Digital Commons Network^™

The Immigrant Experience Of Latina Mothers From A Strengths Perspective: A Focused Ethnography, Esperanza Gutierrez

Open Access Dissertations

Latina mothers are part of a rapidly growing ethnic minority group in the United States (U.S.). Researchers have largely illuminated their challenges and problems in their immigration process. A problem-oriented approach leads to labeling of the individual based on vulnerabilities, pathologies, and deficits. Nursing needs a greater emphasis on the strengths perspective, empirical studies, and a broader culturally based conception of strengths, including Latina mothers who immigrate to the U.S. A strengths perspective would be beneficial in encompassing Latina mothers’ capabilities and potentialities.

Focused ethnography was used to identify and describe the strengths of Latina mothers who immigrated to the …

Computational Close Reading: A Critique Of Digital Literary Methodology, Damiano Consilvio

Open Access Dissertations

Computational Close Reading intervenes in digital humanities and American literary scholarship to negotiate a significant institutional and disciplinary problem: the devaluation of close reading and interpretation in digital humanities applications to literary studies in favor of more distant modes of reading. To remedy this issue, I pursue a core question meant to bring the literary and the digital into a more perfect confluence, as a demonstration of possibilities meant to run counter to these preconceptions about computational reading: how “close,” if close at all, can digital technologies bring us to the interpretive elements of literary texts? I argue that they …

Culturally Sustaining Disciplinary History Instruction: Teachers Exploring A Possibility Through Practice, Brenda Santos

Open Access Dissertations

Since Wineburg (1999) suggested that history is an act of reasoning rather than remembering, historical thinking (or disciplinary history) has become a widely accepted and practiced vision for history instruction in the United States. Yet evidence suggests that this has not contributed to greater student learning or investment. Some scholars have pointed to a need for culturally sustaining pedagogy in history classrooms, but a vision for such a pedagogy remains unarticulated. This study involves a group of high school teachers in practitioner inquiry aimed at developing both their own learning and knowledge for the field about the practices of culturally …

Incorporating Hemodynamic Cognitive Neuromarkers For Personalized Assistive Communication Technology, Seyyed Bahram Borgheai

Open Access Dissertations

A Brain computer interface (BCI) for communication bypasses standard efferent neural pathways towards peripheral nerves and muscles and directly translates brain activity into symbolic commands to facilitate communication in people with motor impairments. Although a range of access options have been developed, there are still many challenges, particularly for those with severe motor-control limitations. Limitations in availability of access options and the accuracy they provide may lead to patient frustration. Hence, many conventional non-invasive BCIs that rely on eye-gaze control and alternative communicative solutions, such as eye-tracking systems, fail to provide successful and efficient communication in people with severe motor …

The Text(Tiles) Of Adinkra Symbols: West African Art, Gender, & Poetic Translations, Rachel A. Ansong

Open Access Dissertations

Gold has unique optical properties, localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), as well as strong interaction with thiolated molecules. For this reason, gold nanoparticles were used as shell materials for the multifunctional platforms. The prepared nanoparticles were further functionalized with different thiolated molecules depending on their specific applications. Magnetic nanoparticles were chosen for their unique magnetic relaxation properties and due to their response to external magnetic field. Self-assembled magnetic nanoparticle clustering is explored to tune their relaxation behavior in a magnetic field. In addition, anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) loading and ‘on demand’ release of the loaded DOX was monitored in the …

Learning To Visualize: Middle-Level Learners Analyzing And Designing Science Infographics, Mark Davis

Open Access Dissertations

Infographics are part of daily life because of the rise of digital media and technology, as learners now encounter a barrage of images carefully designed to convey data and information through social media. But what happens in the classroom when young learners first encounter this expressive genre? This case study examined a unit of instruction on analyzing and creating infographics in a content-area middle school classroom. Data included classroom observations through video and audio recording, examination of a student graphic organizer and student-designed infographics, and semi-structured interviews with students and the facilitating teacher. Results show that students learned how to …

Broken Dozer, Haunted Vale: The Ecopoetics Of Ambient Language, Andrew Merecicky

Open Access Dissertations

Broken Dozer, Haunted Vale is a collection of poetry that explores the principles of ambient language poetics as articulated in its critical introduction. Rather than a poetic focused on a set of thematic concerns, ambient language poetics is an ecopoetic that addresses the writing process itself and proposes an alternative to the internal/external spatial metaphor that inspires creative writing pedagogy premised on the urgency of self-expression. The poems within the collection are an experimental inquiry into what might be possible in making poems if the activity of reading/writing is not motivated primarily by representational and mimetic aims that are described …

Black Feminist Autoethnography: How Identity Can Affect Peer Review Practices In The College Writing Classroom, Eileen M. James

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the importance of embodied teaching pedagogy as it relates to peer review practices in the college writing classroom. This work uses autoethnography as a research method, exploring issues of (dis)embodiment and experiences with collaborative learning in classrooms. In addition to a review of applicable literature focused on peer review practices, writing pedagogy, and Black Feminist Autoethnography, this dissertation contains narrative sections from the viewpoint of the subject--a Black woman--as a student, an instructor, and a researcher working to examine her experiences and how they demonstrate the need for embodied approaches in the classroom. The purpose of this …

Turning Points: A Case Study Of Motivation In Foreign Language, Shawna C. Iula

Open Access Dissertations

Enrollment in foreign language courses has been declining. Fewer students are studying foreign languages and those that do often discontinue after the introductory levels. This single-embedded case study looks into why students who initially wanted to continue on to more intermediate levels did not, and also why students who initially only wanted to complete introductory levels changed their plans and continued on to more intermediate levels. Participants included two groups with nine participants total. The first group consists of five students who initially planned on discontinuing after introductory levels and changed their minds and decided to continue. The second group …

Counter-Narratives Matter: A Critical Race Analysis Of Black Servicemen’S School-To-Military Trajectory, Derece Vanterpool

Open Access Dissertations

For more than a decade the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and more recently the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) have mandated that schools allow military recruiters access to student information with the objective of recruitment for military service. Thus, national education reform has become the conduit through which schools are legally obligated to support the military agenda to recruit children. Enabled by ESSA, the military launched campaigns predominantly in large urban schools attended by poor and working-class Black students (Furumoto, 2005), which often offer a narrow and disempowering curriculum and are under-resourced (Anyon, 2014). The practice of military …

Working Towards Proficiency: Investigation Of Reclassification And Growth Rates For High School English Learners In An Asset And Research-Based English Learner Development Course, Amy Correia

Open Access Dissertations

This study evaluated the impact of a newly-developed asset and research-based English Learner Development (ELD) course on high school English Learners’ (ELs) likelihood of reaching reclassification or showing growth on an annually-administered state assessment of English language proficiency (ELP). Logistic regression was used to calculate the probability that an EL would reach reclassification while controlling for the student-level variables of gender, lunch status, and time in country. Linear regression was used to calculate growth rates in literacy. The findings of this study revealed that ELs who participated in the ELD course were 1.6 times more likely to reach reclassification status …

Gatekeepers And Access Agents: How Admissions Officers Understand Their Roles In Shaping College Access In The 21st Century Market For Higher Education, Brian Stevens

Open Access Dissertations

Many scholars (Cox, 2016; Harklau & McClanahan, 2012; Niemann & Maruyama, 2005; Solórzano, 2005) have explored the causes of opportunity gaps in higher education. Those studies have looked at the various impediments to accessing higher education that have led to the persistence of gaps in college attendance rates, but few have specifically explored the complex relationship between college admissions officers and institutional admissions policies. This study will contribute to literature related to higher education access by examining the roles of admissions officers and adding their perspectives to a body of work where their voices have been largely absent. Grounded in …

Training And Professional Practices Of School Psychologists Serving U.S. Indigenous Communities: A Qualitative Descriptive Study, Erin D. Churchill

Open Access Dissertations

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) is committed to supporting the academic, behavioral, social, and emotional needs of students from historically underserved and/or marginalized backgrounds. However, there continues to be a lack of attention given to U.S. Indigenous populations in the school psychology literature. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the training and professional practices of school psychologists serving U.S. Indigenous communities. Fifteen certified and/or licensed school psychologists practicing in a school setting with three or more years of experience serving high-density Indigenous school populations participated in the study. Qualitative methods were employed, and data were …

South Asian American College Students’ Mental Health Help-Seeking Attitudes And Preferences, Mehwish Shahid

Open Access Dissertations

Previous research has established that Asian Americans are less likely than other racial and ethnic groups to utilize mental health services. This has given rise to a multitude of studies examining Asian Americans’ attitudes towards seeking professional psychological help. However, given the immense diversity of the Asian American population, there exists a need for additional studies exploring the needs of specific subsets of the Asian American population. The present study explored the mental health help-seeking preferences and attitudes of South Asian Americans in particular. Participants were 131 South Asian American undergraduate and graduate students from universities across the United States. …

The Mark Of The Vanishing Reader: Intradiegetic Interaction In Multimodal Narrative, Catherine Ann Winters

Open Access Dissertations

What is a book? What do we expect to find in books? Who is the twenty-first-century reader? Such questions have proliferated over the last thirty years as the anxiety of the death of the book and the vanishing reader has loomed over literature. In this dissertation, I explore how twenty-first-century American multimodal narrative books featuring intradiegetic readers (a character who reads a story within the storyworld) represent the possibilities and limits of the print book to engage the informed reader in a changing media ecology. The books in this study are not merely testing the limits of how stories can …

Opening Ceremony: A Writing Practice Towards Queer Futurity, Laura Marie Marciano

Open Access Dissertations

Opening Ceremony is a collection of poems in completion of a creative dissertation in poetry at the University of Rhode Island. The book is a five-year writing practice towards queer futurity and considers, both in form and content, how poems can transgress hierarchal binaries and create exit discourse. The poems use lyric imagery, reference to color and material, space on the page, and colloquial language, to write the bodies, aesthetics, and experiences of contemporary queer life. It is a practice of not rallying against hetero-patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy, which may restabalize binaries, but rather, giving homage to that which …

Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of The Wisc-Iv With A Trinidad Referred Sample, Cherisse Rambarose

Open Access Dissertations

There has been an extensive amount of research in the intelligence-assessment literature on the structure of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, fourth edition (WISC-IV; 2003a). Numerous studies show that the test’s general factor structure replicates across normative and referred groups, in the U.S. and globally. Thus far, few studies have been done examining the factor structure of this, and other intelligence tests with Caribbean samples. The current study adds to this body of literature by examining the factor structure of the WISC-IV with a referred sample from Trinidad. This study utilized archival data from a sample accessed through private …

The Role Of Kindergarten Vocabulary Knowledge And Language Status On Early Reading Comprehension, Jennifer Cruz

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of receptive vocabulary knowledge on first and second grade reading comprehension for 340 Kindergarten Dual Language Learners (DLLs) and monolingual students. An additional purpose of the study was to examine the effect of a Tier 2 vocabulary intervention on students’ reading comprehension abilities. Linear regression analyses found statistically significant interactions between initial vocabulary knowledge and DLL status, as well as initial vocabulary knowledge and intervention treatment condition on first grade reading comprehension. Vocabulary at the end of Kindergarten and the change in vocabulary scores also significantly predicted first grade comprehension. …

Learning Practices In Chinese Character Recognition: An Analysis Of Student Outcomes And Perceptions, Xiaoyan Hu

Open Access Dissertations

Research has shown that memorizing a character by its strokes is perhaps the most difficult aspect of learning the Chinese language, particularly for beginning students. Since learners can handwrite Chinese characters without knowing the meaning or the pronunciation, emphasizing drawing the characters from the beginning is not an efficient way of learning Chinese characters. Meanwhile, character recognition, grammar pattern drills, and memorization are not enough for college Chinese language learning. Currently, there is a gap in the literature about Chinese language acquisition research from classroom contexts to naturalistic settings, from an acquisition metaphor to a participation metaphor, and from Chinese …

Understanding Principals’ Perceptions Of Effective Communication In Suburban And Urban Schools: A Cross-Case Study, Abdelnasser Hussein

Open Access Dissertations

The research explored the perceptions of effective communication with parents in suburban and urban school districts from the perspective of the school principals. To achieve this purpose, the study was guided by five research questions: 1) What are the principals’ perceptions of effective communication with parents?; What are principals’ perceptions of effective strategies of school-home communication?; How does a principal’s perception of effective communication influence the strategies implemented to communicate with parents?; How does the cultural context of a school setting affect principals’ perceptions of school-home communication?; and What are the barriers that may obstruct effective communication between principals and …

Non-Sovereign Poetics: Rethinking Nationalism And Independence In Puerto Rico, Martinique, And Guadeloupe, Fély Catan

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation reconsiders the notion of political sovereignty, independence and nationalism in the non-sovereign Caribbean context. I explore the ways in which writers and artists from Puerto Rico, Martinique, and Guadeloupe envision alternative epistemologies to the Western concepts of sovereignty and the nation-state. By questioning the traditional model of state sovereignty through the linguistic, aesthetic, and thematic components of their texts, plays, and visual, I argue that these artists have expressed other ways to be sovereign. This dissertation analyzes a defiant artistic production that originates in a contemporary crossroads for economic survival in a Caribbean context. I investigate how the …

Perceptual Experience And Understanding Language, Seong Oh

Open Access Dissertations

Can we literally see and hear meanings? In my dissertation, I argue first that we have a conscious understanding experience which is (1) non-inferential, (2) cognitively impenetrable, and (2) with a specific sensory modal. Under the characterization of the experience, I conclude that the experience is literally perceptual. Thereafter, I argue that this characterized understanding experience is conceptual by virtue of being a high-level perceptual experience, and then plays the role of epistemic justifier for the belief of what an utterance means just as high-level perceptual experience in general performs as a justifier for perceptual belief.

Mexicanidad Reloaded: Multiple Histories And Narratives In Contemporary Novels And Film From 1989 To 2002, Ariana Heydi Magdaleno-Yntema

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines Brianda Domecq’s new historical novel La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (1990), Carmen Boullosa’s origin novel Duerme (1994), and Carlos Reygadas’s auteur film Japón (2002), and studies the way these texts rearticulate Mexican history and Mexicanidad. These works reload Mexico’s history and understanding of what is to be Mexican by intersecting fiction with the historical and literary archive and by positioning marginal figures in leading roles. I define the term reload as an intentional postmodern objective in which historical constructions of the past are continually updated; to reload does not mean to deconstruct or …

Impacts Of Demographics, Symptom Presentation, And Clinical Factors On Tf-Cbt Service Utilization, Lucia M. Walsh

Open Access Dissertations

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a common trauma, but up to half of youth who demonstrate associated symptoms do not obtain treatment in a timely manner. Demographic variables have been examined to better understand service utilization patterns in CSA youth, but more complex factors (e.g., symptom profiles) remain relatively ignored. This study sought to understand the relationship between symptoms, commonly examined demographics, and service utilization in a large sample of CSA youth. Youth were ethnically and linguistically diverse, predominantly low-income, and referred for evaluation and treatment at a Child Advocacy Center. Latent profile analysis was used to create profiles of …

Examining The Role Of Varying Levels Of Classroom Quality For Toddlers In Early Head Start And Subsidized Child Care Programs: Understanding Threshold Effects, Krystal Bichay Awadalla

Open Access Dissertations

The Toddler Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS-T) is one of the most commonly used measures to assess the quality of teacher-child interactions in toddler classrooms. Cut-points on the CLASS-T scores are being used to determine Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) ratings of programs as high or low quality, and therefore have policy implications for program funding and for parent consumers. Despite widespread use of the CLASS-T for these purposes, few studies have examined the construct validity of the CLASS-T for use in Early Head Start (EHS) and subsidized child care programs serving low-income, ethnically and linguistically diverse children and …

The Occupied Strike Back: Writing Against Empire And Constructing Postmemory In Occupied Hispaniola, Elizabeth Langley

Open Access Dissertations

The Occupied Strike Back: Writing against Empire and Constructing Postmemory argues that the specter and experience of occupation have inextricably influenced the island of Hispaniola. The centenaries of the US Occupations of Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), which took place in 2015 and 2016, serve as a mnemonic point of departure for this work. Using a comparative approach, this manuscript analyzes narratives in French, Spanish, English, and some Haitian Creole that contribute(d) to a project of resistance against US occupation and intervention over time—spanning the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. It further avers that these …

Teachers’ Experiences In Serving Late-Entering Central American Refugees With Limited Or Interrupted Formal Education, Kristin W. Kibler

Open Access Dissertations

The overarching purpose of this study was to fill a gap in the academic literature not only by shedding light on the experiences and perceptions of teachers of late-entering Central American students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE), all of whom teach in segregated, high-poverty, under-resourced, urban high schools, but in looking at what works in those challenging contexts. Therefore, the research questions asked what the teachers’ experiences have been in serving the focal students, what challenges the teachers have faced and how they have addressed them, how they effectively leveraged the focal students’ strengths and languaging practices in …

“Estamos Buscando Acorns!”: Examining Dual Language Learning Head Start Children’S Conceptual Science Knowledge Across Languages, Brooke Rumper

Open Access Dissertations

Children from low-income homes are at risk for an academic achievement gap that spans the domains of language, math, and science. Latino Dual Language Learning (DLL) children are disproportionately more likely to come from low-income homes than their peers, making them more likely to face additional risks to their academic achievement. Science has recently been recognized on a national level as an area of importance for early childhood education. Science is a key content area for DLL children because it provides opportunities to learn vocabulary through hands-on activities, develop social-emotional skills, engage in critical-thinking, and problem-solving. High quality early science …

The Effects Of Cognitively Guided Instruction (Cgi) On The Use Of Representational Modeling By First And Second Grade English Language Learners (Ells) During Individualized Assessments Of Arithmetic Word Problem Solving., Edwing A. Medina

Open Access Dissertations

Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) is a professional development framework that informs participating teachers regarding research-based knowledge of elementary arithmetic-problem types and children’s developmental strategies for solving them. A classroom taught led by CGI participants includes one where heterogeneous learners (including English Language Learners, ELLs) are using and discussing representational systems and modeling tools (such as base-10 blocks, snap cubes, fingers, and verbal narratives) as part of the collaborative whole-class and small group problem solving process. This exploratory study investigated the effects of classroom instruction by CGI teachers on ELLs’ use of representational systems as they independently solved arithmetic word problems. …

Offensive Uses Of Language: Slurring And Synecdochical Utterances, Amanda Mcmullen

Open Access Dissertations

Be advised that some offensive language is mentioned in the following abstract. ‘That woman’s a dyke’. ‘She’s a piece of ass’. The former utterance is an example of a slurring utterance, and the latter is an instance of an utterance that I call a Synecdochical Utterance Targeting Women (SUTW). A synecdochical utterance targeting women is one in which an anatomical part term is predicated of a woman. What these utterances have in common is that, in many contexts in which either is uttered, the speaker does something at least alienating, if not disrespectful or worse. I argue, in this dissertation, …