From stories of staying to stories of leaving: a US beginning teacher’s experience

This narrative inquiry traces a beginning teacher’s unfolding career over a six-year period in a diverse middle school in the fourth largest city in the USA. The work revolves around two conceptualizations: ‘stories to live by’ and ‘stories to leave by.’ How these identity-related phenomena surface and play out in an entry-level teacher’s experiences become revealed. The stories of experience lived and told, and relived and retold, illuminate the influence of context on beginning teachers’ knowing. The interwoven nature of educators’ lives also forms a major theme. In the final analysis, the beginning teacher’s ‘stories to live by’ are no longer able to sustain her in her urban teaching milieu. Shifting occurs and ‘stories to leave by’ prevail.     

William Horsley: music master at Miss Black’s boarding‐school for young ladies, 1828–1840

William Horsley (1775–1858) was active in London from the late 1790s. A founder member of the Philharmonic Society, Horsley was at the heart of the musical establishment, working as a composer, organist, commentator and teacher. His teaching career spanned over 50 years, during which time he took private pupils, trained choristers and organists and taught at many boarding‐schools for young ladies. In 1809 Miss Ann Black took up residence at 37 Kensington Square, where she opened a boarding‐school and engaged Horsley as music master in 1828. Her school prospectus and surviving correspondence offer an insight into the difficulty of sustaining a viable school business in a competitive market. Horsley’s papers shed light on the business dealings between masters and school proprietors, both depending on income from pupils to sustain them. Through his correspondence and published work we learn more of Horsley’s teaching method and of his working relationships with his pupils.     

Assessing twenty‐first century skills through a teacher created video game for high school biology students

As twenty‐first century skills become a greater focus in K‐12 education, an infusion of technology that meets the needs of today’s students is paramount. This study looks at the design and creation of a Multiplayer Educational Gaming Application (MEGA) for high school biology students. The quasi‐experimental, qualitative design assessed the twenty‐first century skills of digital age literacy, inventive thinking, high productivity, and effective communication techniques of the students exposed to a MEGA. Three factors, as they pertained to these skills, emerged from classroom observations. Interaction with the teacher, discussion with peers, and engagement/time‐on‐task while playing the MEGA suggested that students playing an educational video game exhibited all of the projected twenty‐first century skills while being engrossed in the embedded science content.