Digital Commons Network^™

Student Achievement, Parental Effort And Schooling, Andrew James Houtenville

Doctoral Dissertations

When evaluating public education programs that are aimed at improving student achievement, it is often assumed that a child's family background is an exogenous factor, albeit an important factor. However, parental decisions may be influenced by such programs. It is the assertion of Becker and Tomes (1976) that distortions in parental behavior (time allocation) may be one of the reasons that compensatory education fails to improve student achievement. In short, parents reduce their own effort when school services (schooling) is increased. However, theoretically parental responses are ambiguous; parental effort can increase or decrease in response to increased schooling. This dissertation …

The Multidimensionality Of Illusory Judgments: Reexamination Of Illusion Of Control Research, Paul Keith Presson

Doctoral Dissertations

The present dissertation examines the well-established research paradigm known as the illusion of control. Until now, researchers have employed one basic paradigm which has addressed the illusion of control as a unidimensional phenomenon. In Study 1, 91 female undergraduates were presented with three induction conditions used by previous researchers. Factor analyses showed that judgments from these tasks did not tap into a single process, but rather fell into two types of illusory judgments--belief- and contingency-based. In Study 2, 182 female undergraduates were exposed to the same three induction conditions used in Study 1 plus two additional contingency tasks. As in …

The Female Coach In The World Of Collegiate Sport: Accommodation And Resistance To The Dominant Sport Culture, Nita Marie Lamborghini

Doctoral Dissertations

This research explores the nature and meaning of collegiate coaching as an occupation for women and the extent to which women coaches accommodate to and resist the dominant sport culture. This study includes a brief historical analysis of the roots of coaching as an occupation for women and the emergence and nature of the "female model" of sport. To further explore the nature and meaning of coaching and the extent of accommodation and resistance to the dominant sport culture, forty-six (46) in-depth interviews were conducted with women collegiate coaches currently employed at an NCAA affiliated institution. A brief survey and …

Power Play: Sexual Harassment In The Middle School, Elizabeth M Allard Chamberlain

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses male to female student to student sexual harassment in public middle schools, arguing that this issue is not merely a legal one, but an educational issue with legal components which demands the attention and intervention of educators. I argue that no legal policy, regardless of how explicitly it is written, or how expertly administered, can, by itself, adequately address student to student sexual harassment. This is not a fault within the legal system: it is a recognition that the law cannot do the work of education. We need to acknowledge the complexity of sexual harassment and its …

Bodily Discourses: When Students Write About Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, And Eating Disorders In The Composition Classroom, Michelle Marie Payne

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes student texts about bodily violence written for Freshman English and advanced writing courses at the University of New Hampshire between 1994 and 1996. All the volunteers were white women, most aged 18-21. The project addresses four central questions: Why are students writing about these experiences? How are they writing about them? What assumptions inform teachers' responses to such essays? What larger cultural contexts shape how such experiences are represented and understood by students and teachers?

The primary materials are twenty-five student essays; interviews with students, teachers, and campus personnel; and observations of classrooms and staff meetings. Information …

Composition As A Mode Of Being: Politics, Ethics, And History In The Writing Classrooms Of Postmodernity, Lance Michael Svehla

Doctoral Dissertations

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. once commented that while he did not "deny the importance, on the level of theory, of the (postmodern) project," such a project did not help him when he was "trying to get a taxi on the corner of 125th and Lenox Avenue" (Loose Canons 37-38). The postmodern project lacked what Gates calls "practical performative force." The purpose of this dissertation is to establish postmodernity's practical performative force for the composition classroom. It addresses four central questions: What is postmodernity? What is its relationship to composition? Why should composition teachers and students care about this relationship? How …