Digital Commons Network^™

Systemic Inequalities In The Brazilian Education System: By Chance Or By Choice?, Erin Marmen

Honors Theses

Systemic inequalities in the Brazil date back to the Colonial Era (1500 to 1822). One of the primary institutions which reflects these inequalities in Brazil is the education system. It is the objective of this thesis to analyze factors that impact educational attainment throughout Brazil with a focus on class, ethnicity, gender, and geographic location. First I provide in depth descriptions of the education system in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Amazonas, and Bahia, and discuss the problems they face. These five states all have distinct populations, and as a result distinct education systems and sets …

Meta Analysis Of Rct Interventions, Ayo Ellis

Master's Theses

External validity of an RCT intervention enables understanding of where interventions are successful.

Meta-analysis allows for more generalized statements to be made on the effectiveness of RCTs across countries of different geographic and national income profiles. By comparing the findings from similar studies carried out in different settings I seek to describe whether RCTs in certain sectors are more sensitive to high GDP growth or higher levels of GDP. I consider 402 health, education, and industry development RCT studies done between 1980 and 2015 in 201 countries compiled by development non-profit Aidgrade. I find no significant effect of income level …

The Fear Of Reptiles And How To Change It, Maxwell Lyman

Honors Projects

Reptile fear is prominent across many cultures. Anti-reptilian attitudes can lead to anti-conservation attitudes towards reptiles. Person-animal interaction has been shown to decrease fear desensitization and increase positive attitudes towards "unpopular" animals. My project demonstrates the effectiveness of live animal presentation in dispelling negative attitudes of reptiles. However, due to the sample size of the project, further research is highly suggested.

Balancing The Theoretical Toolkit: A Quantitative Examination Of Social Mobility And Culture, Nathan Cole Baggett

Sociology & Anthropology Theses

Stratification researchers of the last four decades have contributed a multitude of information on how class-origins, culture, and social psychological factors affect class reproduction. However, scholarship has spent comparatively less effort in exploring cultural elements that can facilitate upward mobility for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. This thesis addresses this research imbalance through providing a nuanced look at cultural, social, and economic factors associated with educational mobility. Specifically, I investigate how educational aspirations offset financial constraints for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. I employ regression analyses to examine how common educational mobility is for individuals from less-educated households and then test to …

Perceptions Of Web 2.0 Tools As Catalysts For Teacher And Librarian Collaboration: A Case Study, Peggy Milam Creighton

Presidential Alumni Research Dissemination Award

Scheduling collaborative planning sessions with classroom teachers is a substantial challenge for school librarians. Research indicates that lack of time is a major barrier to collaboration. The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of Web 2.0 tools as a potential means of overcoming the time barrier to collaboration. Participants were school librarians and classroom teachers from a large suburban school district. Loertscher's taxonomy and school library 2.0 provided a conceptual framework for the design of this case study. Research questions focused on (a) ways Web 2.0 tools can be used to collaborate and (b) which tools are most …

Growing Up Biracial And Gay In The Deep South: Living Between The Color/Gender Lines, Theresa S. Hoogacker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a critical inquiry into the stories of three generations of women living in the South. Through the stories my mother, my daughter and I have lived through, I critically reflect on my experience of being a first generation doctoral student growing up in-between the color lines of Black and White and raising a biracial and gay daughter growing up in the deep South. Building on the works of Kincheloe and Pinar (1991), Frantz Fanon (1963), Maria Root (1996), Henry Giroux (1992), Paul Gilroy (1993b), Phillion, He & Connelly (2005), and He & Phillion (2008), I explore the ways …

The Ertirean English Curriculum: Grades 2-6 Assessing Academic Readiness, Kelly Walter

Linguistics & TESOL Theses

This study is an examination of the 2002 Eritrean English curriculum from Grades 2–6. In the Eritrean educational system, the nine languages of Eritrea are the languages of education until Grade 6, when students are expected to make a transition to an all-English curriculum. The purpose of the study is to ascertain whether students are prepared at the end of Grade 5 for the academic English of Grade 6. The criteria for preparedness is mastery of vocabulary. Data from the Eritrean National Reading Survey and the vocabulary counts from the curriculum of Grades 2–5 and Grade 6 were compared. The …

Facilitative Or Favorable Conditions For Adult Learners To Acquire Oral Proficiency In English, Shigeko Suzuki Hironaga

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

Social interaction in the language classroom has been said to contribute to the acquisition of oral proficiency in a target language by presumably facilitating comprehension and learner production through negotiation of meaning. Since a great portion of interaction is initiated by teacher questions, numerous studies on questions have been conducted. The majority of these studies, however, fail to provide adequate explanations for the conditions or environments which result in successful or unsuccessful elicitation. The study investigated the relationship between input, interaction and learner production with a focus on internal and external factors to teacher questions. Factors such as form, function, …

The Impact Of E-Mail Use On Fourth Graders' Writing Skills, Carole Greb Nix

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

The growing interest in computer use at home and in the workplace has led to the incorporation of computer skills into school curricula. Numerous claims assert the benefit of computers, but questions remain concerning the nature of that benefit. The increasingly widespread use of telecommunications raises further questions regarding the effect of computer-mediated communication on language development. Unfortunately, few rigorous studies have been conducted to provide evidence of the actual effect of e-mail on children's writing skills. The data for this study are handwritten compositions, e-mail messages, and surveys/interviews collected from two schools, matched for demographic and academic variables. The …

A Sociolinguistic Survey Of Bilingual Education Among The Shipibo Of Amazonian Peru, Kathleen Ann Tacelosky

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

In the 1950s, the trend worldwide in public education was for classes to be conducted in the national (prestige) language. In Amazonian Peru however, an alternative was being considered: Bilingual Education (BE). Since monolingual education in Spanish in Peru had been unsuccessful, the government was looking for a way to educate indigenous Peruvians. Therefore, the government of Peru, together with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), implemented a BE program that incorporates vernacular indigenous languages and Spanish. The BE experiment was designed on a transition model: children are introduced to school and new concepts and skills such as reading in …

A Contrastive Study Of The Rhetorical Structure Employed In English Texts By Native Speakers Of English And Native Speakers Of Spanish, Susan Clark Wykel

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

It has often been observed that students of English as a second language not only speak with a foreign accent but write with a distinctively foreign accent as well. Two apparently conflicting theories have been proposed to account for both success and failure in the acquisition of standard written English rhetorical patterns at the discourse level. On the one hand, Kaplan (1966) claims there is negative transfer of culturally based rhetorical norms from the first language into rhetorical practices in the second. On the other hand, Cummins (1980) points to positive transfer of cognitive/academic language proficiency. In other words, there …

A Study Of Iconicity In Korean: With Special Attention To Long And Short Forms, Kyu-Cheol Kim

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

This study of iconicity if Korean has examined the iconic relationship (non-arbitrariness) between form and meaning in phonology, morphology, and syntax. There are many pairs of linguistic expressions that carry roughly the same meaning. The two members of the pair exhibit different lengths or sizes: one of the pair is short (or small), i.e., the Short-Form, the other of the pair is long (or large), i.e., the Long-Form. The different lengths are focused upon in this study. This study begins with the question: why are there two forms which exhibit different lengths (or size)? In order to answer this question, …

Listening Comprehension: Adult Second Language Learners, Mary Karen Williams

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

The goal of this work is to discover information that will improve the selection and design of listening comprehension materials for adult second language learners. Chapter 1 treats adult versus child language learning and first versus second language learning, finding that: (1) due to the interdependence between neurological and linguistic development, adult language learning is inherently different from a child's acquisition of his primary language, nevertheless, (2) given fundamental properties common to all language use, processing strategies should be similar for first and second languages. Chapter 2 treats listening and reading as receptive (but not passive) skills. Here it is …