Digital Commons Network^™

Integrating Multiple Instructional Mediums To Teach Critical Literacy With The Adult Linguistically Diverse Learners, Kaemanje Thomas

Publications and Research

Critical reading is the apex of tertiary education and the chief focus in higher education courses as they prepare adults for the workforce. Without significant improvements in academic preparation and support, many linguistically diverse [LD] students will have higher drop out rates in their first year of college. Developmental reading instruction practices are designed to emphasize moving the first-year LD students from sub-par reading levels towards the application and development of critical reading skills, as demanded by their college courses. Many community colleges across the United States prepare assessments tests in reading and mathematics for most, if not all, newly …

Numbers Are Just Not Enough: A Critical Analysis Of Race, Gender, And Sexuality In Elementary And Middle School Health Textbooks, Sherry L. Deckman, Ellie Fitts Fulmer, Keely Kirby, Katharine Hoover, Abena S. Mackall

Publications and Research

Textbooks are a multimillion dollar publishing business in the United States. Even as 21st-century classrooms become more multimodal, digital and hardcopy textbooks remain a key feature of American education. Consequently, classroom textbooks have been shown to control knowledge dissemination across the content areas. In particular, health texts have been uniquely shown to communicate values that validate or marginalize students and encourage healthy or harmful activity. Thus,what textbook makers choose to include as worthy of study, and how they portray various groups of people with regard to race, gender, and sexuality has societal implications. Employing quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods, …

From Invisibility To Liminality: The Imposition Of Identity Among Non-Federally Recognized Tribes Within The Federal Acknowledgment Process, Christopher M. Drake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the imposition of a “liminal” identity among non-federally recognized American Indian tribes pursuing federal recognition through the Federal Acknowledgment Process. By requiring a tribe to simultaneously appear as both intelligible/similar to and distinctive/different from American society, the “liminal” identity fails to be maintained, barring a tribe’s recognition.

In Anthropocene Air: Deleuze's Encounter With Shakespeare, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Using Visual “Bait” To Hook, Engage, And Empower New Community College Writers, Nicola Blake

Publications and Research

This reflective article focuses on a series of semester-long activities conducted with developmental writers in an urban community college classroom. It builds on the research of John Berger (1972) and Sondra Perl (1994) who highlight seeing and perception as key components of self-composition. The article showcases assignments where students created photo journals as a way to share their lives, thoughts, and experiences. The use of structured prompts allowed students to actively engage with their neighborhoods -- a sort of text to be read, captured, and ultimately decoded through written explanation. The examples will be useful to practitioners who may be …

Diversity And Cultural Competence In The Lis Classroom: A Curriculum Audit, Nicole A. Cooke, Jennifer A. Jacobs

Urban Library Journal

In a case study examining a library and information science graduate curriculum, 18 graduate students engaged in a comprehensive diversity audit of the School of Information Science curriculum. The diversity audit was a student-generated review of 108 syllabi and permitted students to engage in an action-learning project that benefited the school and allowed them, and the school’s faculty, to see first-hand why diversity and cultural competence are important facets of library and information science curricula.

Effect Of X-Word Grammar And Traditional Grammar Instruction On Grammatical Accuracy, Sue Livingston, Andi Toce, Cyndi Casey, Fernando Montoya, Bonny R. Hart, Carmela O'Flaherty

Publications and Research

This study first briefly describes an instructional approach to teaching grammar known as X-Word Grammar and then compares its effectiveness in assisting students in achieving grammatical accuracy with traditionally taught grammar. Two groups of L2 pre-college students were taught using curricula and practice procedures in two different grammar texts over a three-month period of time for 20% of their class time. Essays written at three different times were analyzed for the correct and incorrect use of sentence patterns and verb constructs. Results demonstrated that improvement (writing with less error) was larger in both categories for the X-Word Grammar group and …

Fiqws Language And Literacy: Linguistic Myths And Realities, Emily Miller, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is for a Freshmen Inquiry Writing Seminar, which is a two-section, collaboratively taught course wherein one of the two courses engages students in critical thinking, reading, and writing about the issue of language and literacy, while the other introduces students to conventions of academic writing and mentors them in social and rhetorical writing processes. Thus, this course draws on the topic of language and literacy as a vehicle for critically analyzing students' own languages and literacies and developing especially their academic and information literacies.

Kratylos: A Tool For Sharing Interlinearized And Lexical Data In Diverse Formats, Daniel Kaufman, Raphael Finkel

Publications and Research

In this paper we present Kratylos, at www.kratylos.org/, a web application that creates searchable multimedia corpora from data collections in diverse formats, including collections of interlinearized glossed text (IGT) and dictionaries. There exists a crucial lacuna in the electronic ecology that supports language documentation and linguistic research. Vast amounts of IGT are produced in stand-alone programs without an easy way to share them publicly as dynamic databases. Solving this problem will not only unlock an enormous amount of linguistic information that can be shared easily across the web, it will also improve accountability by allowing us to verify analyses across …

Considering Ethical Questions In (Non)Fiction: Reading And Writing About Graphic Novels, Gene Mcquillan

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

#Cut/Paste+Bleed: Entangling Feminist Affect, Action And Production On And Offline, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

I consider my media praxis project to be labs, encounters, theory-making and scholarly output where doing and thinking in community (often the classroom and its linked spaces) in the sites or technologies under consideration is the “scholarly” product. That is to say, the doing and the process is the product, and what remains can also be shared and/or evaluated, as needed. This sharing of process is what I model now. I describe my most recent project, Ev-Ent-Anglement, engaging again critically with social media networks from inside them, share some of my lessons learned about production and action-based New Media/DH research, …

Style In Scientific Writing, Caitlin Geoghan

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizations Of Catalogers’ Judgment Through Content Analysis: A Preliminary Investigation, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

Catalogers’ judgment is frequently mentioned, but rarely researched in formal studies. The purpose of this article is to investigate catalogers’ judgment through an exploration of the texts collected in the database of Library and Information Science Source. Verbs, adjectives and nouns intimately associated with catalogers’ judgment were extracted, analyzed and grouped into 16 categories, which give birth to five conceptual descriptions. The results of this study provide cataloging professionals with an overview picture on aspects of catalogers’ judgment. They may help library school students and graduates and novice catalogers to become independent and confident decision makers relating to cataloging work.

Using Multiple Instructional Mediums To Foster Critical Literacy Skills With The Adult Lingusitic Diverse Learner, Kaemanje Thomas

Publications and Research

Critical reading is the apex of tertiary education and the chief focus in higher education courses as they prepare adults for the workforce. Without significant improvements in academic preparation and support, many linguistically diverse [LD] students will have higher dropout rates in their first year of college. Developmental reading instruction practices are designed to emphasize moving the first-year LD students from sub-par reading levels towards the application and development of critical reading skills, as demanded by their college courses. Many community colleges across the United States, prepare assessments tests in reading and mathematics for most, if not all, newly admitted …

Spooky Grammatical Effects, Joseph C. M. Davis

Publications and Research

Linguistic constructs often correspond to nothing concrete: Descriptivists’ zero morpheme, generativists’ trace, variationists’ null instantiation, and Columbia School’s null signal. These represent structural relations with no phonetic substance. Columbia School has posited, moreover, three types of relatively insubstantial semantic structure: The residual member and the including member are semantic value oppositions within a grammatical system, each defined by the system’s other members. In the opposition of substance, in my own work, two signals share a value from one semantic substance but only one of them bears a meaning from an additional semantic substance. All of these …

La Aculturación En La Comprensión Lectora De Los Estudiantes Universitarios: La Valoración En El Uso Polifónico De Las Citas, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

El acceso de los alumnos universitarios a los estudios de nivel superior implica un proceso de adaptación y aculturación que encuentra respuesta principalmente en la lectura y en la escritura académica. Esta transformación genera al principio altos grados de ansiedad en los sujetos, quienes en este nivel carecen aún de las coordenadas necesarias para la interpretación de textos científicos codificados en géneros discursivos que en muchas ocasiones han sido expresamente elaborados por escritores expertos para otros especialistas de la disciplina.

El cambio conceptual que se produce en el individuo que trata de integrarse en una nueva comunidad discursiva viene marcado …

Creator And Creation: Artistic Development In Herman Melville’S Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities And James Joyce’S A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, Magdalena M. De La Cruz

Dissertations and Theses

This study focuses on the primary protagonists of Herman Melville’s Pierre; or, the Ambiguities (1852) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Pierre Glendinning and Stephen Dedalus, as well as Isabel Banford, a supporting character in Melville’s novel, to illustrate how the tensions of contemporary society have a direct influence on the artist-hero’s representations and perspectives on self-realization. This thesis will draw on the major concepts of the artist and artist fiction as put forth in Otto Rank’s Art and Artist (1916), Herbert Marcuse’s “Der Deutsche Künstlerroman” (“The German Artist Novel”, 1922), and Maurice …

Aspectos Formales De La Citación En El Discurso Científico Desde Una Perspectiva Diacrónica, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La presente investigación hace una revisión histórica del tratamiento del elemento retórico-discursivo de la citación desde su primera aparición en el ámbito de la comunicación científica en la Philosophical Transaction de la Real Sociedad de Londres para el avance de la Ciencia Natural.

Language Attitudes In Algeria, Kamal Belmihoub

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Comic Counterfactual: Laughter, Affect, And Civic Alternatives, Don Waisanen

Publications and Research

This project contributes the comic counterfactual to the critical lexicon of rhetorical studies. Using a range of examples from political comedy, this paper offers six distinguishing features and several temporal functions of this concept. I argue that the comic counterfactual invites audiences to critically reflect upon the political, social, and performative consequences of historical events by bringing affective, sensory weight to alternative visions, moving unaccountable private interests into public culture, targeting the subtle determinisms that can easily creep into communication, and creating plausible ways to reworld the status quo. I discuss the limitations of the comic counterfactual in the political …

Translingualism ≠ Code-Meshing: A Response To Gevers’ “Translingualism Revisited”, Brooke R. Schreiber, Missy Watson

Publications and Research

In this response, we aim to clarify the relationship between code-meshing and translingual pedagogy, including the definition of code-meshing. We identify points of connection between Gevers' critiques and translingual scholars' own concerns about an overemphasis on visible language difference, and we discuss ways to move toward a more fully articulated translingual pedagogy.

The Politics Of Spanish In The World, Laura Villa, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This chapter offers an overview of the spread of Spanish as a global language, focusing on the politics and institutions that have worked toward its promotion in the last decades. The actions of the institutions, as well as those of corporate and cultural agencies involved in this sort of language policy, are to be understood as part of a wider movement of internationalization of financial activities and political influence. Our approach to globalization emphasizes agency and the dominance of a few nations and economic groups within the neo-imperialist order of the global village. In line with this framewrok, our analysis …

The Roma And Documentary Film: Considerations For Collection Development, Rebecca Schiff

Publications and Research

This paper explores the issues and criteria involved in developing a creditable documentary film collection about the Romani people for an academic library. Throughout their history, the Roma, or Gypsies, have dealt with biased, romanticized versions of their story, perpetuated by stereotypes found in legend, literature, song, and film. The expectation in the present undertaking is that the evidence coming from documentary films provides an effective antidote for misrepresentations. The paper reviews pertinent literature, suggests a selection process, and furnishes commentaries on individual titles as they relate to a framework based on the Romani historical and geographical narrative. A critical …

A Convergence Of Surrealism And Realism: Why Spirituality, Folklore, And The Supernatural Saturate The Work Of Toni Morrison, Kevon K. Harvey

Dissertations and Theses

This paper will analyze how Toni Morrison blends surrealistic elements into the recognized realism of her text by crafting various paradoxes within her work. Using three of Morrison’s books: Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, I will examine how each book ties a specific surrealistic component, as well as an equally relevant realistic element that will aid in the construct of a figurative bridge between the cultural past and present for African Americans. Moreover, I will discuss how the use of the surreal in Morrison’s work represents a dive into African traditions. Formed as a direct result of slavery, …

Nationalism, Soft Annexation And Hybrid Warfare: Putin's Recipe For Russian Resurgence, Brian E. Szlenk Straub

Dissertations and Theses

Over the last decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, The Russian Federation has struggled to reclaim its grasp over Eastern Europe and re-establish itself as a major player on the international scene. Increased NATO expansion towards its borders, and the “Westernization” of Eastern Europe has led to the country feeling it has been boxed into a corner. The feeling that the Russian nation has been encroached upon by the Western world has led to the rise of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia, and the marked rise in nationalism within the country. In this Master’s Thesis, I intend …

Well-Being And Academic Performance In Immigrant Students: The Role Of Inequality Of Country Of Origin And Resilience, Yumiko Yamaguchi

Dissertations and Theses

Abstract

Research on the psychology of immigrants has primarily focused on their socioeconomic status, but has not factored in macroeconomic indicators. These provide a deeper understanding of the stressors experienced by immigrants through the lens of cultural gaps between home and host countries. This study examined predictors of psychological well-being (PWB) and academic performance among 376 immigrant college students by employing Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of development (1994) consisting of four levels of environmental factors: Macrosystem, exosystem, mesosystem and microsystem. The results revealed that higher PWB was predicted by mesosystem variables (lower perceived stress, lower acculturative stress) and microsystem variables (higher …

Education And Civil Conflict: The Negative Effects Of Intolerant Curricula In Kosovo, Pakistan, And Sudan, Nicholas A. Jaspers

Dissertations and Theses

Education has long been used as a tool for national identity formation and social cohesion. However, in diverse communities across the globe, the question must be asked: are educational institutions creating citizens with a narrow view of “us vs. them” or an identity built on multiculturalism and acceptance? Through past research, it is obvious that education has either acted as an instigator or mitigator of civil conflict, though to what extent is still largely unknown. In this thesis, I argue that both the extent and quality of education in a country can instigate or, at least, exacerbate the outbreak of …

The Behavioral And Electrophysiological Effects Of Discrimination And Inhibition Training On Visual Selective Attention: An Erp And Time-Frequency Analysis, Arooj Abid

Dissertations and Theses

Enhancement of task relevant information and the suppression of task irrelevant information are the two co-occurring mechanisms of selective attention. Studies have shown that ERP components (specifically N2, P3, and RP) and the alpha band (8-14 Hz) rhythm correspond to neural mechanisms and processes of visual selective attention, especially conflict resolution. Tested by a modified version of the visual flanker task, a conflict task employing inhibitory control, two groups of healthy adults were exposed to three weeks of cognitive training; either discrimination training (trained to discriminate target orientation) or inhibition training (trained to ignore interfering distractors) to investigate whether training …

The Modulatory Effect Of Expectations On Memory Retrieval During Sentence Comprehension, Luca Campanelli, Julie A. Van Dyke, Klara Marton

Publications and Research

Memory retrieval and probabilistic expectations are recognized factors in sentence comprehension that capture two different critical aspects of processing difficulty: the cost of retrieving and integrating previously processed elements with the new input words and the cost of incorrect predictions about upcoming words or structures in a sentence. Although these two factors have independently received substantial support from the extant literature, how they interact remains poorly understood. The present study investigated memory retrieval and expectation in a single experiment, pitting these factors against each other. Results showed a significant interference effect in both response time to the comprehension questions and …

Investigating The Status Of A Rare Cross-Linguistic Contrast: The Case Of Romanian Palatalized Postalveolars, Laura Spinu

Publications and Research

This study examines a rare cross-linguistic contrast, that between plain and secondarily palatalized postalveolar fricatives, through (i) an acoustic analysis of the production of 31 Romanian speakers, and (ii) a perception experiment with a different group of 31 native speakers. Evidence of acoustic separation between plain and palatalized forms was found for 27 of the subjects, suggesting that the contrast is produced by the majority. This is consistent with previous reports of native speakers collected in 1961. These findings were supported by the results of the perceptual experiment, which showed that native speakers exhibit moderate sensitivity to this contrast. An …