Digital Commons Network^™

Inclusion In Physical Education For Students With Severe Disabilities, Michelle Anne Grenier

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative case study investigated the effectiveness of inclusive physical education for two third grade students with severe disabilities utilizing a social constructionist framework. In the first class, one student was identified as having significant language based challenges. The second class included a child with severe cerebral palsy.

Four levels of relations were identified: systemic relations, group relations, conjoint relations and internal others. Each focused on specific areas within the school and the classroom that contributed to the construction of disability. Data were collected from three primary sources: interviews, participant-observer, and document review. Boyzaitis's (1998) five-step process was utilized in …

Reaching Beyond Compliance: Obstacles To Integrating Sustainability Into Decision -Making Processes In An Institution Of Higher Education, Julie Newman

Doctoral Dissertations

There are emerging opportunities for institutions of higher education to respond to current environmental and public health crises. By setting institutional examples and modeling for others how to prioritize sustainability as a grounding framework for decision-making, institutions of higher education have an opportunity to facilitate society's transition to a more sustainable future. Sustainability principles stem from an international consensus that the pursuit of economic viability as an end in itself, conditioned by a neo-classical model of economics, does not maintain or enhance ecological health and human well-being. There are a number of universities worldwide who are making an effort to …

Interracial Dating Among College Students: Cultural Norms And Partner Violence, Carolyn Field

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines three important issues for race relations in the United States today using a sample of college students: interracial dating patterns, attitudes towards interracial dating, and dating violence among same-race versus interracial couples. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, African American/White couples make up less than 1 percent of all married couples in the U.S. Rates of intermarriage for Hispanics and Asians in the U.S. are much higher. Using a sample of college students (N = 1174) from two Historically Black Universities and three Predominantly White Universities, results indicate that attitudes towards interracial relationships differ by race, but …

Perceptions Of Eighth-Grade Mathematics Teachers Of The Impact Of The Maine Educational Assessment On Instructional Practices, Mary Christine Runge

Doctoral Dissertations

The purposes of this study are (a) to examine the perceptions of eighth grade mathematics teachers in the state of Maine concerning their classroom instructional and assessment practices and the influence on their students' scores in the MEA tests and (b) to determine if there is a relationship between community social/economic levels and student achievement on the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) mathematics tests. The survey instrument consisting of a mailed questionnaire designed for this study contained 86 Likert scale items that measured teachers' beliefs regarding the following resource 1 indicators: awareness and use of MEA resources, content area knowledge, instructional …

Asian American Perspectives On College Student Experience: An Interpretive Narrative, Linda Chen Einsiedler

Doctoral Dissertations

This is a socio-cultural study examining contemporary Asian American college student experiences at a private liberal arts residential college in the rural Northeast United States. This project utilizes a grounded theory approach designed to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The findings include a narrative interpretation that considers emotional experiences and social behaviors as sub-consciously held internalized identity beliefs.

This project details psychological and social dimensions of shared Asian American experiences with insights into individual interpretive perspective frameworks shaped by community cultures. This study describes a distinctive Asian American identity that conjoins ethnicity with racial self-identity. Variables in ethnic identity, …

Writing American Subjects: Race, Composition, And The Daily Themes Assignment For English 12 At Harvard, 1886--1887, Amy A. Zenger

Doctoral Dissertations

This study works to develop a way of reading the functions of race in classroom contexts---specifically in the predominantly white contexts in which composition was formed as a university subject. The model of race chosen for this study is based on critical race theories that conceive of race as being socially constructed, but also a force that organizes identity and experience in powerful ways, even when (or perhaps especially when) its presence is apparently silent---or is, in the terminology of Charles Mills, "normalized."

Primary data for the study is drawn from materials related to the daily theme assignment designed by …