Jo Fletcher (academic)

Josephine Florence Fletcher is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor in the School of Teacher Education at the University of Canterbury, specialising in literacy and learning environments.

Academic career
Fletcher completed a PhD titled The wider systemic conditions that support reading for 11 to 13 year-old students at the University of Canterbury. Fletcher then joined the faculty of the University of Canterbury, rising to full professor in 2024. Fletcher supervised Canterbury's first Doctor of Education thesis.

Fletcher's research covers aspects of teaching and learning including literacy in Pasifika students, adult literacy, learning environments and distance learning, and the effects of the Christchurch earthquakes on learning. She has collaborated with Professor John Everatt on investigating innovative learning environments and Covid-19. Fletcher is a research advisor for the Better Start Literacy Approach research project at Canterbury, which is an evidence-based structured literacy approach developed for a New Zealand context, for Years 0 to 4. She is also part of a Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga-funded project with Angus MacFarlane, looking at 'practices of sustenance' for Māori learners. With Niki Davis, she led a Ministry of Education project on e-learning for adult literacy and numeracy, which led to further work on how e-leraning could support English literacy for people learning it as a second language.

Fletcher is a member of the advisory board of the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative, which is a government fund established in 2003 to fund research on teaching learning from primary through to tertiary and build research capacity and capability.