Dispositions: Real-Time Active Practice

This longitudinal case study followed new teachers from one small undergraduate pre-service program into the first years of teaching. The researcher’s initial study (Hughes, 2014) examined dispositional awareness and development of participants using personal interview data from program graduates, interview data from program faculty, and archived course artifacts. The current study extends the research and shines a light on dispositional development from pre-service through the fourth year of teaching. Using personal interviews, a focus group meeting, and archived course artifacts, the study affirms the significance of dispositions in pre-service preparation and professional practice. The study validates that participants carry dispositional awareness into the fourth year of teaching and also reveals a variety of strategies that new teachers use to grow dispositions. Of significance is the finding that new teachers require a set of dispositional practices for career longevity. This finding exposes the need for increased professional development opportunities related to dispositions during and beyond the first years of teaching

Mighty Teacher Mentors

Teaching is about cultivating curiosity, fostering a love for course content, and making connections with students. Educators who serve as mentors and pass on their passions for the profession and a love for sharing their craft can thoughtfully encourage prospective teachers into the field. This article captures and links one educator’s journey with the teaching mentors that encouraged a contagious love for teaching and learning in her. The article provides encouragement and practical suggestions for educators that desire to learn from authentic mentors and pay it forward with others in the faith. The article is adapted from a chapel talk given at Westmont College by the author on February 24, 2014

Language Change in a Post-Creole, British Contact Setting: Non-Standard Ain’t Negation

The word ain't is used by speakers of all dialects and sociolects of English. Nonetheless, language critics view ain't as marking speakers as "lazy" or "stupid"; and the educated assume ain't is on its deathbed, used only in cliches. Everyone has an opinion about ain't. Even the grammar-checker in Microsoft Word flags every ain't with a red underscore. But why? Over the past 100 years, only a few articles and sections of books have reviewed the history of ain't or discussed it in dialect contexts. This first book-length collection specifically dedicated to this shibboleth provides a multifaceted analysis of ain't in the history and grammar of English; in English speech, writing, television, comics and other media; and in relation to the minds, attitudes, and usage of speakers and writers of English from a range of regions, ethnicities, social classes, and dialect communities. Most articles in the collection are accessible for the average educated speaker, while others are directed primarily at specialists in linguistic study-but with helpful explanations and footnotes to make these articles more approachable for the layperson. This collection of articles on ain't thus provides a broad audience with a rich understanding and appreciation of the history and life of this taboo word

Language Change in a Post-Creole, British Contact Setting: Non-Standard Ain’t Negation

The word ain't is used by speakers of all dialects and sociolects of English. Nonetheless, language critics view ain't as marking speakers as "lazy" or "stupid"; and the educated assume ain't is on its deathbed, used only in cliches. Everyone has an opinion about ain't. Even the grammar-checker in Microsoft Word flags every ain't with a red underscore. But why? Over the past 100 years, only a few articles and sections of books have reviewed the history of ain't or discussed it in dialect contexts. This first book-length collection specifically dedicated to this shibboleth provides a multifaceted analysis of ain't in the history and grammar of English; in English speech, writing, television, comics and other media; and in relation to the minds, attitudes, and usage of speakers and writers of English from a range of regions, ethnicities, social classes, and dialect communities. Most articles in the collection are accessible for the average educated speaker, while others are directed primarily at specialists in linguistic study-but with helpful explanations and footnotes to make these articles more approachable for the layperson. This collection of articles on ain't thus provides a broad audience with a rich understanding and appreciation of the history and life of this taboo word

Can Resilience Be Our Teacher Super-power?

Teaching is courageous work. Today\u27s teachers face heavy workloads and growing emotional responsibilities as K-12 students and families face complicated hurdles and issues such as mental health issues, immigration, and natural disasters. This essay names resilience, grit, and perseverance as essential dispositions needed to tackle the daily hurdles and unexpected circumstances found in the classroom and pre-service teacher preparation. The author’s reflections lead to practical recommendations with the intention to nurture and cultivate resilience in teachers and school communities

Green Bay Chronic Nuisance Notification Evaluation, 2006–2010

Green Bay City Ordinance Chapter 28 allows the City of Green Bay, Wisconsin to recover the cost of providing police services for chronic nuisances. Enforcement of Chapter 28 began in October 2006 and continues as of this writing. This report examined calls for service at properties with chronic nuisance enforcement to determine if enforcement was associated with a reduction in calls for service. Enforcing the chronic nuisance ordinance is associated with reduced calls for service but is costly in terms of officer and analyst hours. The best use of the chronic nuisance ordinance may be as a credible threat to entice property owners to partner with the Green Bay Police Department on crime prevention and nuisance abatement efforts

Better text compression from fewer lexical n-grams

Word-based context models for text compression have the capacity to outperform more simple character-based models, but are generally unattractive because of inherent problems with exponential model growth and corresponding data sparseness. These ill-effects can be mitigated in an adaptive lossless compression scheme by modelling syntactic and semantic lexical dependencies independently

Discursive manoeuvres and hegemonic recuperations in New Zealand documentary representations of domestic violence

This paper examines three television documentaries--entitled Not Just a Domestic (1994), Not Just a Domestic: The Update (1994), and Picking Up the Pieces (1996)--that together formed part of the New Zealand police ‘Family Violence’ media campaign. Through a Foucauldian, feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis, the paper examines how these texts assert and privilege particular understandings of domestic violence, its causes, effects and possible solutions. The analysis illustrates the way in which five discursive explanations of domestic violence--those of medical pathology, romantic expressive tension, liberal humanist instrumentalism, tabula rasa learning and socio-systematic discourse--are articulated and hierarchically organised within these documentaries, and considers the potential hegemonic effects of each text’s discursive negotiations. It is argued that the centrality of personal ‘case studies’ and the testimonies of both battered women and formerly violent men work to privilege individualistic rather than socio-political explanations of domestic violence. Additionally, the inclusion of extensive ‘survivor speech’ means that women are frequently asked to explain and rationalize their actions as ‘victims’ of domestic violence, while fewer demands are placed on male perpetrators to account for their violent behaviour. Consequently, the documentaries leave the issue of male abuse of power largely unchallenged, and in this way ultimately affirm patriarchal hegemonic interests