

Campion 116
Telephone: 617-552-8305
Email: jon.wargo@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0001-9100-9091
Academic Writing; Digital Literacies; Advanced Qualitative Research; Teaching Reading; Teaching Social Sciences and the Arts; Teaching Language Arts
Critical literacies; teacher education; qualitative methodologies; civic education; educational technology; elementary education
Jon M. Wargo is committed to educational equity. A scholar and teacher educator who attends closely to qualitative research methods, Wargo engages in ethnographic, design-based, and arts-informed methodologies to examine how technology mediates children and youths’ social and civic education. In turn, he explores how these practices facilitate critical literacy learning as well as broader cultural change and social transformation.
Publishing extensively across literacy studies, media and technology, teacher education, and qualitative research, his scholarship can be found in the pages of academic journals such as the Journal of Literacy Research, Qualitative Inquiry, New Media & Society, Learning, Media, and Technology, Research in the Teaching of English, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, and Language Arts. His forthcoming book, Lifestreaming Queer Culture: LGBTQ+ Youth Writing with Mobile Media, explores how LGBTQ+ youth use technology to design more just social futures.
A former Denver Public Schools teacher, Wargo holds a B.A. in English and Gender Studies from Indiana University – Bloomington and a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from Michigan State University. Wargo’s scholarly profile and body of research has been both nationally and internationally recognized. Since 2017, he received the Council of Anthropology in Education’s (CAE) Concha Delgado Gaitán Presidential Fellowship, the ELATE National Technology Leadership Initiative (NTLI) award, the Divergent Award for Excellence in 21st Century Literacies Research, the NCTE Language Arts Distinguished Article Award, the Children’s Literature Assembly (CLA) Early Career Award, the 2021 LRA Early Career Achievement Award. In 2020, he was named an NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.
As a core faculty member in the Teaching, Curriculum, and Society department at the Lynch School, Wargo teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in literacy, social studies education, curriculum theory, technology, and inquiry methodologies.
Wargo, J.M. (2022). Gendered Genius Hour: Tracing Young Children’s Uptake of Expert across the Nexus of Personal Digital Inquiry. Research in the Teaching of English, 56(3), 275-300.
Wargo, J.M. (2021). ‘Sound’ civics, heard histories: A critical case of young children mobilizing digital media to write (right) injustice. Theory and Research in Social Education. 49(3), 360-389. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2021.1874582
Wargo, J.M., Brownell, C., & Oliveira, G. (2021). Sound, Sentience, and Schooling: Writing the Field Recording in Educational Ethnography. Anthropology & Education Quarterly. 52(3), 315-334. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12365
Wargo, J.M. & Alvarado, J. (2020). Making as worlding: young children composing change through speculative design. Literacy. 54(2), 13-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12209
Wargo, J.M. (2019). Sounding the Garden, Voicing a Problem: Mobilizing Critical Literacy through Personal Digital Inquiry with Young Children. Language Arts. 96(5), 275-285.
Wargo, J.M. & Clayton, K.* (2018). From PSAs to reel communities: exploring the sounds and silences of urban youth mobilizing digital media production. Learning, Media & Technology. 43(4), 469-484. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1534859
Wargo, J.M. (2018). Writing with Wearables? Young Children’s Intra-Active Authoring and the Sounds of Emplaced Invention. Journal of Literacy Research. 50(4), 502-523. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1086296X18802880
Wargo, J.M. (2017). Rhythmic rituals and emergent listening: Intra-activity, sonic sounds, and digital composing with young children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3), 392-408. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1468798417712573
Wargo, J.M. (2015). “Every Selfie Tells a Story…” LGBTQ youth lifestreams and new media narratives as connective identity texts. New Media and Society, 19(4), 560-578. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1461444815612447