Digital Commons Network^™

Preserving The Historic And Cultural Music Of Louisiana Through School Music: An Ethnographic Case Study, Christopher S. Song

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to examine the lives of teachers, students, community members, and culture bearers within a musical community located in South Central Louisiana. The geographic area of focus in this research was Vermilion Parish and its surrounding area, known as Acadiana, the heart of Creole and Cajun culture where Traditional Louisiana Music finds its origins. Participants’ intrinsic cultural understandings of Louisiana’s music and impact on school music programs was examined through ethnographic interview and observation. A resource pedagogy known as funds of knowledge was used as a theoretical framework meant to maintain participants’ intrinsic …

Round Ii: Exploring The Experiences Of Black, First-Generation Graduate And Professional Students At Historically Black Colleges And Universities (Hbcus), Derrick D. Lathan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This phenomenological study explores the experiences of Black, first-generation (first-gen) students pursuing advanced degrees at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), following the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice movements like Black Lives Matter. Additionally, this study examines the present-day motivations to pursue advanced degrees, particularly the benefits of doing so at an HBCU. The main research question guiding this study is: What are the experiences of Black, first-gen graduate and professional students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)? The sub-questions are:

1. How do Black, first-gen graduate and professional students describe being a first-gen student?
2. What barriers and supports impact …

Speech And Language Errors In An 8-Year-Old Spanish-English Bilingual Speaker: A Case Study, Alaniss Heredia

LSU Master's Theses

Despite the growing population of Spanish-English bilingual speakers with developmental language disorders and speech sound disorders (SSD) in the United States, there is limited research on assessment for this population. Research suggests that the linguistic environment in which the Spanish-English bilingual speakers are brought up should be considered when assessing and treating this population since the Spanish-English bilingual population is diverse. One result of such environments is differences in degrees of language exposure. For example, a child can be exposed to two languages but have more exposure in one than the other. This might lead to better proficiency in one …

Effects Of Music Instruction For 3-4-Year-Old Children On Cognitive Development And Spatial Skills, Veronica Perez Espinosa

LSU Master's Theses

The impact of music instruction on child cognitive development has been examined by researchers in many contexts, but not as often in very young children. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of music instruction on the spatial and cognitive skills of preschool children ages 3-4. Participants in the study were 68 three- to four-year-old students who received weekly music instruction at a private school in South Louisiana. Of the 68 participants, and using a quasi-experimental design, 30 students in three intact classes were randomly assigned to receive a movement song treatment and the other 38 …

The Reality Of Teaching English Virtually: Esl Teachers' Perspectives And Experiences During The Covid-19 National Pandemic, Natalia Guerrero

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined the dilemma ESL teachers experienced as the educational system shifted from the usual modus operandi of in-person lessons to the uncharted virtual learning environment (VLE). ESL teachers, in one of the largest urban districts in Louisiana, accumulated additional roles and responsibilities that were unique to the teachers of the English learner (EL) population enrolled at their schools.

Data collected to answer the research questions were the product of single and focus group’s interviews with five ESL elementary and middle school teachers in Freedom District. State and district emergency response to COVID-19 guidelines, along with instructional artifacts, were …

Did The Rapid Transition To Online Learning In Response To Covid-19 Protocols Results In Forced Disclosure By Faculty Members With Invisible Disabilities, Charles Edward Ethridge

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In December of 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, now commonly referred to as COVID-19, was first identified in Wuhan, China. The virus proved highly contagious and quickly spread around the globe. By April 7, 2020, Stay-at-Home orders and/or directives regarding the closures of non-essential businesses and schools had been issued throughout the US. While there has been considerable research since 2020 regarding the impact of COVID-19 on higher education, nearly all the research has focused on the effects on students, the economic impact on institutions, and the future landscape of higher education. However, there is little research regarding the effect on …

Explanation Needed: Understanding The Low Graduation Rates Of Spanish-Speaking English Learners In Southeastern Louisiana, Alice I. Garcia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative research study used the case study method of one-on-one interviews to collect and examine the experiences of former English learners (ELs) who were unable to finish high school in southeastern Louisiana. This study aimed to identify specific factors that, using Everett Lee’s theory, pushed or pulled these ELs from school and affected their ability to graduate. The push factors that were identified included language, inadequate support, academic performance, discrimination, and lack of connection with school and culture. Pull factors that were identified included lack of prior education, immigration, poverty, pregnancy, being far from family, financially supporting family, and …

Physical To Cyber: A Case Study Of The Print And Digital Literacy Of Burgeoning Older Adult Learners, Laura Elizabeth Williams

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This intrinsic single case study explored the ways in which two older adult burgeoning literacy learners in a capital city in the U.S. Gulf South utilized the skills of print literacy and digital literacy both together and apart. This study was an investigation of print and digital literacy, individually and combined, in order to examine the way older adult burgeoning literacy learners used one kind of literacy (print) to develop the other (digital). Using semi-structured interviews, observations, and literacy journals, participants’ perceptions were explored. Findings included that fully literate older adults used their literacy to enact and maintain social connections, …

Understanding Children's Museums' Approaches To Diversity: A Critical And Socio-Cultural Investigation, Amber Nicole Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Children begin to develop self-awareness and awareness of others at an early age (Marion, 2011). Before they reach kindergarten, children begin to make distinctions about race by noticing similarities and differences between themselves and others (Winkler, 2009). Exposing young children to diversity can help each child embrace their identity, accept and celebrate differences, and be accepting of themselves and others (Cole & Verwayne, 2018).

The purpose of this study is to explore how children’s museums support diversity through their programs and planning. The research of this study focuses on four children’s museums located in the United States. There are many …

Responsible Classrooms: Unfinalizability, Responsibility, And Participatory Literacy In Secondary English Language Arts, Emma Jamilah Gist

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines participatory literacy practice in secondary English language arts classrooms. While literacy achievement in this context is often measured according to a student’s ability to receive and repeat predetermined information within the scope of mandated curricula and standardized tests, this study attends specifically to classroom literacy practice that centers authentic, unanticipated, dialogic student response. Within its consideration of literacy practice, this study applies the Bakhtinian notion of unfinalizability to consider those conditions that allow for learning experiences that are not predetermined but are rather uniquely, unpredictably, and unrepeatably co-constructed by individual students, student groups, and teachers. These unfinalizable …

Exploring Co-Planning Conversations As A Professional Development Activity For Mentors And Mentees At The Beginning Of A Yearlong Teacher Residency, Channing Parfait

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In order to prepare pre-service teachers for their roles in the classroom, it is important to examine the rigor and purpose of the mentoring experience. This study explored the aspects of co-planning conversations that helped experienced and novice teachers expand their expertise and develop a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship at the beginning of a yearlong teacher residency model. While research on co-planning during the student teaching/residency experience exists, this research illuminated the importance of mentoring conversations early on in the teacher residency experience. Using a single case study design, observations, one-on-one interviews, and artifacts from four mentor-mentee dyads, data were …

The Contributions Of Immediate Retrieval And Spaced Retrieval To Word Learning In Preschoolers With Developmental Language Disorder, Laurence B. Leonard, Justin B. Kueser, Patricia Deevy, Eileen Haebig, Jeffrey D. Karpicke, Christine Weber

Faculty Publications

Background and Aims: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) benefit from word learning procedures that include a mix of immediate retrieval and spaced retrieval trials. In this study, we examine the relative contribution of these two types of retrieval.

Methods: We examine data from Haebig et al. (2019) in their study that compared an immediate retrieval condition and a condition of spaced retrieval that also included immediate retrieval trials. Participants were 4- and 5-year old children with DLD and same-age peers with typical language development. Each child learned novel (made-up) words referring to unusual plants and animals in both conditions. …

Variedades. Second Edition. Intermediate/ Advanced Spanish Conversation, Carmela V. Mattza

Faculty Publications

VARIEDADES. Second Edition. Intermediate/ Advanced Spanish Conversation is a textbook for the student at the intermediate / advanced intermediate level. Through audiovisual activities, the student is expected to put their previous knowledge into practice and improve their ability to understand, write, listen, and speak in Spanish. VARIEDADES offers communicative activities that can be easily adapted into courses of different levels. In addition, it offers an appendix of activities with films and a Spanish grammar section that by subject directs the student to electronic databases that are freely accessible or are part of the Open Access platform.

African American English-Speaking Children's Judgments Of Grammaticality: Effects Of Clinical Status And Grammatical Structures, Lori Elizabeth Vaughn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

African American English (AAE)-speaking children’s ability to judge the grammaticality of sentences was evaluated by their clinical status and grammatical structure. The study originated from a need to understand more about the tense and agreement systems of AAE speakers with specific language impairment (SLI) relative to their typically developing (TD) AAE-speaking peers. Tense and agreement forms are typically excluded from the assessment and treatment of children who speak AAE in fear of misinterpreting a dialect difference as a language disorder. As a result, limited information exists about the tense and agreement systems of AAE-speaking children.

The data were archival and …

Efficiency Of Teaching Sight Words In Similar Vs Dissimilar Sets, Jensen Chotto

LSU Master's Theses

Early reading intervention can decrease the likelihood that children who struggle with reading develop long-term reading problems. Due to the prevalence of words that cannot be read phonetically in the English language, sight word instruction is required to supplement phonics instruction. In this study, we compared the effects of creating sets of sight words with the same starting letter (3 words per set, 3 total sets) versus distributing words with the same starting letter across sets when assessing acquisition of the combined set (9 words) in five 4-to-6-year-old children using a combined adapted alternating treatments design and pre-posttest design. All …

Prüfung: A Deconstruction Of Assessment Across Three Languages, Thomas Erich Benz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research aims at deconstructing and questioning certainties about assessment as an educational institution on its most fundamental levels. To achieve that, I am utilizing theoretical frameworks inspired by concepts on the existence of cultural and social capital, by artifact mediated cognition, and by a recently proposed discipline on pedagogy of assessment. The research operates with the application of narrative synthesis and network text analysis of material, on which they have not previously been used. As such, I aim to contribute to a methodological application of both methods on exam data, understood as the totality of curricular documents which govern …

The One – Way (Agri)Cultural Mirror: A Case Study Of How Young Agriculturalists Understand And Experience Culture, Janiece M. Pigg

LSU Master's Theses

As the global economy continues to transform how society operates, cultural competence has become a buzzword in education, professional development, research, government, and healthcare (Gay, 1994; Gallus et al., 2014). Cross et al. (1989) developed the most accepted definition of cultural competence: “a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enable that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations” (p. 13).

Despite this, little to no research has been devoted to understanding cultural competence in agriculture. Thus, a need emerged to describe the cultural competence …

Second Language Spanish Refusals: The Effectiveness Of Explicit And Implicit Teaching Methods, Hannah R. Mcintire

LSU Master's Theses

This study investigates the effects of pragmatic instruction on two experimental groups in order to analyze participants’ pragmatic ability of producing culturally and situationally appropriate refusals in Spanish. The three groups include an in-class group, a tandem group, and a control group. Using pre and post written discourse completion tasks (DCTs), this study analyzes participants’ first turn in making a refusal of a friend’s invitation (-P, -D) and a professor or advisor’s suggestion (+P, +D). Based on tokens elicited for each group, it will be demonstrated that 1) both experimental groups increased in their ability of producing appropriate refusal strategies, …

Brown's Stages Of Morphosyntactic Development Applied To The Typical Development Of Italian, Marie Laiche

LSU Master's Theses

Background: In A First Language (1973), Roger Brown called for an increase in crosslinguistic data and analysis of morphosyntax across languages as more research in this field is crucial for working out the overarching determinants of language acquisition order and for the ability to accurately compare child language acquisition across different languages. An increase in this research would benefit linguistic researchers and speech-language-pathologists offering services to or evaluating children speaking a different language or more than one language. The current study seeks to add to the field of crosslinguistic research by adapting Brown’s guidelines of English language acquisition to the …

Identity Construction In The Yoruba Group Project Abroad: Discourse Analysis Of Language Use, Tawakalitu Odunayo Lasisi

LSU Master's Theses

This research examines the experiences of five Nigerian Americans who participated in the Yoruba Group Project Abroad in the year 2018. After taking classes on Yoruba language at the basic, intermediate and advanced levels in their various universities here in the US, the students traveled to Nigeria in the summer of 2018 to immerse themselves in the native speakers’ environment in Ibadan, Nigeria. While in Ibadan, they were paired with Nigerian host families (Yoruba speakers) in order to have an overarching immersive experience. These students constitute the population of this research. Using a qualitative research method and an in-depth online …

The Perceived Importance And Ability Of Secondary Agricultural Education Teachers Regarding Accommodating Students With Exceptionalities: A Mixed Methods Study, Raegan Ramage

LSU Master's Theses

Each year, the number of students who have a documented disability in public schools in the U.S. has increased. However, SBAE instructors continue to identify a lack of confidence when teaching students with exceptionalities. This lack of confidence is exacerbated by a lack of professional development opportunities and preservice training offered by teacher preparation programs regarding teaching students with special needs. To better understand this complex issue, this mixed methods investigation sought to describe Louisiana SBAE instructors’ previous educational experiences focused on accommodating students with special needs and describe their desired professional development opportunities regarding accommodating students with special needs. …

Experiential Statistics: A Case Study In Favor Of Using Project-Based Learning To Advance Preliminary Statistics Content Knowledge In The Algebra I And Geometry Classroom, Trey Michael Earle

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Preparing secondary students for college entrance requirements and the expectations of the job market, a market which is actively seeking the employees who are most qualified to take on jobs that require data analysis skills, is becoming increasingly important. Federal, state, and local education administrators and personnel must rewrite many of the general education curricula to incorporate data organization, collection, manipulation, application, and analysis in order to better prepare students for the expectations of college entrance and an ever-changing employment market. From a purely pedagogical standpoint, while traditional educational structure has been commonplace for decades in the United States, projects …

Empathy, Fiction, And An Educational Ecosystem: A Narrative Case Study Of A High School Ela Classroom, Danielle Marie Klein

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores how empathy exists, as an experience, in an English Language Arts classroom. The research was conducted in an 11^th grade classroom during an instructional unit with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible as the anchor text. The study relies upon Transactional Reader Response Theory (Rosenblatt, 1988) to justify the exploration of the aesthetic, evocative nature of a text. Narrative inquiry methodology was used to collect and assemble the instances of empathy as inspired by the play. Guided by Doll’s (1993) premise of the classroom as an ecological, open system with multiple contributing forces, data was collected through classroom …

Spatial Production And Nomadic Subjectivities In A Buddhist Learning Space, Chau Bao Le

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Space and place are an integral part in the geographies of education, therefore, knowledge about culturally complex and ethnically diverse transnational communities could inform curricular innovations that meet the needs of individual students. This year-long ethnographic study challenged the prevailing realities that U.S. schools continue to devalue the experiences and cultural backgrounds of immigrant youth, which caused students from ethnic, cultural, racial, linguistic, and religious minority groups to feel structurally excluded and marginalized. Through examining the spatial production and nomadic subjectivities enacted over time in a transnational, diasporic space of a Buddhist temple in a U.S. southern state, the study …

A Chance For Success: Understanding How Latinx Students Make Meaning Of Federal Work-Study Employment, Raylea Danelle Rideau

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Many students engage in Federal Work-Study as a means of additional income and part-time employment. However, few studies detail the program’s overall effectiveness and impact, especially from the perspectives of students of color. This qualitative study described, by way of multiple case study design, how Latinx students employed in at least one semester of an on-campus Federal Work-Study position make meaning of their employment experience. The researcher explored the varied experiences of six undergraduate Latina women employed through work-study through the theoretical lenses of happenstance, self-authorship, and career construction. Sources of evidence used for this study included interviews, documentation, written …

Evolution Of Computational Thinking Contextualized In A Teacher-Student Collaborative Learning Environment., John Arthur Underwood

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The discussion of Computational Thinking as a pedagogical concept is now essential as it has found itself integrated into the core science disciplines with its inclusion in all of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2018). The need for a practical and functional definition for teacher practitioners is a driving point for many recent research endeavors. Across the United States school systems are currently seeking new methods for expanding their students’ ability to analytically think and to employee real-world problem-solving strategies (Hopson, Simms, and Knezek, 2001). The need for STEM trained individuals crosses both the vocational certified and college degreed …

Valuing Voices: Construction Of Meaning Through Discursive Interactions During A Critical Service-Learning Partnership, Jane Helen Noble

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As teacher educators strive to prepare preservice teachers for careers as literacy instructors and advocates of social justice in education, critical service-learning pedagogy has been considered as an approach for teacher education programs. Tenets of academic study, reflective practice, social change, and the development of authentic relationships between universities and communities outline the structure for critical-based field experiences. What are preservice teachers learning in these spaces? How do they grow as part of critical service- learning courses? How do community organizations and members interpret experiences in the partnership, and how do they describe their roles?

This study highlights the voices …

Documenting Desire: Addressing The Educational Needs Of Undocumented English Learners, Alejandra Sofia Torres

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While research on motivation in second language acquisition is copious and the interest in undocumented youth within the education field is growing, there is a need to closely examine the intersection of being both undocumented and an English Learner (EL) and how this intersection often limits ELs, especially those in underserved schools. Using ethnographic methods, this dissertation documents the educational experiences of thirty-one Spanish-speaking ELs in a predominately of color, urban, working-class high school in the southeastern United States. EL participants were ages fourteen through twenty with varying non-citizen immigrant statuses. Semi-structured interviews and field notes were collected during the …

Unprepared To Be Culturally Responsive: An Examination Of Secondary Esl Educators In Rural Louisiana, Danielle Marie Butcher

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the problem of instructing English learners in a rural Louisiana district. The following questions guided this study: (1) How do the teachers perceive their pre-service and in-service training for English learners?, (2) How do the teachers perceive their ability to implement culturally responsive pedagogical practices for English learners?, (3) How do the teachers perceive the district’s approach to tangible, informational, and emotional supports for English learners?, and (4) What are the teachers’ perceptions, if any, of sociocultural inequities faced by English learners? And how, if any, do these sociocultural inequities affect the …

Giving Four-Year-Old Children A "Voice" Within The Comprehensive Evaluation Of Quality Teaching Practices, Mistie M. Perry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Educational research has largely focused on the correlation between governmental entities and classroom pedagogy as policymakers develop more comprehensive evaluation systems that raise the expectations of teacher quality. However, some researchers in the field of early childhood suggest the measurement of teacher quality is largely a “mismatch between informant-based, retroactive methods” (Downer, Booren, Lima, Luckner, & Pianta, 2010, p. 5) as developmentally appropriate measurements of early childhood quality that include the perceptions of the children are few. To examine the potential for researchers to consider the inclusion of children’s perceptions within evaluation systems, this study examines the following area of …