Education Commons^™

Critical Social Justice Theory In Action: A Practitioner Inquiry Into The Service-Learning Capstone Experience, Julie A. Jaynes

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Service-learning pedagogy can be found in K-12 schools and higher education classrooms across the country. Those programs and courses exist on a complex spectrum from charity to social justice; research presented here documents my efforts as a service-learning teacher to better align the program’s senior capstone class to the teachings from critical social justice theory. I used a practitioner inquiry approach to address the problem of an epistemology in the research process that recreated systems of oppression by excluding the knowledge and voices of the minoritized groups who are impacted by the issues being researched. My inquiry centers my students’ …

Discovering Psychological Components Of A Ph.D.; The Road To Success, Kathryn L. Bode 4803290

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

This was a descriptive study which examined the psychological components involved in the completion of a Ph.D. journey. I used a phenomenological approach to investigate doctoral program experiences (n=23), seeking to identify strategies, skills, and experiences commonly shared by successful Ph.D. students through a lens of Transformational Learning, Psychological Capital (PsyCap), and Emotional Intelligence (EI). Assessment measures included interviews, questionnaires, and the administration of both the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal (EIA) and Psychological Capital Questionnaires (PCQ). Findings revealed the presence of Grit, adequate support systems, balance, positive self-talk, and a moderately high level of PsyCap. A correlational analysis indicated a moderately …

Agency, The Uncanny, And Strangeways: An Autoethnographic Journey Through An International Wunderland., Roberto T. Ollivier

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The African diaspora and postcolonial studies author George Lamming writes in his book “The Pleasures of Exile” that the Caliban character from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” “cannot be revealed in any relation to himself-for he has no self which is not a reaction to circumstances imposed upon his life” (Lamming, 1992, p. 107). One could argue that the only hope this half-human half-monstrous creature, or for that matter, any of us have to find peace, lies in the attempt to find resolution through the metaphorical slaying of our respective pasts. Like Caliban, many of us are never …

Causality: A Comparative Study Of A Current Causality Model To That Of Synchronized Analysis Model (Sam) In A Rural Elementary School, Matthew L. Williams

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

The field of K-12 education has undergone an ever increasing strain to improve student and school performance in the last few decades. Many schools have failed to improve despite the attention they have been given.

The purpose of this study is to compare an elementary school’s current model of causality to the Synchronized Analysis Model (SAM) and Kaizen’s five why’s in determining low school performance. Using a qualitative instrumental case study design, surveys, interviews, and a focus group as the method of inquiry, nine employees were surveyed, four teachers and a principal were interviewed, and three leaders participated in a …

Connecting Genre-Based And Corpus-Driven Approaches In Research Articles: A Comparative Study Of Moves And Lexical Bundles In Saudi And International Journals, Basim M. Alamri

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Research articles (RAs) have become the primary channel for researchers to circulate academic knowledge within certain discourse communities. Writing an acceptable research paper for publication in a scholarly journal is challenging for novice writers, especially for nonnative speakers of English. The present study was pedagogically motivated, and the ultimate goal was to provide the basis for a genre approach and corpus linguistics to academic writing for ESL/EFL postgraduate students in the field of applied linguistics.

The study analyzed the rhetorical structure and lexical bundles of English-language RAs—Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion-Conclusion (I-M-R-D-C)—sections published in Saudi Arabian and international journals in the field of applied …

A Humanistic Examination Of Posttraumatic Growth In United States Military Veterans, Aaron J. Smith

Individual, Family, and Community Education ETDs

Military Mental Health Stigma (MMHS) is attributed as a significant factor in the 20 suicides that occur each day by United States Military Veterans (USMVs) (Kemp & Bossarte, 2012). These negative attitudes or beliefs about mental health exist, in part, due to a dearth of research on additive gains in the aftermath of trauma, known as Posttraumatic Growth (PTG, see: Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). The model most often used to describe PTG by mental health counselors working with USMVs is both under-researched (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2004), as well as, one that may be philosophically misaligned with the spirit of combating …

The Relationship Between Online Students' Use Of Services And Their Feelings Of Mattering, Tracy L. Hart

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

The purpose of this single case study was to examine the relationship between online students’ use of support services and their feelings of mattering using a convergent parallel research design to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Students enrolled exclusively in online classes during the academic year 2015-2016 at the University of New Mexico (UNM) were invited to participate. The survey was based on the theoretical and conceptual frameworks for comprehensive services and mattering theory. Responses provided descriptive statistics and correlation analysis with stories that added to the description of students’ service experiences.

Service-to-service correlations showed correlation strength of moderate, strong, …