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The Culture Of An Alternative Education Program: A Participant Observational Study, Dian Dee Connett

Dissertations and Theses

This study is participant observational research focused on the culture of one successful alternative education program. The survey of the literature showed that the problem of high school dropouts is one of numbers and persistence over time. Most research in the past attempted to list characteristics of high school dropouts or elements of successful alternative education programs. Researchers such as Wehlage (1986) and Catterall (1987) have begun to look at a different approach. Their work looks at schools as systems and suggests that educators should direct their attention to the interaction of the school environment with the characteristics of the …

Correlations Between The School Situations Questionnaire-Revised And Speech And Language Disorders, Geraldine Teresa Comerford

Dissertations and Theses

Many children with emotional and/or behavioral disorders also present with speech and language disorders. Children with attention deficits, in particular, have shown a much higher incidence of speech and language disorders than does the general population.

Traditionally, school speech-language pathologists have been responsible for conducting mass screenings to determine which children should be further evaluated for speech and language disorders. An increasing number of school districts are relying on teacher referrals to determine which children require speech-language evaluations. It was hypothesized that if teachers were able to identify children with attention deficits, these children may be appropriate for referral to …

Scattering Of A Light Beam From Waves At An Air-Sea Interface, Donald D. Duncan, W. H. Carter

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The authors report a new theory that describes the scattering of an upward propagating laser beam from the sea through the air-sea interface in the presence of sea waves. The sea is assumed to be a uniform dielectric and conventional scattering theory is employed by using a modification to the first Born approximation that permits treatment of surface refraction phenomena. Methods of statistical radiometry are also used in a new manner by assuming that the surface scattering function for the sea waves can be treated by a quasi-homogeneous source model to calculate the second-order correlation functions for the partially coherent …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet June 1993, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The June 1993 Monthly packet includes the June agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held May 1993.

The Assimilation And Integration Processes: A Study Of The Commitment Patterns During Students' Entry Into College, Suzanne M. Pastori

Dissertations and Theses

This study examined the heuristic value of applying the organizational model of Jablin, Putnam, Roberts, and Porter (1987), who studied newcoming employees assimilating into an organization, to the study of newcoming students integrating into an educational institution.

Three hundred and fifty-five college students were surveyed. I used an adapted version of Mowday, Porter, and Steer's (1982) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire.

Two hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis One states: The higher the level of expressed commitment the more likely it is that the student will express the intention to remain. Hypothesis Two states: Within Terms One, Two, and Three, the higher the level …

A Comparison Of Ambient And Hearing Aid Output Noise Levels In Industrial And Non-Industrial Settings, Jody Lynn O'Connor

Dissertations and Theses

Federal regulations specify that an employee working for eight hours cannot legally be exposed to noise which has a time-weighted average greater than 90 decibels on the A scale. The industrial workforce is comprised of not only people with normal hearing acuity, but of individuals who suffer from hearing loss. While current noise regulation standards are deemed appropriate for those with normal hearing, it is difficult to apply these standards to persons wearing hearing aids on the job. The ambient, or unamplified, noise levels that fall below the maximum permitted by OSHA standards may very well be amplified to levels …

Cultural Bias In The Assessment Of Phonological Processes In Conjunction With The App-R, Sharon Elise Soliday

Dissertations and Theses

Normal phonological development is characterized by phonological processes in preschool children. These processes are sound error patterns, in relation to the adult target, that are expected within the speech of normally developing children. As children grow older, they "outgrow" these developmental errors.

Within the black English dialect, speakers may use a combination of these processes and not be considered phonologically impaired within their linguistic community.

The purpose of this study was to assess and compare phonological process usage in the speech of lower socioeconomic black and white preschoolers.

The APP-R in conjunction with the CAPP was administered to two groups …

Existence Of High-Order Superlattices In Orientationally Ordered C_{60}, J. E. Fischer, D. E. Luzzi, K. Kniaź, A. R. Mcghie, D. A. Ricketts-Foot, W. R. Romanow, Gavin B. M. Vaughan, Dayin Li, Allan L. Smith, Robert M. Strongin, M. A. Cichy, Laurent Bard, Amos B. Smith Iii

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

We correlate the presence or absence of high-order modulated structures in solid C₆₀ with the differential scanning calorimetry signature of the orientational ordering transition and other diagnostic data. We have searched for, but not observed, the 2a face-centered cubic structure recently observed in low-temperature electron and single-crystal x-ray diffraction. We conclude that the intrinsic ground state is the previously reported simple cubic structure [space groupPa3¯, a(14 K)=14.06 Å], and that other structures may be stabilized by defects or impurities.

The Concepts Of Capitalism And Democracy In Implied Power Relations: Fractionation Philosophy And Theory, Randy Baker

Dissertations and Theses

This research proposes that it is possible to meaningfully examine the differences between subjects' perceptions of concepts at two different levels of analysis. The central theory, called "fractionation", is derived from structuration theory. The theory suggests that there is an important and particular difference between subjects' perceptions of key concepts at the value (abstract) level, as differentiated from the policy (action) level. The key concepts provided here are capitalism and democracy. Three major stages of data gathering and analysis were conducted. The first stage, carried out in several phases, surveyed 337 college students to gather words commonly associated with two …

An Exploratory Study Of Student Retention In Kindergarten And Grade One And The Associated Decision Making Processes As Perceived By Principals And Teachers, Doris Cameron-Minard

Dissertations and Theses

Students who fail to achieve in school are frequently retained in grade to remediate their lack of satisfactory progress. In this study, elementary school principals, kindergarten, and first grade teachers were interviewed to explore their perceptions of the decision making processes used in recommending retention. The belief systems which underlie their reliance on retention as a remedial option were also examined.

Three research questions were addressed:

1. What is the relationship between the written retention policy of a selected school district and the actual decision making process used by its schools?
2. What are the influences by district socio-economic level which impact …

Meeting Notes 1993-05-13 , Joint Policy Advisory Committee On Transportation

Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation

No abstract provided.

Sentence Discrimination In Noise And Self-Assessed Hearing Difficulty, Dianna W. Brainerd

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the sensitivity of the CID Everyday sentences, with competing cafeteria noise, as a measure of the real life receptive communication difficulty experienced by subjects with hearing loss limited to frequencies above 2000 Hz. In order to establish normative data the speech discrimination test w~s given to 38 normal hearing subjects (aged 19-46). Second, the discrimination test was given to 12 hearing impaired subjects (29-64), who also completed a self-assessment questionnaire, the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults (HHIA). The results were analyzed to determine: (a) if there was a significant difference between the …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet May 1993, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The May 1993 Monthly packet includes the May agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held April 1993.

A Survey Of Aural Rehabilitation Services Provided To Hearing Impaired Clients In The Private Sector, Alison Metcalf

Dissertations and Theses

While the approaches for providing aural rehabilitation to the hearing impaired are well documented, no research and only a few articles addressed the comprehensive application of these approaches in the private sector. Therefore, a survey of audiologists was conducted to determine how extensively the approaches are being utilized in this setting and what, if any, unmet client needs may exist. Sixty certified, dispensing audiologists who work in the private sector and reside in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming participated in the study. Participants were identified from membership lists provided by the five states' Speech-Language and Hearing Associations. A questionnaire …

Unusual Thermal Stability Of A Site-Ordered Mc60 Rocksalt Structure (M=K, Rb, Or Cs), Q. Zhu, O. Zhou, J. E. Fischer, Andrew R. Mcghie, W. R. Romanow, Robert M. Strongin, M. A. Cichy, Amos B. Smith Iii

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry of M_xC₆₀, with x∼1 and M=K, Rb, or Cs, reveal an unusual T-dependent phase sequence. A low-symmetry ground state is found, while the high-T limit is an ordered rocksalt structure in which only the octahedral sites are occupied. The unusual high-T stability of this ordered phase is attributed to the entropy of molecular orientational disorder and/or thermal disorder of the alkali-metal ions within the octahedral sites. Unique to K_xC₆₀ with x≥1.4, we find at intermediate temperatures an fcc site-disordered lattice gas …

Portland State Magazine, Portland State University. Office Of University Communications

Portland State Magazine

PSU’s alumni magazine, published 2-3 times a year. In this issue: Four former PSU students are winners of the Milken Family Foundation’s 1992 National Educator Award; state legislators dealing with the fallout of Measure 5 tell higher education it must be 15 percent more productive; Richard Toscan, dean of the school of fine and performing arts, seeks to forge more ties with the local arts community; Jack Ohman, editorial cartoonist for The Oregonian, writes about his decision to enroll at PSU; Professor Devorah Leiberman says misunderstandings caused by cultural differences can be avoided; Professor Marek Perkowski’s research may someday result …

An Intercultural Analysis Of Differences In Appropriateness Ratings Of Facial Expressions Between Japanese And American Subjects, Patricia Jean Peschka-Daskalos

Dissertations and Theses

In 1971 Paul Ekman posited his Neuro-Cultural Theory of Emotion which stated that expressions of emotion are universal but controlled by cultural display rules. This thesis tests the Neuro-Cultural Theory by having subjects from two cultures, Japan and the United States, judge the perceived appropriateness facial expressions in social situations. Preliminary procedures resulted in a set of scenarios in which socially appropriate responses were deemed to be either "Happy", "Angry" or "Surprised". Data in the experimental phase of the study were collected using a questionnaire format. Through the use of a 5-point Likert scale, each subject rated the appropriateness of …

Rain, Eco-Net

RAIN: Journal of Appropriate Technology

Volume 14, Number 3

Inside: Village-Organized Healthcare; The Homeless Garden Project; Center for Appropriate Transport; Ecotopia, Bulgaria

RAIN began in October 1974 as a publication of ECO-NET, an environmental education network funded by the Hill Foundation and an Environmental Education grant. Its office was based in the Environmental Education Center at Portland State University. With a focus on the Pacific Northwest, particularly Oregon, RAIN originally described itself as a “bulletin board” with an “emphasis on environmental/energy related and communications kinds of information” and interested in “the evolutionary possibilities of inter-disciplinary connections.”

Lents: Alternatives For The Future, Kent Healy, Shea Gumusoglu, Mark Dane, Steve Kelley, Jim Holycross, Ning-Sheng Zhou, Michael Ray, Sean Loughran, Kyle Bairnsfather, Peggy Scolnick, Matt Zybas

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

This document is the complement to the Issues Analysis. The Issues Analysis looked at the problems and issues which confront the Lents neighborhood. This document proposes actions that can be taken to address the issues identified in the previous analysis. Each section, e.g. Environment, Transportation, etc., has its own goals and subsequent objectives and actions. A goal is a broad statement of what is the desired outcome for the neighborhood. More specific objectives identify what needs to be done to improve things and to remedy the identified problems. The actions are means to achieve an objective. Specific potential implementers are …

Cross-Cultural Training Of Chinese Managers And Workers By U.S. Companies: A Comparative Cultural Analysis Of The Problems Reported By U.S. Trainers, Linda Vick

Dissertations and Theses

As Western business increases in China and China acquires more technology from the West, the need to effectively train the Chinese workforce becomes more important. Identifying and understanding the perceived problems that Western corporate trainers encounter when they train Chinese may lead to more effective and efficient training programs. This study examines the experiences of trainers, working for American companies, who have designed and implemented training programs for Chinese from the People's Republic of China. The purpose of the study is to identify perceived problems the trainers encounter and to determine whether differences between Chinese and American cultures may account …

Communication And Gender: Interviews With Blue-Collar Women, Jeri Lynn Sofka

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the interactions between women and men who work in highly-skilled blue-collar trades. The aim of this research is to describe women's perceptions and responses to their on-the-job communicative interactions with male co-workers, supervisors and union officials.

Small focus groups were conducted to produce rich narrative data that was audio recorded for later use by the researcher. The researcher met with the four subjects for three sessions. The interviews lasted three hours each. The researcher also conducted follow-up interviews by phone to clarify subjects' responses. The subjects were provided with an interview schedule of questions prior to the …

Issues Statement For Unincorporated North Clackamas County, Trell Anderson, Will D'Andrea, Tom Boullion, Aaron Corman, Donna Davis, Mark Greenhite, Barry Hennelly, John Mcknight, Nan Stark, Andy Wilch

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

This document was produced as a student project by students in the Master of Regional and Urban Planning (MURP) program at Portland State University during the Comprehensive Planning Workshop, Fall 1992. By focusing on a particular sub-area within Clackamas County, we hope to generate ideas and compile issues that may not have been seen in quite the same light as from a countywide perspective

Smart Memory: An Inexact Content-Addressable Memory, Jack Lee

Dissertations and Theses

The function of a Content-Addressable Memory (CAM) is to efficiently search the information stored in the memory, by using hardware rather than software with a corresponding improvement in searching speed. This hardware allows a parallel search by matching the data stored in memory to a search key rather than sequentially searching address by address as is done in a Random Access Memory. Although existing CAMs are more efficient in finding relevant information than RAM, there are additional improvements that can be made to further improve its efficiency. For example, previous CAMs use a word parallel searching scheme that can only …

From The Middle East To The United States: Stressors And Coping Strategies Of Members Of A Sacred Culture Living In A Secular Culture, Angela Taha

Dissertations and Theses

The values and beliefs involved in Islam maintain that religion is embedded in everyday life. Students from countries which subscribe to the tenets of Islam may have a difficult time adjusting to the secular society of the U.S. This study is concerned with the interrelationships among events perceived as stressful, the ways of coping with stress that are reported as most often used, and the reported level of satisfaction with living in the U.S. for the Muslim Arab international students in this study.

A four page survey questionnaire was used as the instrument. The questionnaire was filled out by 102 …

An Analysis Of The Involvement Of Ten High Schools In Scholastic Aptitude Testing Student Preparation, Elaine Drakulich

Dissertations and Theses

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is taken each year by two fifths of the high school graduates (Cameron, 1989). The perception that high SAT scores will either open the door of selective colleges and generate scholarships or that low SAT scores will close off opportunities for the rest of one's life, makes virtually every student who invests the three hours of time required to take the test extremely anxious about doing as well as possible (Whitla, 1988). Significant relationships between identified preparation techniques and the perceived effectiveness of those techniques by students and staff can be very useful information for …

Occurrence Of Phonological Processes Within Two Pragmatic Categories In Normal And Speech-Delayed Children, Betsy Ann Bergman

Dissertations and Theses

Research into the eventual suppression of phonological processes among children has centered on the influence of phonetic context and semantic-syntactic factors. Researchers have described various factors that would account for the variability found in normal and speech-delayed children's use of phonological processes. Researchers have found associations between phonological process use and language form and content, although there is a paucity of information pertaining the effect of language use on phonological performances. This study examined the phonological process use within two pragmatic functions-assertiveand responsive utterances-used by 15 normally developing and 15 speech-delayed 3-year-olds. These groups were matched for age, sex, and …

Certain Phonological Skills In Late Talkers, Catherine Marie Ryan-Laszlo

Dissertations and Theses

While there is general agreement among researchers in the field of language and learning disabilities upon the language hypothesis for reading failure, little research has been explored concerning the relationship between the phonological production skills of preschool children and the same children's prereading abilities in kindergarten.

This study examined two aspects of phonological skill (a) the relationship of early phonological production errors and later success on phonological awareness and general prereading skill, and (b) determining if prereading deficits in a group of children with a history of language delay reside specifically in the phonological awareness items or the prereading score …

An Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphor In Marital Conflict, Anne Elizabeth Burgermeister-Seger

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis investigates metaphoric structure revealed during discussions about conflict, and poses the general question: What conceptual metaphors do married individuals use to structure their marital conflict? Theoretical issues of metaphor analysis and general issues of conflict management are reviewed, providing a background for the study's approach to data collection and analysis. Eight married individuals were interviewed. Interviews were tape recorded. The interview schedule was structured around issues of topic, setting, process, response, and communication of typical, as well as a most recent, marital conflict. More specific probing followed respondents' comments. Using techniques of interpretive analysis, transcripts from the interviews …

Language And Memory Development In The Three And Four Year Old, Caroline Prater Moffatt

Dissertations and Theses

Although there is agreement in the literature that memory is required for language, there is disagreement as to whether certain memory abilities are prerequisite for language. There has been a significant amount of research in the field of memory development as it relates to language; however, little research has been done in the area of memory and language development in the preschool aged child.

This study examined two aspects of auditory memory and language development in the preschool child: (a) the auditory memory abilities of delayed language children versus normal language children, and (b) determining if there is a relationship …

Dynamics Of Ultrashort Pulse Generation And Amplification In Dye Lasers, Shuanghua Jiang

Dissertations and Theses

The dynamics of ultrashort pulse generation and amplification in dye lasers is studied in this dissertation. In particular, we have developed general semiclassical models for ultrashort pulse dye laser amplifiers and oscillators. These models start from Maxwell's equation for the electric field and density matrix equations for the active laser medium. A finite coherence time or phase memory time of the molecular wave functions, a finite vibrational relaxation time for the lower electronic state of the dye laser transition, an isotropic molecular orientational distribution, and an arbitrary pump polarization are all taken into account. Based on these models, specific topics …