Rate My Professor Helen Harper

Helen Harper is Associate Professor in English, Literacies and Languages Education in the School of Education at the University of New England. Her academic qualifications include a PhD in anthropological linguistics from the University of Queensland awarded in 2001, a Graduate Diploma in Primary Teaching from Charles Darwin University in 2005, a Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies in Linguistics from Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III, a Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults from the Royal Society of Arts, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the University of Queensland. Before joining UNE, she taught English as an Additional Language in France, Australian universities, and remote areas of the Northern Territory. She contributed to multidisciplinary research teams at Charles Darwin University and the Menzies School of Health Research, examining literacy interventions in remote schools and links between education and health outcomes. Drawing on more than two decades of experience in northern Australia, Harper's work emphasizes teaching strategies that support marginalized students, such as those facing socio-economic disadvantage, Indigenous students, and English language learners from refugee backgrounds.

Harper's research focuses on literacy education across the curriculum, classroom interactions and discourse analysis, educational linguistics, remote schooling, theories of learning, and how teachers develop their practice. In 2016, she co-received the Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA) Research Grant. Her key publications encompass books such as An EAL/D Handbook: Teaching and Learning Across the Curriculum When English is an Additional Language or Dialect (co-edited with Susan Feez, 2020), Literacy Education and Indigenous Australians: Theory, Research and Practice (2019), and Teaching with Intent 2: Literature-based Literacy Teaching and Learning (2019). Prominent articles include ‘I had to go out and get myself a book on grammar’: A study of pre-service teachers’ knowledge about language (2009, cited 142 times), and contributions to studies on the ABRACADABRA digital literacy program, for example, ABRACADABRA aids Indigenous and non-Indigenous early literacy in Australia: Evidence from a multisite randomized controlled trial (2013, cited 56 times). Her scholarship influences literacy pedagogy for diverse learners in challenging contexts, including recent work on subversive pedagogies for empowering marginalized students and planned translanguaging for English learners. Harper has delivered public seminars, including Powerful language for educationally marginalised students: Developing a subversive pedagogy for the language and literacy of science (2017, Charles Darwin University).