Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Link Between Students’ Usage Of Aleks And Their Performance On State Benchmark Assessments In Mathematics, Verna Marie Richard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate relationships between students’ ALEKS usage, teachers’ implementation of ALEKS, and student performance on the 2017 – 2018 LEAP 2025 mathematics assessment. The quantitative portion of the study involved district-level analyses and teacher-level analyses that explored relationships between students’ ALEKS usage and LEAP performance. The qualitative portion of the study took into consideration previous research findings that have reported associations between program implementation and student achievement. This portion of the study included thematic analyses that examined the following relationships: ALEKS implementation in relation to teacher groups (i.e., RtI 8, Math 8, …

The Religion Of Policing: Race, Riots, And The Killing Of Alton Sterling, Landon Jay Douglas

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Deadly force encounters with black people and law enforcement officials are far too numerous and encounters that result in the death of civilians do not always result in disciplinary actions against officers, many of whom are white. The high-profile killings of black people in America require an in-depth analysis of race, policing, and the origins of tactics used by law enforcement against black people, which is not merely data-driven, but also theory driven. In trying to understand the disparate treatment experienced by black people at the hands of law enforcement officials, and the extent to which many Americans, mostly white …

Increasing The Inclusion Of Women Composers In The Wind Band Repertoire: Pale As Centuries By Sarah Kirkland Snider, Clifton Gerod Croomes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Women composers are underrepresented in the wind band medium. This study aims to determine the major factors for the disparity between men and women composers. I’ve transcribed a contemporary chamber music piece, Pale As Centuries by Sarah Kirkland Snider, for the wind band. Expanding on Snider’s existing work for chamber ensemble I will explore her compositional style and reinterpret the piece using the colors of the wind band.

A review of the literature focuses on trends within western music in the United States over the last century and establishes a documented history of institutionalized marginalization. In an interview with Snider …

"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing, Darina Pugacheva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The history of colonial and racial oppression made hair stories and testimonials fundamental to understanding hair as a unifying element particular for women of African descent in the post-slavery era. Seen as such, their hair narrations provide the first-person perspective of their life experiences while at the same time inviting a critical investigation of colonial and racial oppression. Contemporary women writers develop these types of narrations into a special language of hair that helps them tell a story that is not apparent or straightforward. This literary device that uses hair to uncover deeper social and political issues is bound up …

The Application Of Nonverbal Prosody In Scratches, An Original Composition For Trumpet And Chamber Ensemble, Shane Courville

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project uses research in prosody (the patterns of stress and intonation in language) to inform the compositional process of an original piece of music for trumpet, piano, string quartet, and sign language entitled Scratches. In this this paper, I propose that both verbal and nonverbal prosody affects music across all cultures at both the subtle and overt levels consciousness. It shows up in chanting and rhythmic structures of folk music as well as composers who use the influence of language explicitly. In conjunction with this document, I will discuss and perform the piece I compose through the inspiration of …

Aging In The Workplace: A Cross Case Analysis In Jamaica's Finance Sector, Malaika Tahirah Edwards

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Along with the increase in the number of older people globally, is an increase in the number of older people in the labor force. Older adults increasingly represent a large segment of the working population. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore workplace aging, with specific reference to Jamaica’s finance sector, in relation to organizational preparedness for the aging workforce.

This study examined aging from an organizational perspective, a national perspective, and an individual perspective, through the lens of Baby Boomers. The study was framed through the lens of the Four Frames Model, and the Metaperspectives Theory, which …

Intimate Fictions: The Rhetorical Strategies Of Obscene Violence In Four Novels, Steven Monk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Richard Wright, Marlon James, Cormac McCarthy and Ken Levine are each celebrated in their respective fields but notorious for their obscene depictions of violence. Contrary to trauma theorists’ claims that violence shatters language and cannot be spoken, these writers speak violence in its most disturbing forms: torn eyeballs, dead infants, forced fecal consumption and mechanized rape. I argue that obscene violence, much like obscene language, creates a space of intimacy in which transgressive, subversive and oppositional thoughts may be spoken. By alienating their texts from the larger reading public, these writers entice a smaller group of sympathetic readers to develop …

Capturing Contingency: Experimental Documentary In The Wake Of Direct Cinema, Dustin Reed Zemel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines experimental works in the late 1960s utilizing technologies and techniques connected with direct cinema and cinema vérité models of documentary filming. Focusing on three experimental filmmakers, I show how films by Jonas Mekas, Robert Fulton and William Greaves eschew the austere style associated with observational realism of direct cinema in favor of more ostentatious experimental assembly practices which highlight the role of the filmmaker as artist. I argue for a relational model of assessment in which documentary film’s qualitative renderings of environment become important determinants of documentary integrity and efficacy. With separate chapters focusing on works by …

Using Systematic Prompt Fading To Program A Self-Questioning Strategy With Elementary Students With Disabilities, Leah Michelle Turner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Standardized assessments are focused on integrating knowledge from multiple sources and developing composed written responses. This requires the students to be able to read and comprehend on grade level, within the various subject areas (reading, math, science, and social studies), which are skills students with disabilities struggle to do. The purpose of the study was to use a systematic prompt fading procedure as a vehicle to program a self-questioning strategy for students with disabilities. The intervention package occurred in seven phases: baseline, embedded questions training, embedded questions independent practice, self-questioning training, self-questioning independent practice, self-questioning fading, and maintenance. A systematic …

Examining Two Self-Assessment Measures Of Teacher Multicultural Competence And Their Predictive Value To Student Behavior Outcomes, Melissa Jo Hamilton Grisdale

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Multicultural competence is a construct that has been discussed in the education literature as an essential skill for teachers' success in reaching all children in the classroom. The current study advances the literature on multicultural competence, specifically pertaining to teachers within their classrooms. Additional evidence was found building upon the technical adequacy of two, theoretically different, measures of teacher multicultural competence. Teachers who received a greater number of hours of multicultural training had significantly higher self-efficacy regarding engaging in culturally responsive teaching practices, than those who had received fewer hours. This study also replicated previous research (Hamilton, 2016) finding that …

Assessing Louisiana State University College Of Agriculture Faculty Members' Cultural Intelligence And Kenyan Workshop Participants' Knowledge And Attitude Towards International Development Projects, Cristina Cossich

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The main objective of this dissertation was to assess Louisiana State University College of Agriculture Faculty Members' Cultural Intelligence and Kenyan Workshop Participants' Knowledge and Attitude towards International Development Projects. The study examines key aspects that contribute to the implementation of international development projects: describing the landscape of what is known about international development projects in Kenya; assessing perceptions of faculty members of a southern United States land-grant university who are in charge of the development and implementation of international development projects; and evaluation of program impacts on selected local participants of a project in Kenya.

The overall findings of …

Cruzando Para El Otro Lado: Motivation, Communication, And The Migrant Experience, Crystal Paul

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Latino/a migration scholarship has largely focused on the motivations to migrate and the assimilation of men migrants. When gender is considered in migration research, it is often treated as a demographic characteristic used to track differences in trends between men and women migrants rather than as a structuring entity informing the migration experience. Recent feminist scholars have shifted focus, employing gender as a theoretical tool to understand how gender shapes the migrant experience before, during and after migration. My research draws upon this theoretical approach and uses data collected via in-depth interviews in an attempt to understand how gender shapes …

Forget Me Not: Are Stronger Memories More Susceptible To Retrieval-Induced Forgetting?, Laura Lee Heisick

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Successfully retrieving information sometimes causes forgetting of related, but unpracticed, information, termed retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). One explanatory mechanism of RIF suggests related, but currently irrelevant, information is inhibited during retrieval, resulting in poorer memory for competing representations. Critically, this perspective suggests stronger memories are more susceptible to RIF because stronger representations produce additional competition when unpracticed. To resolve this competition, strong competing items are inhibited, resulting in the counterintuitive prediction that stronger memories are more likely to be forgotten. The aim of the current experiments was to replicate and extend recent work suggesting non-typical objects and own-race faces, both of …

Teachers As Change Agents: An Investigation Into The Literary Practices Of Effective Tier 2 Charter School Teachers In South Louisiana, Earlisha Jenkins Whitfield

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A Southern Louisiana charter school is in the initial phases of a Response To Intervention (RTI). General education classroom teachers are responsible for all Tier 1 and 2 instruction that included interventions in Tier 2. However, many teachers were unsure about the implementation, of RTI and had negative experiences with RTI, describing the process as frustrating and overwhelming. This case study examines teachers that have been effective in the process as evidenced by an increase in in reading levels and student interest. The research explores the teachers’ perceptions, experience, and knowledge of the current implementation of RTI. This qualitative research …

#Whyididntreport: Using Social Media Analysis To Inform Issues With Sexual Assault Reporting, Jordyn Warren

LSU Master's Theses

The #MeToo movement allowed victims of sexual assault to go public with their stories. When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in September of 2018, she was scrutinized by President Trump for not reporting the incident to authorities “when it happened nearly 30 years ago.” Promptly, #WhyIDidntReport came to fruition on Twitter, uncovering the shame victims feel and the complexities behind why so many individuals didn’t and still don’t report their assaults. Victim-service agencies “provide victims with support and services to facilitate their physical and emotional recovery, offer protection from future victimizations, …

Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois, Antiquarian, Anna E. Dow

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the life of Léon-Jean-Joseph Dubois (1780-1846), a French engraver, antiquarian, conservator, and restorer of antiquities. Dubois lived in Paris during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in an era when Ancient Egyptian art and history became very popular. His life was overshadowed by the career of his friend Jean-François Champollion, the “Father” of Egyptology, who laid the foundations for the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1822. This thesis is the first to study Dubois, and the focus of this study will be on his life, his publications, his art, his relationships with other antiquarians, his museum …

Second Language Identities Of International Teaching Assistants In The U.S. Classroom, Adam Agostinelli

Faculty Publications

Sociolinguistic research has yet to comprehensively address changes in the second language mediated identity, or second language identity (L2I), of English as a second language (ESL) students that take place as a result of traveling abroad and experiencing English in authentic circumstances. First, this study provides an outline of L2I and proposes a framework for evaluating L2I in authentic contexts (i.e. in a country where the target language is the primary means of communication). Second, personal narratives, formal reports, and observed classroom comments of international graduate teaching assistants (ITAs), who were placed in a required English Speaking course as a …

Second Language Identities Of International Teaching Assistants In The U.S. Classroom, Adam Agostinelli

Faculty Publications

Sociolinguistic research has yet to comprehensively address changes in the second language mediated identity, or second language identity (L2I), of English as a second language (ESL) students that take place as a result of traveling abroad and experiencing English in authentic circumstances. First, this study provides an outline of L2I and proposes a framework for evaluating L2I in authentic contexts (i.e. in a country where the target language is the primary means of communication). Second, personal narratives, formal reports, and observed classroom comments of international graduate teaching assistants (ITAs), who were placed in a required English Speaking course as a …

The Use Of Geospatial Modeling And Novel Diagnostics To Detect And Map Risk Factors Of Soil-Transmitted Helminths In Feira De Santana, Brazil, Ryan Harry Avery

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections impact billions of people worldwide. The traditional STH control approach is a morbidity control strategy implementing mass drug administration (MDA) programs targeting school-aged children (SAC). In Brazil, this control strategy has decreased STH prevalence to less than 20% in most of the country and providing an opportunity to transition from the morbidity control program and towards a surveillance and response system geared towards STH elimination. Surveillance and response systems geared towards elimination require the implementation higher accuracy diagnostics to detect infection in low-transmission communities, surveillance of entire households, high-resolution modeling at the household-habitat scale, and targeted …

The Jeffersonian Huey Long: The Rise Of Southern Socialism, Ali Katherine Nabours

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that there existed in the South between the 1890s and World War II a leftist dissenting tradition which frequently included or had a good deal in common with Socialism. Southern Socialism, broadly defined as a shared set of leftist values among a diverse population, was unique to the region because it was a native-born movement established in response to the region’s unique social, labor, and economic conditions. Huey Long capitalized on this tradition in his rise to power. He went after the voters that political machines and large interests ignored. He echoed the complaints poor Southerners had …

Analysis And Utilization Of Hip-Hop Techniques In Classical Music, William Francis Montgomery

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

As of January 4^th, 2018, R&B/Hip-Hop (including rap) had overtaken rock and roll as the most popular genre among music fans. Nielsen Music reported that rap had surpassed rock in terms of total consumption with rappers such as Drake and Kendrick Lamar leading the charge. This would lead to the second-highest growth of any genre of music, spiking at 25% over the previous year.[1] This came as a very big surprise to many, especially when we take into consideration the rocky at best relationship that rap has had with public perception.

There are many misconceptions and …

Time In Giorgio De Chirico's Metaphysical Paintings, Ge Chen

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract

A subtle transformation in the fundamental cognition of a generation could trigger overwhelming ripples throughout the society. Time as an essential concept went through tempestuous changes in late nineteenth-century Europe because of the revolutionary development in railway system. Art world in cross-century Europe also witnessed unprecedented upheavals. Founder of Metaphysical Painting, Giorgio de Chirico was born to that age and was renowned for his complicated opinion towards modernism. This thesis intends to present how the change in the basic perception of time permeated the society, influenced ways of production, inspired art movements, and got reflected in art works.

Railway …

Beyond The Transcript: A Narrative Analysis Of Students' Experiences With Academic Dismissal In A Baccalaureate Nursing Program, Angela Edwards Capello

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Re-defining different is the first step in addressing inequity in nursing education and the disparities that result in a high incidence of academic dismissal in baccalaureate nursing programs. What are the students' differences that contribute to one student’s ease of progression through a baccalaureate nursing program and those who struggle from the first semester?

This study provides a private look into the experiences of nine baccalaureate nursing students who were academically dismissed from their nursing program. Each story chronological from the time they decided to pursue nursing to their experiences during nursing school and to their lives after dismissal. …

Effective Use Of Systems Beyond The Firm’S Control: The Case Of Online Review Systems, Biagio Palese

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The world is changing, and companies are becoming more exposed to systems beyond their control (e.g., online review systems, social media, shopping comparisons websites). We define systems beyond the firm’s control as any information systems neither designed nor commissioned by a company, that the firm must use to compete. Despite their importance and increasing prevalence these types of systems are surprisingly understudied in Information Systems. We focus our attention on the effective use of a specific class of systems beyond the firm’s control: online review systems. Online reviews are virtualized and broadcasted customer service systems that affect customers’ decisions. Companies …

The Effects Of Collaboration On Harmonization In College Group Piano, Yining Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Current university-level group piano classes may not provide adequate training on functional keyboard skills needed by non-keyboard professional musicians. Innovative teaching strategies involving collaborative learning have been successfully demonstrated in other areas of education (e.g., math, science, and English) and might efficiently improve students’ functional keyboard skills. This dissertation examined the effects of collaborative learning on harmonization in college group piano classes. This study explored the differences between performance outcomes among students who collaborated to learn harmonization, as opposed to those who worked alone. It also investigated how collaborative work influenced students’ attitudes and confidence toward learning and performing harmonization. …

After-School Martial Arts: A History, Perceptions Of Academic Advantage, And Effects On Academic Performance, Rose Marie Kelley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

After-School Martial Arts utilizes mixed methods to further our understanding of (a) how martial arts became an established after-school activity for elementary school children, (b) how parents and participants perceive the value of martial arts, and (c) whether sustained participation in martial arts is associated with academic gains. I begin with a historical case study that examines how parents came to see martial arts as one of the viable after-school activities for their elementary school age children. Next, I employed qualitative observations and in-depth interviewing techniques to learn more about what parents and participants perceived as attractive in marital arts …

A Case-Study Approach To Investigate Transmission, Co-Infection, And Clinical Sequelae During Epidemics Of Dengue And Ebola Virus Disease, Jennifer Elizabeth Giovanni

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

From within their ecologic niches, zoonotic viruses emerge from animal reservoirs into the edges and centers of human habitation to exploit opportunities for unabated transmission within immunologically–naïve populations. Our understanding of where, in whom, and how these viruses emerge is under direct challenge, driving the evolution of modern infectious disease epidemiology within a rapidly-connected global community. The studies presented herein are based on analyses of both aggregate and case-level data, which, we argue, provide unique insight into the complexities of transmission, co-infection, and clinical sequelae occurring within, and arising from, epidemics of emerging zoonotic viruses. In Chapter II, we investigate …

Music Reading For Everybody: Notation For Laptop Music Making, Kathleen Alyse Winn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to document the creation of a new music notation called KeyMusic for the ASCII/QWERTY keyboard on any computer platform. This notation is designed to enable those without musical training the ability to participate in music making. Creation of the notation is traced from its conception to the application of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) usability criteria to establish its efficacy for users. All of the pieces notated in this format so far, are transcriptions from traditional folk song and arrangements of classical melodies. The development of a chromatic, polytonal, multitimbral laptop instrument which is designed …

Auditory Distraction Does More Than Disrupt Rehearsal Processes In Children’S Serial Recall, Angela M. Aubuchon, Corey I. Mcgill, Emily M. Elliott

Faculty Publications

As children mature, their ability to remember information improves. This improvement has been linked to changes in verbal control processes such as rehearsal. Rehearsal processes are thought to undergo a quantitative shift around 7 years of age; however, direct measurement of rehearsal is difficult. We investigated a measure of rehearsal ability in children and compared this measurement to serial recall performance in the presence of auditory distractors. Theories of auditory distraction effects in children rely upon a combination of attentionally based and serial-order-based processes (Elliott et al. in Journal of Memory and Language, 88, 39–50, 2016); the present work contributes …

An Examination Of The Technical Adequacy, Classification Accuracy, And Usability Of The Ssis Sel Screening/Process Monitoring Scales In Elementary School Populations, Shelby Mccoy Byrd .

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Social emotional skills and competencies are integral to student success at home, school, and in the larger community. Extant research also consistently demonstrates that social emotional skill deficits are associated with various adverse outcomes. Universal screening for social emotional and behavioral risk in schools facilitates early identification and targeted intervention, with the primary goal to mitigate and reduce these potential adverse outcomes for students. Research on the technical adequacy and classification accuracy of universal screening is essential to this process to ensure efficient and accurate identification, as well as subsequent implementation of social emotional interventions targeting deficits in skills.The purpose …