Digital Commons Network^™

Atypical Sensory Processing And Semantic Language In Autistic Children, Charlene L. Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

Autistic children demonstrate a constellation of traits with varying degrees of severity in areas including language differences, restrictive and repetitive behaviors, and sensory processing differences. However, the relationship between sensory processing and these other behaviors are not well understood especially their neurobiological underpinnings. Therefore, this research examined behavioral measures of semantic language, sensory traits, and associated brain networks in 20 autistic children (ages 6-11) and 22 typically developing (TD) age matched peers. Mann-Whitney U tests revealed a strong correlation between sensory traits and general composite and semantic language in both groups of participants. Sensory seeking traits were most significantly correlated …

Working Knowledge: An Analysis Of Innovation In K-6 Charter Schools, Jennifer Lynn Price

Theses and Dissertations

This three-article dissertation explores educational innovation in charter schools. A common frame of reference for each article is the consideration of the influence of Dr. Benjamin Bloom's 2 sigma problem--the observation that one-on-one tutoring, though often cost prohibitively expensive, produces outcomes two standard deviations higher than traditional group-directed instruction. The first article is a literature review of the types of charter school innovations most commonly found in the literature and the type of effect those innovations can have on student learning outcomes. The research suggests that three of the top studied new innovations from charters are technology-based virtual schools, specific …

The Development Of A Social And Emotional Well-Being Scale Using Esem And Cfa: Synergistic Stories In Complex Models, Christopher Hughes Busath

Theses and Dissertations

School districts face unique challenges as they implement social and emotional learning (SEL) initiatives, particularly when choosing or developing a high-quality scale to measure non-academic competencies. Like collaborations with the CORE school districts described by West, Buckley, et al. (2018) and the Washoe County School District described by Davidson et al. (2018), Alpine School District (ASD) partnered with Brigham Young University (BYU) to develop a scale (80 items) that reflected their Vision for Learning framework. In this pilot study, I describe the collaborative and iterative process used to develop a shortened version of the ASD Social and Emotional Well-Being Scale …

Full Issue

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Uptake Processes In Academic Genres: The Socialization Of An Advanced Academic Writer Through Feedback Activities, Shakil Rabbi

Journal of Response to Writing

Academic socialization has been a common framework in writing studies for decades. Recent scholarship on rhetorical genre studies and feedback on writing can develop this paradigm in generative ways. In particular, examining how writers take up feedback as they write in genres can inform how writing pedagogy understands such activities. This study examines and interprets the case of a graduate student as she works with in-person and textually mediated feedback in research group meetings and reviewers’ letters. Approaching graduate students as advanced academic writers—simultaneously performing the role of expert and learning the content needed to be a full member of …

Professors’ Views Of Content Transformation In Students’ Paraphrasing, Ling Shi

Journal of Response to Writing

This study explores how paraphrasing transforms and integrates meaning from reading into writing. Findings are based on interviews with 27 professors who commented on 8 paraphrases written by graduate students. Both student writers and professors were selected from across cultural (Chinese and North American) and disciplinary (soft and hard) contexts. Results indicate that the participating professors tended to accept paraphrases that involved a selection or interpretation of the original source that accurately represented the source text, rather than those that contained a misunderstanding or additional ideas. The professors also suggested that students could add an explanation for the content transformation …

Towards A Better Understanding Of The Complex Nature Of Written Corrective Feedback And Its Effects: A Duoethnographical Exploration Of Perceptions, Choices, And Outcomes., Eva Kartchava, Yushi Bu, Julian Heidt, Abdizalon Mohamed, Judy Seal

Journal of Response to Writing

Despite a large body of research into the benefits of corrective feedback (i.e., teachers’ reactions to students’ incorrect use of the target language), little is known about how new and experienced second-language (L2) teachers supply feedback to writing and what factors guide their decisions. This paper is a collaborative effort of 1 teacher-educator and 4 graduate students to examine the process of providing written corrective feedback (WCF) to university-level L2 learners. Findings point to complexities involved in WCF provision and the importance of examining CF holistically, as preservice teachers’ corrective choices and learners’ responses to them are often interlinked.

Acknowledgments: …

Student Engagement With Teacher Written Corrective Feedback In A French As A Foreign Language Classroom, Maria-Lourdes Lira-Gonzales, Hossein Nassaji, Kuok Wa Chao Chao

Journal of Response to Writing

This paper reports on an exploratory multiple-case study conducted to examine 6 French as a foreign language (FFL) learners at a university in Costa Rica and their affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagements with teacher written corrective feedback (WCF). We collected data through students’ writings (drafts and revisions), semistructured interviews, and stimulated recall interviews. We used the students’ writings to examine students’ behavioral engagement, and we used the semistructured and stimulated recall interviews to determine how students engaged cognitively and affectively with WCF. Findings revealed that although most participants initially reported mixed feelings and, at times, negative emotions upon the receipt …

Spanish Writing Learners’ Stances As Peer Reviewers, Emilia Illana-Mahiques, Carol Severino

Journal of Response to Writing

This study explores the attitudes and perceptions about online peer review of 18 Spanish learners enrolled in a third-year college Spanish writing course. Students participated in peer review training, wrote a personal narrative, and completed two online peer review sessions before submitting their final narrative. Using data from questionnaires, interviews, a peer review simulation task, and the first author’s journal, this qualitative study investigates students’ approaches to peer review and the different practices they employ when commenting on their peers’ drafts. Results show that even though students receive the same training, they interpret and enact that training differently. Students position …

Editorial Introduction, Katherine Daily O'Meara, Betsy Gilliland

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of The Pe Teacher Knowing And Using Student Names In Pe Class: A Qualitative Investigation, David C. Barney, Teresa Leavitt

Faculty Publications

We have each been given a name. With this given name we are known among our families, friends and other associates. Our name becomes an integral part of our identity. A common and important place where a person is addressed by name is in educational school settings, more specifically in a school setting, including in physical education (PE) classes. The physical education setting offers many opportunities for teachers and students to use student names. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of PE teachers using their student’s given name, along with how it affects students. For this …

Direct Response To Usb64: Focus On Compliance Or Improved Student Learning, Patrick Edward Flanagan

Theses and Dissertations

Using the professional literature surrounding change knowledge, this study assesses Utah public school districts' response to Utah Senate Bill 64 (USB64) that was passed in 2012. USB64 required school districts to ensure that principals were evaluating teacher performance through the use of a chosen evaluation tool. The chosen evaluation tool needed to include evaluation rubrics tied to the state teacher standards. USB64 was passed with the intent to improve classroom instruction and thereby improve student learning in Utah schools. Utah school districts complied with USB64 requirements and timelines. Districts successfully identified and adopted observation tools that principals could use to …

Longitudinal Measurement Invariance Of The Outcome Questionnaire-45, Shiloh Marie Howland

Theses and Dissertations

The Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45) is a 45-item instrument designed to be used by psychotherapists to track their clients' distress over time. The OQ-45 is composed of three factors: symptomatic distress, interpersonal relations, and social role performance. Numerous researchers have attempted to replicate this intended three-factor structure in their own data, only to find poor fit. Attempts to find a factor structure that does show adequate fit have been met with mixed, but generally poor, results. Additionally, very little work has been done to establish that the OQ-45 exhibits sufficient longitudinal measurement invariance to allow comparison of OQ-45 scores over time. …

Humor Production And Coping On Distress And Help-Seeking Attitudes Among Polynesian Americans, Augusto D. Gancinia Ii

Theses and Dissertations

There is a need for more psychological studies that inform culture-specific adaptations in psychotherapy among Polynesian Americans. The use of humor has been identified as a potential adaptation in psychotherapy. Humor can be a catalyst for building and strengthening a healthy working alliance between counselor and client. The utilization of humor in therapy has significantly reduced mental health-seeking stigma. Evidence of the use of humor exists among Polynesian people prior to western colonization of Polynesia which suggests humor to be a culturally salient practice. The current study explored attitudes of seeking mental health counseling among Polynesian Americans while investigating the …

Understanding Public K-12 Building Principals' Perspectives On The Greatest Successes And Challenges In American Education, Buck Ekstrom

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study was conducted in a suburban intermountain school district. The research purpose was to (a) solicit narratives from principals about the greatest successes and challenges in American education; (b) conduct deep insightful analysis to find emerging themes from the interviews with principals; and (c) to provide important information for policy and law makers. The findings focused on data collected from interviews asking 25 principals to share perspectives and examples from their work in schools and education in general. The principals were asked about educational successes. Those cited regularly highlighted positive cultures, doing tremendous work with minimal funding, and …

Something Happened: Exploring Student Religious Experiences Through The Eyes Of Their Teacher, Jason Bird Pearson

Theses and Dissertations

Religious education involves learning about religion and the possibility of having religious experiences. Although measuring religious knowledge can be fairly straightforward, assessing whether students are having religious experiences can be more difficult. The purpose of this self-study is to develop clearer understanding of the interactions that might enable my students' religious experiences and how I might recognize when such experiences are occurring. I have written 10 narratives describing situations in which I believed students in my seminary had religious experiences. I interviewed those students to better understand their side of the narrative, and then used the Listening Guide to analyze …

Effects Of Background Noise On The Speech Acoustics Of People With Aphasia, Kirsten Dixon

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effect of hearing six background noise conditions (silent baseline, pink noise, monologue, lively conversation, one-sided phone call, and cocktail noise) on acoustic measures of speech production during story retells in people with aphasia. Eleven individuals with aphasia and 11 age- and gender-matched control participants took part in the study. Participants heard the background noise conditions through open-back headphones while they retold six short stories. The examiner calculated mean and standard deviation of intensity, mean and standard deviation of fundamental frequency (F0), and speech rate in words per minute. A Matlab application that identified pauses (i.e., periods …

Secularism: A Measure Of Explicit Agreement With Assumptions Of Secularism (Meaas), Conner Douglas Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Values are inherent within cultures, relationships, and many other systems, however, little study has been done on the extent to which individuals may explicitly agree with the metaphysical assumptions that much of psychological science relies upon. Psychological science, which uses scientific methodology, is a trusted source of knowledge for many students. Scientific methodology is conceptually linked to assumptions of naturalism, which makes claims about the truth of reality. These naturalistic assumptions pertain to ideas of disenchantment, which describe the world as free from any transcendent quality. These same ideas have become popular among people of the Western world and are …

Fathers As Stay-At-Home Dads: Fathers' And Mothers' Perspectives On Children's School Experiences, Taylor Hubbert Michelsen

Theses and Dissertations

As traditional family roles change and circumstances at home become increasingly varied in contemporary society, the experiences of children also undergo change. For instance, when fathers take on primary caregiving responsibilities, those differing circumstances also impact their children. Therefore, it is important for researchers to study how changing parental roles affect children in the home. Through the use of qualitative research design, this research focuses on how the experiences of children within the home may be impacted when fathers are the primary caregiver. Although previous research has examined several aspects of family dynamics with so-called stay-at-home fathers, research has not …

Culture And Collective Teacher Efficacy: A Case Study In Efficacy, Scott Jason Benson

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of collective teacher efficacy was first introduced by Bandura (1997) in the 1990's. Hattie's (2016) identification of collective teacher efficacy as the number one influence on student achievement has led to the idea that educators within a school have the ability to positively impact student achievement. In his research, Bandura identified four sources of both individual and collective teacher efficacy: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and affective state. The purpose of this qualitative research study is to identify aspects of school culture that support collective teacher efficacy. This was done by interviewing 32 members of the faculty …

Student Retention And Persistence In Certificate-First Programs, M. Troy Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the effect that earning professional certificates has on student confidence, motivation, and persistence. For this study, the focus is the student motivation and persistence of nontraditional students who seek to earn a bachelor's degree despite considerable obstacles and challenges. Specifically, this study evaluates the matriculation rates between two cohorts of students who participated in the online PathwayConnect program. The first cohort was encouraged to complete the program and apply for an online bachelor's degree program at BYU-Idaho. The second cohort was also encouraged to apply to an online program, but only after earning a professional certificate in …

Racial Discrimination And The Indirect Effects Of Forgiveness On Well-Being Among Emerging Polynesian Americans, Emily E. Tanner

Theses and Dissertations

There is a lack of research on the effects of racial discrimination on the mental health of emerging Polynesian American adults (ages 17-29). This study examines the effects of racial discrimination and the indirect effects of forgiveness on mental health among 423 Polynesian American emerging adults. Correlations were conducted in preliminary analysis then data was further analyzed through multiple regressions to determine if racial discrimination predicts psychological outcomes. A mediation analyses with Hayes PROCESS macro bootstrapping was conducted to examine the indirect effects of forgiveness. Lastly, a point-biserial correlation was conducted to examine the effects of education level on perception …

Facilitating Training Transfer For Entrepreneurs Enrolled In Business Training Programs In Peru, Matthew J. Karlsven

Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurship and business training programs have been created and administered throughout the world and particularly in developing economies to help entrepreneurs open new businesses and grow their current businesses. Evaluations of these programs have shown that most of them successfully help entrepreneurs expand their knowledge and understanding of business principles and practices, but few entrepreneurs will then apply or transfer what they learn into their businesses. Without many entrepreneurs making changes in how they run their businesses, it is no surprise that these training programs generally show little impact on sales or profits. This research explores how business training programs …

The Impact Of Background Noise On The Spoken Language Of People With Mild To Moderate Aphasia: A Preliminary Investigation, Brenna Delyn Scadden

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how different background noise conditions affected the spoken language production of people with aphasia (PWA) when performing a story retell task. Participants included 11 adults with mild to moderate aphasia and 11 age- and gender-matched controls. Participants retold stories in a silent baseline and five background noise conditions (conversation, monologue, phone call, cocktail, pink noise). Dependent measures of speech fluency and language production measures (correct information units, lexical errors, lexical diversity, and cohesive utterances) were compared between groups and across conditions. Results reveal that background noise results in significantly lower communication efficiency (i.e., correct information units) for …

Effects Of Parent-Implemented Interventions On Outcomes For Children With Autism: A Meta-Analysis, Wai Man Cheng

Theses and Dissertations

Parent-implemented interventions (PIIs) can be useful in promoting parents’ knowledge of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and in transferring necessary skills to children with ASD. Individuals with ASD can directly and indirectly benefit from PIIs in terms of academics, ASD symptom severity, behavior improvement, cognition, communication, and social skills. Many studies have explored the efficacy of PIIs; however, they have tended to report mixed effects. Previous meta-analyses and systematic reviews have been characterized by limited search terms and literature search procedures, emphases on published manuscripts, dependency on parent reports, dated findings, and comparisons across of different types of control groups. This …

Developing A Professional Early Childhood Educator Identity: The Experiences Of Three Teachers, Amy Shakespeare White

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to better understand the impact experience and context have on the development of an early childhood education teacher professional identity. Using the Listening Guide (Gilligan et al. 2006), data were gathered and examined from interviews with three early childhood educators (ECE) currently teaching in a public school setting. Findings suggest that personal life experiences, teacher preparation, and career experience/contexts had a significant impact on the development of the teachers' professional identities. Examining when these early childhood educators committed themselves to the profession, and during which contexts and experiences they embraced early childhood tenets, provided …

The Perceived Effect Of Pause Length And Location On Speaker Likability And Communicative Effectiveness, Julia M. Price

Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies have examined the effect of atypical speech pause on conversational fluency and how the conversational listener perceives the speaker. The present study investigated the effect of pause duration of increasing length and in differing sentential locations on listener perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likability. One neurotypical male and one neurotypical female speaker recorded three sentences from the Quick Aphasia Battery, and artificial pauses of varying lengths (250 ms, 400 ms, 550 ms, 700 ms, 850 ms, and 1 sec) were inserted before the subject, verb, and object of each sentence. The six baseline (unmodified) sentences were also …

Stakeholders' Perceptions Of Available Services In A Rural Community To Effectively Educate Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Candice Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has increased 150% over the last 20 years, affecting all communities, with future projections of further rise. This is a particular concern for the public education system, where laws mandate that schools provide meaningful education to all students. Resources must be in place to provide the level of support children with ASD require for a successful educational experience. These resources are often expensive and require specialized training to secure. Rural schools face unique barriers meeting the standards set forth through federal law. To determine the most productive use of available resources as well as …

Psychometric Investigation Of The Attachment To God Inventory And Its Implications For The Psychology Of Religion And Spirituality, Justin Paul Zamora

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to conduct a psychometric investigation of the Attachment to God Inventory (AGI; Beck & McDonald, 2004) using a national sample of socioeconomically and religiously diverse young adults commonly referred to as millennials (i.e., persons born between 1980 and 1996; Pew Research Center, 2018). Confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) results failed to yield satisfactory fit for the AGI model using the entire sample and a Christian-only subsample. Alternative model specifications that accounted for method factors, higher-order factors, and bi-factors also failed. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) suggested alternative factor solutions that were cross-validated using CFA. Support for …

Beginning Novel Course, Hyram Brown

Student Works

The purpose of this project was to increase student access to Brigham Young University's ENGL 318R course by creating an online version of the in-person ENGL 318R course that would allow the professor to increase their capacity to teach by at least 25%. This course was originally not intended to be offered officially by the university, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this course was offered online and for credit during Spring term of 2020.