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Provided below is a general-purpose brief biography for adaptation in conference programs:

Shirley Brice Heath, linguistic anthropologist, has studied how different kinds of social and cultural learning environments support children's early and later language development. In her studies of classrooms, she takes as her focus within-school creative programs using visual, musical, and dramatic arts and examines how long-term participation in arts projects affects attention to visual detail, planful behavior, and strategic problem-solving. In her research on families, friendship groups, and community organizations, she studies how responsible roles accelerate desires 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). Heath has taught at universities throughout the world-most notably Stanford University and Brown University, and as Visiting Research Professor at Kings College, University of London. Of emphasis in her research are the long-term effects for learners of heavy immersion in both the arts and sciences as companions in building highly effective learning environments. In 2004, with Shelby Wolf, she published for teachers and arts practitioners a series on "visual learning"; in 2005, a similar series on learning through drama and in arts and science project-based work was published. In several nations, she has studied youth-based community organizations in which the young devote themselves to environmental projects, social justice, enterprise development, and educational inclusion. Her resource guide and prize-winning documentary ArtShow (2000) features young leaders in four interracial and cross-class community arts organizations in the United States. She also directed and produced two short documentaries on youth organizations dedicated to the sustainable agriculture and environmental architecture. These are available with ArtShow on a DVD (2005) entitled ArtShow 2 Grow.

For further biographical information, see profiles of Heath in and Education Leadership (1985). Prologue to Ways with Words: Language life, and work in communities and classrooms (1983/1996) also gives biographical information.