Theory, Knowledge and Science Commons^™

Critical Paradigm Theory: A Deconstruction Of The Dominant Discourse Shaping Public Education In America, Kevin Froner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to deconstruct the dominant discourses shaping public education in America. To understand the ontological and genealogical roots of public education, the researcher developed a framework referred to as Critical Paradigm Theory (CPT) to examine the current education paradigm. Longitudinal data was collected from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) with an analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Additional analysis was performed applying critical paradigm theory to a …

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard …

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

The Larger Conversation: Contemplation And Place By Tim Lilburn, Emory Shaw

The Goose

Review of Tim Lilburn's The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place.

College Self-Funding Predicting Deviant Behaviors, Blake A. Darling

Masters Theses

This study examines the effects of the source of college funding on student participation in four deviant behaviors: monthly binge drinking, monthly marijuana use, illicit drug use, and academic cheating. Using secondary data from a self-reported online survey conducted at a midwestern University, competing hypotheses based in general strain theory and social bond theory, were tested. Logistic regression analyses of the four deviant behaviors suggest that the source of college funding has a very limited effect. Only in the cases of marijuana use and illicit drug use were significant relationships observed; where students whose funding came from their parents were …

"Mine" Or "Ours": Property And Moral Reasoning, Robert J. Nonomura

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research seeks to address long-standing empirical questions about human morality arising from the critical sociological tradition. It examines, in social-psychological terms, the theoretical contention that systems of ownership predicated on exclusionary conceptions of what is “mine” and/or “ours” causes people to overlook or decidedly ignore the needs of others and of society at large. More specifically, it draws upon the theoretical works of Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Erik Erikson, and C. B. Macpherson to examine the relationships between individuals’ attitudes toward private property relations and the kinds of “active” or “passive” cognitive processes individuals use when reasoning about moral …

Preventing Prejudiced Psychological Practice: Social Justice Education In Undergraduate Psychology Programs, Rachel Roewer

Global Honors Theses

In order to provide sufficient mental health care services and produce ethical research, psychologists must be motivated to inhibit their personal biases. Bias in psychological research and mental health care settings can contribute to the perpetuation of oppression, preventing clients who identify with marginalized groups from receiving adequate mental health services. Prejudice amongst mental health care providers can influence misdiagnosis and wrongful prescription of medication. Psychological research informs clinical practices, thus biased research can lead to prejudiced mental health care practices. To ensure that members of marginalized groups receive effective health care, there is a global need for ethical, culturally …

Immersed In Fire: The Use Of Virtual Reality As An Attitude Assessor And Boundary Object In Wildland Fire Management, Casey Olechnowicz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Interest in using prescribed burning as a forest management tool to promote forest health and regeneration is growing in Maine. The goal for this research was to better understand the way that the public perceives prescribed burning practices in wildland-urban interfaces, with an emphasis placed on how immersive imagery, closely related to virtual reality (VR), compares to traditional communication methods. We specifically focus on the social acceptability of prescribed burning and analyze how the level of immersive imagery is related to that acceptability (Ahn, 2015; Bricken, 1990; Fogg, Cuellar, and Danielson, 2009; Smith 2015; Wiederhold, Davis, and Wiederhold, 1998). The …

Student-Athletes’ Experiences With Racial Microaggressions In Sport: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, Sae-Mi Lee, Malayna B. Bernstein, Edward F. Etzel, Brian T. Gearity, Clayton R. Kuklick

The Qualitative Report

Despite growing research on racial microaggressions as a subtle but prevalent form of racial discrimination, research on microaggressions in sport and their effects on the psychosocial wellbeing of athletes is scarce. Moreover, some researchers question the legitimacy of microaggressions due to their subtle nature and inconsistency in how they are experienced (Lilienfeld, 2017). The purpose of this study was to examine U.S. collegiate student-athletes-of-color experiences with racial microaggressions in sport through a new theoretical lens, Foucauldian poststructuralist theory. We theorized microaggressions as an example of the daily panoptic gaze that leads to self-surveillance and the production of normalized individuals (Foucault, …

Interethnic Marriages In The United States: An In-Depth Look At Marital Challenges, Spring C. Miles

Senior Theses

As ethnic diversity increases in the United States, interethnic marriages are becoming increasingly prevalent. Despite their increasing rates, interethnic unions experience lower levels of relationship quality and are at a higher risk of divorce than same-ethnic unions. Other factors that influence marital outcomes include age at marriage, education, religion, and parental divorce. However, factors that influence specifically interethnic marriages include internal stressors, such as conflicting values and relationship expectations, and external stressors, such as a lack of social support and/or legal barriers. The best theoretical framework for studying interethnic unions is interdependence theory because it analyzes these factors and their …

Electric Light: Automating The Carceral State During The Quantification Of Everything, R. Joshua Scannell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the rise of digitally-driven policing technologies in order to make sense of how prevailing logics of governance are transformed by ubiquitous computing technology. Beginning in the early 1990s, police departments and theorists began to rely on increasingly detailed sets of metrics to evaluate performance. The adoption of digital technology to streamline quantitative evaluation coincided with a steep decline in measured crime that served as a proof-of-concept for the effectivity of digital police surveillance and analytics systems. During the turbulent first two decades of the 21^st century, such digital technologies were increasingly associated with reform projects designed …

“Hello? Are You Still There?” The Impact Of Social Media On Self-Disclosure And Reciprocity In Interpersonal Relationships: A Literature Review, Clara D. Costello

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

Social Media sites have become increasingly popular platforms for developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Although the usage of computer-mediated communication is normal in day-to-day life, the understanding behind how and why these relationships grow is scarce. This literature review considers relational elements such as self-disclosure and reciprocity, and how they are impacted by online elements such as an asynchronous context, controllability, and the disinhibition effect. Contrary to interpersonal relationships that develop in a physical context, the law of reciprocity is fulfilled and replaced by affirmation and recognition from relational partners, while self-disclosure continues to be a vital element within relationships. …

The ‘Meanings’ And ‘Enactments’ Of Science And Technology: Ant-Mobilities’ Analysis Of Two Cases, Farrukh Chishtie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this work I study two cases involving practices of science and technology in the backdrop of related and recent curricular reforms in both settings. The first case study is based on the 2005 South Asian earthquake in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan which led to massive losses including large scale injuries and disabilities. This led to reforms at many levels ranging from disaster management to action plans on disability, including educational reforms in rehabilitation sciences. Local efforts to deal with this disaster led to innovative approaches such as the formation of a Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) model by a local NGO, which …

School Shootings: A Nexus Of Adolescent Masculinity, Bullying, And Homophobia, Jack Marsden

Honors Theses

Though overall gun violence has plummeted since 1993, multi-victim school shootings have increased in frequency over the last fifty years and the number of adolescent perpetrators has more than doubled since 1996. I borrow from Kimmel and Mahler’s (2001) format to examine seven shootings that have occurred in the fifteen years since their paper’s original publication. I replicate their qualitative methodology and conduct my own analysis of these attacks. My findings suggest that these boys that open fire are mired in a history of routine, merciless bullying and that the content of the bullying is homophobic in nature. I also …

Towards An Agreed Definition Of Sustainability: Exploring The Concept Of Sustainability In Amherst, Massachusetts, Babatunde Ajao

Capstone Collection

Many educators agree that to learning about sustainability and discussing it’s implications on values, ethics and the role of humans are essential. With so many moving parts it is difficult to determine a sustainable assessment to encompass the changing world. The time has come for us to ask reflective questions about what exactly sustainability means. How has the term sustainability been used worldwide? What was the goal of sustainability and what is the result? Is there a better alternative to achieving this goal? By identifying the characteristics of best practice for sustainability, we take a step towards understanding the concept …

Right Of Adoption For Same-Sex Parents, Youjia Chen

Lesley University Community of Scholars Day

The gay right has been one of the hot topics in the world, especially when the same-sex marriage legalized, there are few controversial topics still cannot be solved. I mainly discussed do same-sex parents have the right to have children or to be the adoptive parents. I have read several articles and research about how the same-sex parents affect their children, would their sexual orientation will affect the children etc. the result was the influence for children who grow in a homosexual family is same as heterosexual family, in conclusion, the same-sex parents definitely have the right to have children. …

Golden Palimpsests: America, Cervantes, And The Invention Of Modernity/Coloniality, Antonia Carcelen-Estrada

Doctoral Dissertations

While many theories of colonial discourse emphasize an imperial power imposing its way of thinking and modes of expression onto colonial cultures and peoples, in this dissertation I consider that this imposition affects members of the colonies and the metropolis in different but related ways. In core and periphery alike, the subjects of Spanish colonialism produced documents in which we recognize overlapping, conflicting narratives. I call this strategy for narrative resistance “golden palimpsests” because, as the epigraph suggests, they appear to tell the story of donkeys covered in gold, while in fact they hide the true story of noble horses …

Jewish Women’S Transracial Epistemological Networks: Representations Of Black Women In The African Diaspora, 1930-1980, Abby S. Gondek

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how Jewish women social scientists relationally established their gendered-racialized subjectivities and theories about race-gender-sexuality-class through their portrayals of black women’s sexuality and family structures in the African Diaspora: the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Swaziland, and the U.K. The central women in this study: Ellen Hellmann, Ruth Landes, Hilda Kuper, and Ruth Glass, were part of the same “political generation,” born in 1908-1912, coming of age when Jews of European descent experienced an ambivalent and conditional assimilation into whiteness, a form of internal colonization. I demonstrate how each woman’s familial origin point in Europe, parental class and political …

From Theory To Practice: A Theory-Informed, Critical Review Of Research On Military Marriages, Benjamin M. Burke, Davina Quichocho, Mallory Lucier-Greer

Southeastern Council on Family Relations Conference

Military marriages may be particularly vulnerable to marital distress and dissolution due to the unique challenges associated with military service. To better understand the research regarding military marriages, a critical literature review was conducted. Fifteen peer-reviewed, published articles were critically reviewed based on their theoretical applications and empirical findings. Articles were categorized according to stage in marriage and primary theoretical orientation. Results suggest that military marriages are at risk due to military factors, but they are also mostly stable. Results also indicate that theories are rarely made explicit in military marriage literature. Future research would benefit from providing clearer links …

Research Performance Of The Asean University Network Member Universities, Raffy A. Lacaden, Tereso S. Tullao Jr

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

The purpose of this research paper is to describe the research outputs of the member universities of the ASEAN University Network (AUN). The paper is an inductive type of research that used a variety of information from Scopus to determine what AUN member universities are actively writing about. The author captured data from 1997 to 2017 from scopus.com to analyze what the AUN member universities and their respective countries have been studying. Results show that almost 50% of the total research outputs of all the ASEAN nations are contributed by the AUN member Universities, with Singapore’s NUS and NUT contributing …