Dr. Joe Stouffer brings over 30 years experience as a classroom teacher and literacy specialist to empower and engage classroom literacy teachers. Joe is currently a Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University and the recipient of the 2022 Brandon University Senate Award for Excellence in Teaching. 
Dr. Stouffer completed his PhD at University of British Columbia’s Department of Language and Literacy Education. His research interests include children’s literacy development formative literacy assessment, and teacher pre-service training and professional development in literacy education. Joe is the winner of the International Reading Association’s 2012 Stephen A. Stahl Memorial Research Grant.
As part of his service within his role at Brandon University and applied professional work in scholarship, Dr. Stouffer continues to engage with schools. Joe is equally comfortable presenting to groups or working alongside teachers in their classrooms. Joe is well regarded for his knowledge of classroom literacy instruction and his ability to work positively and productively with teachers of varying experiences and approaches.
Through his career, Joe has taught English Language Arts at primary and Middle School levels in urban and rural settings. He brings a broad base of teaching experience, having also worked as a Resource, French, and Music teacher, university sessional instructor, Reading Recovery teacher and Teacher Leader, Literacy Coach and Literacy Consultant.
As a former Reading Recovery Teacher Leader for the Southwest Manitoba Region, Joe worked alongside teachers and administration of several school divisions. Following highly successful work as a division-wide Literacy Coach for the Rolling River School Division in Manitoba, Joe has led professional development initiatives in K-8 literacy in urban, rural, and northern school divisions including division-wide work across the Frontier School Division, Western School Division, and the Rocky View School Division, Alberta. As a Literacy Coach, Joe’s work centres on the development of K-8 teachers’ capacity to design and deliver effective and appropriate literacy instruction to a wide variety of learners. Joe's K-6 classroom writing assessment system, PAWs (see available sessions), has been implemented across the Rolling River, Western, Frontier and Prairie Spirit School Divisions and schools in five additional school divisions in Manitoba and Ontario.
Joe has been tremendously received as a consultant from coast to coast in Canada and has presented at National and International conferences in both Canada and the U.S. Most recently, he has enjoyed meeting and working with Canadian teachers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, the Northwest Territories, and Newfoundland. In 2017, Joe’s consulting work has taken him as far as the American School in Bello Horizonte, Brazil. His popular sessions are frequently lauded for their practicality and their basis in the reality of classroom instruction.
Joe currently resides in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada.
email: stoufferj@brandonu.ca
Selected Publications:
Stouffer, J. (2024). Write-it-out: Leveraging writing to support word solving in reading. Literacy Today, 41(3), 22-23. https://publuu.com/flip-book/24429/811271/page/24
Downey, A. M., Gallagher, T., Lemieux, A., McKee, L., Stouffer, J., & Wood, J. (Eds.) (2024). Special issue: Literacy teachers navigating turbulent times in Canada. Language & Literacy, 26(3). https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/langandlit/index.php/langandlit/issue/view/1963
Stouffer, J. (2023). Write it out: A teaching response to foster complete word analysis. The Reading Teacher, 77(3), 414-417. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2242
Stouffer, J., & Van Dyke, J. (2023). Stones from a glass house: The paradoxical condemnation of Reading Recovery in the Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read Report. Journal of Teaching and Learning, 17(1), 52-71. https://doi.org/10.22329/JTL.V17I1.7426
Stouffer, J., Kasamali, Z., Di Muro, M., Lam, M., & Watson, E., (2023). Transactions of online literacy: Ethical relationality, ICT, and critical reading skills in the post-truth era. In L. Parker (Ed.), Education in the Age of Misinformation (pp. 163-186). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25871-8
Stouffer, J., Worsfold, S., & Terry, M. (Eds.) (2022). Special issue: Exploring trends in early and middle years English language arts. BU Journal of Graduate Studies in Education, 14(2). https://www.brandonu.ca/master-education/files/2023/03/BU-Journal-of-Graduate-Studies-in-Education-2022-vol-14-issue-4.pdf
Stouffer, J. (2021). Seeking middle ground: Analyzing running records from the top and bottom. The Reading Teacher, 74(6), 769-784. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/trtr.2012
Purcell-Gates, V., Duke, N., Stouffer, J. (2016). Teaching literacy: Reading. In Drew H. Gitomer & Courtney A. Bell (Eds.), The Handbook of Research on Teaching 5th Ed. (1217-1268). American Educational Research Association.
Stouffer, J. (2016). A palette of excellence: Contextualizing the reported benefits of Reading Recovery training to Canadian primary classroom teachers. The Journal of Reading Recovery, 15(2), 31-48.
Stouffer, J. (2011). Listening to yourself reading: Exploring the role of auditory input to literacy processing. The Journal of Reading Recovery, 11(2), 15-28.
