Rate My Professor Sam Miller

Sam Miller is a Faculty Emeritus Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Higher Education in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He earned an A.B. in Political Science and Philosophy from Providence College in 1971, an M.Ed. in Elementary School Education from Rhode Island College in 1979, and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology: Reading & Language Arts from the University of Michigan in 1985. Throughout his tenure at UNCG, Miller has served in key leadership positions, including Chair of the Faculty Senate from 2001 to 2002, Department Chair of Teacher Education and Higher Education in 2012, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Education effective July 1, 2011. He has maintained a long-term collaboration with teachers at an urban elementary school for more than 25 years, placing interns and student teachers. In the 2017-2018 school year, he co-led an experiment in implementing an interest-based curriculum for fourth graders alongside colleagues.

Miller's research interests encompass student learning and motivation, literacy, reading, writing, critical thinking, and international studies in Croatia and Bosnia. His influential publications include "Self-efficacy and adolescents’ motivation" (2002, with D.H. Schunk), "A longitudinal analysis of elementary school students' achievement goals in literacy activities" (2001, with J.L. Meece), "Changes in elementary school children's achievement goals for reading and writing: Results of a longitudinal and an intervention study" (1999, with J.L. Meece), "Teachers as metacognitive professionals" (2009, with G.G. Duffy and others), and "Enhancing elementary students' motivation to read and write: A classroom intervention study" (1997, with J.L. Meece). More recent works feature "A lesson in motion stays in motion: If students lead, will teachers follow?" (2022, with L. Stallings) in Phi Delta Kappan and a 2021 publication on interest-based curriculum (Miller et al.). In 2019, he was recognized as an Inspirational Educator by the UNCG School of Education.