Ruth M. Harman
- Professor
Department of Language and Literacy Education - Professor on Special Assignment
Professional Development School District - Program Coordinator
TESOL and World Language Education Programs
Areas of Expertise
- Critical Discourse Analysis; Systemic Functional Linguistics; Disciplinary Language and Literacy Development; Performance Pedagogies
- Youth Participatory Action Research
Interests
- Performance and Performativity; SFL-oriented Genre Writing Instruction;
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis; Challenging Anti Immigration Discourses
- Second Language Identities
- Classroom Discourse Analysis
Concentrations
Contact
Aderhold Hall, 309J
Research Summary
Over the past decade, my research, teaching and service have focused on exploring how best to support the literacy and language development of emergent bilingual learners in K-12 classrooms, especially in the current climate of high stakes school reform and anti-immigration discourses. Since arrival at the University of Georgia, I have published and developed courses in three overlapping areas that relate to this focus: systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and SFL-informed genre pedagogy; critical performative pedagogy (CPP) in multicultural teacher education and K-12 education contexts; and critical discourse analysis (CDA) .I have used these approaches as tools to research and challenge social inequity in schools.