Fernanda Soares Jones

Biography & Research

Fernanda Soares is an applied education researcher and assistant research professor with the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child in the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame. She also is a concurrent assistant research professor at Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs.

Soares's research focuses on the implementation, effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability of educational interventions that enhance both teacher practices and student outcomes in the Global South. Drawing on deep methodological expertise, she leads and supports mixed-methods studies that bridge research and practice, with the goal of generating actionable evidence to improve education systems serving children affected by poverty and inequality. Dr. Soares’s scholarship centers on three interconnected areas: (1) teacher professional development and school leadership, (2) oral language, reading comprehension, and foundational literacy, particularly in multilingual contexts, and (3) the activation of home–school–community systems to support whole child development.

A key strand of Soares’s work involves the development and adaptation of measurement tools for use in low- and middle-income countries. She has designed and piloted assessments of oral language, reading comprehension, teacher wellbeing and school leadership practices, and has supported partners in building capacity to collect and use high-quality data for program improvement and policy decision-making. She has led and contributed to large-scale impact evaluations, implementation research studies, and tool development efforts across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia, with a strong emphasis on methodological rigor and contextual relevance.

Soares works closely with Ministries of Education, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, universities, and faith-based institutions through long-term research–practice partnerships. Her current and recent projects include evaluations of remedial education and summer learning programs, studies of school leadership standards implementation, and research on faith-based platforms for early childhood development. She is committed to collaborative, practitioner-engaged research that produces actionable evidence to strengthen education systems and improve outcomes for children and families. She holds a Ph.D. in policy analysis from Maastricht University.