This book documents the impact of Stephen Harris's works in Aboriginal education, Aboriginal learning styles, domains of language use and bilingual-bicultural education. It provides a summary and critique of Stephen Harris's key ideas, particularly those on bilingual-bicultural education. This book also profiles the man, his background, his beliefs and talents. It showcases contributions and personal reflections from Stephen's family, wife, close colleagues, and many of those influenced by his work. This festschrift explores the professional life and work of Stephen Harris as an educator and anthropologist who worked in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Professor Brian Clive Devlin is Honorary Professorial Fellow at Charles Darwin University, Australia. Designated an 'expert of international standing' by the ARC College of Experts in 2007, he was Associate Professor of Bilingual Education and Applied Linguistics at Charles Darwin University, Professor and first holder of the Dr. R. Marika Chair in Australian and Indigenous Studies at Cologne University, Germany (October 2009–February 2010), and an Australian delegate to UNESCO meetings in the Asia-Pacific region. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked as a teacher-linguist, school principal and then Principal Education Officer (Bilingual) before joining the university. In more recent times, he has helped to build a digital archive of books printed by Literature Production Centres (LPCs) during the bilingual era of education in the Northern Territory, Australia (see www.cdu.edu.au/laal). For his doctorate at Columbia University, he researched the intergenerational transmission of vernacular languages in a Northeast Arnhem Land settlement. His research interests include the use of vernacular languages in educational programs, interactive e-learning for remote students, and the history of bilingual education policy in the Northern Territory, Australia.
Dr Joy Kinslow-Harris is Research Linguist from Texas, USA. Her 1968 article in Australian Territories was the catalyst for the establishment of bilingual programs in the Northern Territory, Australia. She met Stephen Harris when she was undertaking research on Gunwingguan languages for a Ph.D. thesis at Australian National University and was married in 1966. Later, in Darwin, she started a class in English for speakers of other languages at Nungalinya for theology students as well as a women’s study group, which studied English language use in the community. From there, she went on to join the Faculty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, to manage an access courseleading on to university studies.
Mrs Nancy Regine Friedman Devlin is Fellow at Charles Darwin University, Australia. Her work there has primarily been with students in teaching degree programs. Her areas of interest are focused on providing an education for students that will enable them to have choices and feel good about themselves. After working as a teacher and advisor in schools, she joined Charles Darwin University in 2002. There, she helped establish the certification for students interested in education support, due to her long-standing work with teaching assistants in government and non-government schools, in bilingual and special education programs, in Australia and the USA. She has also taught in China, Germany and Papua New Guinea.
Ms Jane Harris is Writer and Journalist, with a background in the visual arts. She has an area of strong professional interest in re-interpreting technical and bureaucratic language for greater accessibility. She has been engaged by a number of organizations in a range of sectors to prepare plain English versions of their materials for effective communication to different audiences and has also convened a large annual arts festival in the northern inland region of New South Wales, Australia.
