of children from historically marginalized communities, with a particular focus on Black children’s educational experiences, racial awareness, and experiential knowledge; examine the nature and impact of centering Black intellectual production and histories in early education. A former early childhood classroom teacher, Johnson holds a Ph.D. in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, where she was named a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow and awarded the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color (CNV) fellowship.

Johnson is currently the principal investigator (PI) of a Spencer Foundation Large Grant entitled “Young African American Children Animating Societal Change: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry”. In 2022, she received the NCTE Language Arts Distinguished Article Award for her work entitled “History Is a Way of Building Identity: How One Independent Neighborhood Elementary School Uses Black Cultural Movements to Engage Children’s Sociopolitical Perspectives.” In 2024, she received the Emerging Scholar Award from the Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education (CPECE) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Reading Research Quarterly, Urban Education, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, and Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2020
B.A., University of Virginia, 2012

Curriculum Vitae