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Center for
Multicultural Education
Upcoming Visiting Scholar: Shirley Brice Heath
Linguistic anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath will be a summer visiting professor from July 5th to 18th, 2012. A scholar with extensive interdisciplinary experience, she is Margery Bailey Professor of English ad Dramatic Literature and Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, Emerita, at Stanford University. From 2003-2010, she was also Professor at Large in the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
Shirley Brice Heath has centered her research on learning tasks and environments that children and young people seek out on their own. From sports teams to laboratories of scientists and studios of artists, she has studied the language, personal interactions, and informational sources that young people voluntarily bring to their play and work. She considers all types of technologies from young adult literature to cell phones and the internet. She examines how changing economic conditions lead community organizations, museums, businesses, and environmental programs to intensify their efforts to draw young people into long-term high-risk involvement with projects that range from community arts to water purification and investigations of alternative sources of energy. She seeks out sites in which young people spend time creating innovative uses of recycled materials, new designs for furniture, and greater opportunities for adults to see the young thinking and learning with professional artists and scientists.
As economic cutbacks for school systems limit extracurricular after-school and summer programs, organizations such as museums and businesses devise opportunities that will complement school learning and enable young people to envision their future in a world of rapidly changing technologies. Influenced by contemporary studies in the cognitive neurosciences, Dr. Heath gives special attention to ways in which long-term participation in art and science projects affects learners’ perception of visual detail, tolerance for trial-and-error learning, and recognition of the portability of strategies for identifying and solving problems.
In her research on families, friendship groups, and community organizations, she studies how responsible roles accelerate the desires of young people for organizational, scientific, and mathematical knowledge. She is the author of the classic Ways with Words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms (Cambridge University Press, 1983/1996) and its sequel, Works at Work and Play: Three decades in family and community life (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
For further information, please visit http://shirleybriceheath.net/index.htm
