Joseph O. Milner

Complexities of Collaboration: Intensity of Mentors' Responses to Paired and Single Student Teachers

Abstract This study examined an innovative approach to student teaching, where pairs of secondary teacher candidates worked together under the guidance of a single mentor teacher. Like studies of partnered student teachers at the elementary level, our study found that paired secondary student teacher candidates developed a more intense and effective relationship with their mentor than did student teachers who worked alone under the guidance of a mentor teacher. By restructuring the relationship between students and their mentor, partnering created a new and more powerful dynamic, one that centered more on pedagogy than on personality. As mentor teachers found that guiding paired student teachers was more complex and demanding, they endorsed this innovation. Our results lend support to an emerging literature that suggests that paired placements form a more effective way of preparing teachers.

Language reception in three modes

Abstract Using three modes of language reception, this study measured (a) developmental patterns that might appear over a seven-grade span, (b) comparative abilities of advanced and remedial students, and (c) abilities of males and females. Equal numbers of males and females and of remedial and gifted children from each of grades kindergarten through sixth grade served as subjects; each class contained 26 students. Each child was individually tested on language reception in three modes. The first mode related to the ability to detect correct sound arrangements in pairs of words. The second mode required the ability to sense inadequacy in a speech act. The third mode involved childrens understanding of the effect of stress on deep structure. Regression analyses yielded significant main effects for grade and for rank for all three modes. In addition, with regard to Mode 3 (understanding the effect of stress on deep structure), gifted males significantly outperformed their female peers. For all three modes,...

Building Discretionary Authority in a Teacher Education Program

ABSTRACT This article reports on a teacher education program’s use of teaching rounds and action research to build teacher candidates’ discretionary authority, the confidence to make their own teaching decisions rather than model their classroom choices solely on a mentor teacher’s classroom pedagogy. Discretionary authority is promoted by many contemporary business and government organizations as a central feature of the transformational leadership that Burns long ago contrasted with transactional leadership. The impact of candidates’ discretionary authority is validated by the top marks awarded by their principals and mentors on the NC Department of Public Instructions IHE Performance Report. Their independence of mind is further corroborated by the important accomplishments they achieved in their first 5 years of teaching.

Emergent Readers' Recognition of Irony in Good Dog, Carl

Jedediah Purdys (2000) For common things laments the ironic mode of thought that characterizes our cultures mindset. He calls for a return to devotion, homage, and allegiance rather than what he sees as a jaundiced detachment that has overcome us. Purdy may be on to something, but Alexandra Day (1985) does not seem to adopt his call to a simpler way of seeing things. She encourages the ironic stance, even in young children. Her Good Dog, Carl may not be a thoroughly modern book; it is not a deconstructed childs text like David Weisners (2001) The Three Pigs where the story falls apart, where we see reality and other texts invade the story world in amazing ways. But Days Good Dog, Carl is a clever book that is filled with a basic irony that even 2- to 3-year-old children are beginning to understand and 5- to 6-year-olds are clearly recognizing. They catch the naughtiness of it, the rebellion that is always about to get underway.

Accountability That Counts

The North Carolina Governors School offers a six-week residential summer program for four hundred academically talented rising juniors. This article measures the schools impact on these students in four fundamental areas: cognitive maturity, moral reasoning, personal learning style, and projections for the future. The results showed that Governors School students advanced further on each of these critical tests than did equivalent nonattending students.

Using a Flat Structure in a Hierarchical World: The Development of English Standards.

n November 17, 1992, a few days after Bill Clinton was elected president, a pulse of great expectation and good will beat steadily among the leaders of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). That huge professional association had just elected a new Executive Committee (EC), which looked forward to the challenge of engaging in significant decision making over the two-year term that lay ahead. At the ECs first meeting, it was apparent that developing the Standards Project for English Language Arts would be the dominant task of their tenure. Both NCTEs executive director, Miles Myers, and its new president, Jesse Perry, seemed perfectly suited to provide the drive and direction that such an overwhelming task would require. Myers had been one of the original leaders of the National Writing Project, so he was a strong believer in action groups for teachers; he was also a man of endless energy and powerful vision. Perry, a person of great personal charm and strength and the first African American male leader of NCTE, wanted to accomplish something extraordinary. The views of most NCTE EC members at the time were well known. They held clear-cut biases against monolithic structures, bubble tests, and top-down operations; registered a strong demand for equity and access in standard settings; and feared being co-opted by educational enterprises that might overwhelm them or somehow dirty their hands. For the leadership of NCTE, however, work on this sizable project had an appeal that overcame those fears. The project was systemic and huge; it could shape the future of English teaching if done well; it was richly funded by the U. S. Department of Education. The question that hovered above the decision to go forward with the project was one of process as much as product. NCTEs leadership accusingly attributed the success of the math Standards to excellent PR work

Children's Awareness of Inconsistencies in Instructions

Abstract In this research, we examined childrens awareness of inconsistencies in messages that are meaningful for children, instructions for games. In the first experiment, kindergarten (n = 25) and second- (n = 25) and fourth-grade (n = 26) children were individually read the instructions for two games, each of which included two inconsistent statements. Chi-square analyses yielded a significant effect for grade for one game (p < .05) and a marginally significant effect for a second game (p < .10). In a second experiment, second- (n = 40), fourth- (n = 40), and sixth-grade (n = 40) children were read the instructions for two games, each of which included two statements that were inconsistent. An analysis of variance demonstrated that with an increase in grade, there was a significant increase (p < .001) in awareness that a message contained an inconsistency. The analysis also indicated that the subjects were more willing (p < .08) to question an adult than they were to question a child about an inconsis...

Teaching Students to Recognize Irony

Abstract This article exposes the problem of using declarative rather than procedural knowledge to help K–12 students recognize irony in stories. It offers commonplace procedures drawn from students’ everyday language experience together with more abstract irony clues to help students recognize irony in stories and increase their story comprehension. Six irony-laden stories are briefly examined to underscore their basic ironic core and guide instruction of elementary, middle, and secondary students.

A Comprehensive Approach to the Humanities

escape the mental constraints of single subject thinking. At the same time, we want our subject, literature (most humanities teachers, lets face it, are English teachers), to be further illuminated by the delightful color of art or the passionate tones of music. Nothing could be more expansive for our students than to educate them to experience beauty, whether in a novel, a symphony, or a painting. A few humanities courses go further to introduce a greater sense of the history and even philosophy that surrounds the arts. Parochial, one-dimensional thinking is often routed by such breadth. Each step a curriculum or school might take to seek inclusiveness and synthesis and to promote interdisciplinary teaching, projects, or thinking should be commended. Our own humanities teaching is even more ambitious; we seek to make solid connections between the hard sciences, the fine arts, and the social sciences. Admittedly, we have a unique setting: a special school with a gifted student body. Our claims for success even for these students also must be modest: often the accomplishments lie well beneath the surface and are not easily measurable. But we believe that some portion of our experience might be applicable to other settings and to the goal of teaching our students how to think their own thoughts and experience beauty for themselves with breadth and depth. Each summer, four hundred academically gifted juniors from across our state are selected for six weeks of intensive instruction at the North Carolina Governors School. The academic curriculum for an individual student is focused on two courses: