RESEARCHER PROFILE

Name: Heather A. Blair

Title: Associate Professor

Institution: Faculty of Education, University of Alberta

Region: Edmonton, Alberta

Research Interests: Language and literacy theory and practice; literacy and gender; indigenous language and literacy; multiple literacies

Complete Biography

Publications

My Research Questions

What are the relationships between and among language, literacy, race, class, culture, and gender?

How is literacy changing?

How are young people taking up the new literacies?

My Resources

1. Susan Urmston Philip (1983). The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.
   As a beginning teacher in the 1970s, I read Susan Urmston Philip's book chapter called “Participant Structures in a Warm Springs Classroom,” which made me think about the assumptions about language and language use. When I did my master's graduate work, I went back and read Philip's book The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation (Philip, 1983). Subsequently, I took a linguistic anthropology class from Dr. Philips in my doctoral program and have since used her book in both teaching and research.

2. Shirley Brice Heath (1985). Ways With Words.
   Brice Heath's work gave me a whole new way to think about the ethnocentric nature of what constitutes “being literate.” Catherine Dorsey-Gaines and Denny Taylor's (1988) book Growing up Literate moved me to recognize the power of research to support the marginalized. I also came to value the dedication and detail required to do quality research. Currently I find the work of the new London Group and people like James Gee to be helpful in continuing to think about the new literacies.