Digital Commons Network^™

Multiple Perspectives On Cognitive Development: Radical Constructivism, Cognitive Constructivism, Sociocultural Theory, And Critical Theory, Meir Muller, Kelley E. Buchheister, Gloria Boutte

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

This multi-vocal article represents the work of three teacher educators. In conjunction with Glasersfeld’s (1996) description of Radical Constructivism, we agree that any theory “cannot claim to be anything but one approach to the age-old problem of knowing. Only its application in contexts where a theory of knowing makes a difference can show whether or not it can be considered a viable approach.” (von Glasersfeld, 1996, p. 309). In this conceptual piece, we examined the relationship between Radical Constructivism and three distinct, yet sometimes overlapping, theories: 1) Cognitive Constructivism 2) Sociocultural Theory; and 3) Critical Theory. First, we discuss the …

Postmodern/Poststructural Approaches, Jennifer J. Mease (Also Peeksmease)

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Postmodern and poststructural approaches to organizational communication are marked by an emphasis on ruptures, disjunctions, tensions, instabilities, and other inconsistencies as a part of everyday organizational life. This emphasis is part of an attempt to question, critique, and often compromise the normalized, mundane power structures that regulate organizational life. By questioning and critiquing, these approaches reveal norms and power structures as contingently constructed with particular interests at play. This contrasts with more traditional assumptions that treat norms and power structures as natural, neutral, and stable constructions.

Poststructural and postmodern approaches to organizational communication find their roots in broader philosophical movements …

Talent Development Of Refugee Women, Minerva D. Tuliao, Katherine Najjar, Richard J. Torraco

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

In almost all refugee populations approximately half are women (Martin, 2004; UNHCR, 2014). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) describes refugees as individuals who are forced to migrate to other countries due to war, civil unrest, or fears of persecution. Not only do refugees receive no protection from their own government, it is frequently their own country that has threatened their personal security and freedom.

Refugee women face particular challenges when integrating into new communities, especially industrialized countries. Young women may unexpectedly be required to assume the role of caregivers or sole breadwinners when traditional heads of household …

Structure And Service Delivery Approach Of The Children’S Bureau’S Resource Centers And Implementation Centers, Tammy Richards, Michelle Graef, Kathy Deserly, Peter Watson, Mark Ells

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

The Children’s Bureau (CB) provides a system of training and technical assistance (T/TA) to build the capacity of state and tribal child welfare systems, with the goal of improving outcomes for children and families. During the time period of 2008-2014, this infrastructure included ten National Child Welfare Resource Centers (NRCs), five Child Welfare Implementation Centers (ICs), and a Training and Technical Assistance Coordination Center (TTACC). Individual ICs and NRCs differed in structure and content expertise, yet they served the same jurisdictions and at times provided services concurrently. To increase cohesion and consistency, the NRCs, ICs, TTACC, and CB worked together …

Teac 908e: Critical Conversations In U.S. Teacher Education Policy And Practice—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Lauren Gatti

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Since compulsory school began in the early 1900s, there have been lively and at times intense debates regarding how teachers ought to be prepared. Current debates are particularly pitched as the achievement gap persists and teacher attrition remains high, made more intense by the level of polarization in the country. Debates in the field of teacher preparation, like the country writ large, are often characterized more by heat than light. Given this reality, I opted to use this peer review of teaching opportunity to think about my graduate course as a place where students could practice perspective-taking and dialogue around …

Contextualizing The Relationship Between Culture And Puerto Rican Health: Towards A Place-Based Framework Of Minority Health Disparities, Giovani Burgos, Fernando I. Rivera, Marc A. Garcia

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

In both the culture of poverty literature and the acculturation literature, Puerto Ricans are portrayed in negative terms. The culture of poverty framework attributes Puerto Rican poverty to the mental, behavioral, and moral pathology of Puerto Rican individuals and to Puerto Rican culture. Similarly, outdated acculturation frameworks also trace the poor health of immigrants and racialized minorities, such as Puerto Ricans, to equivalent perceived deficiencies. In this paper, we argue that both the culture of poverty and acculturation frameworks are two pillars of the White Racial Frame (Feagin 2009) that sustains racial inequality in the United States. To build our …

An Introduction To Serbian Piano Music: Musical And Cultural Influences On Three Selected Composers, Jelena Djukic

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

Serbia is a country that has survived many political and religious conflicts. Perhaps the best way to describe Serbian culture and tradition would be a country whose inhabitants struggled for many years, yet managed to incorporate the best elements of its conquerors’ cultures. Serbian musical identity is an amalgam of local and international influences and styles.

Different foreign authorities occupied this country for centuries. The Danube River was the main border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, located in the north, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire, situated south of the Danube. The Austro-Hungarian influences on Serbian music are most evident in piano …

Heteroglossic Practices In A Multilingual Science Classroom, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This paper uses sociocultural theories of language learning to investigate how teachers and students navigate between monolingual institutional policies and the multilingual realities encountered in a rural Kenyan fourth-grade classroom. The paper addresses not only how learners’ communicative repertoires are deployed to make meaning in a foreign language instruction context but also the sociocultural significance of these communicative practices. Results illustrate how the science teacher used heteroglossic practices to mediate students’ access to literacy, hence, supporting the content learning and language development of students. Both the science teacher and the students preferred a more flexible use of language to make …

Subgroup Discovery With Evolutionary Fuzzy Systems In R: The Sdefsr Package, Ángel M. García, Francisco Charte, Pedro González, Cristóbal J. Carmona, María J. Del Jesus

The R Journal

Subgroup discovery is a data mining task halfway between descriptive and predictive data mining. Nowadays it is very relevant for researchers due to the fact that the knowledge extracted is simple and interesting. For this task, evolutionary fuzzy systems are well suited algorithms because they can find a good trade-off between multiple objectives in large search spaces. In fact, this paper presents the SDEFSR package, which contains all the evolutionary fuzzy systems for subgroup discovery presented throughout the literature. It is a package without dependencies on other software, providing functions with recommended default parameters. In addition, it brings a graphical …

An Experimental Examination Of Visual Grouping Techniques In Skip Patterns On Respondent Navigation Errors, Rebecca J. Powell

Survey Research and Methodology Program: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Researchers are able to obtain better coverage and response rates with mail surveys compared to landline telephone surveys due to (1) easier access to the United States Postal Service (USPS) Computerized Delivery Sequence File (CDSF) (Iannacchione, 2011), and (2) the rise of households with no landline telephone (Blumberg and Luke, 2016). However, the use of the mail mode raises important challenges, such as the need to help respondents navigate the questionnaire without interviewer assistance.

As not all questions asked are relevant to all respondents, skip patterns are introduced to navigate respondents around questions that do not apply to them. With …

Review Of Estimation Of Parameters For Animal Populations: A Primer For The Rest Of Us By Larkin A. Powell And George A. Gale, Max Post Van Der Burg

The Prairie Naturalist

“Me? A modeler? Never!” This is the opening challenge of the book, Estimation of Parameters for Animal Populations: A Primer for the Rest of Us, by Larkin Powell and George Gale. I say “challenge” because I think this book attempts to challenge the misconception that quantitative methods are out of reach for most biologists and wildlife scientists. When many of us attend college or graduate school to study wildlife science there’s a sense that, at some point, there will be math. But it appears that the attitude of many students toward this reality is to simply suffer through the …

Supporting First-Generation Writers In The Composition Classroom: Exploring The Practices Of The Boise State University Mcnair Scholars Program, Bernice M. Olivas

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

First Generation students face disproportionate challenges in college. Their graduation rate is much lower than continuing generation students even though the majority of First-generation students perform at the same level as their continuing generation peers. Existing research suggests that First-generation students perceive their writing skills as lower than their peers’ skills and current composition research suggests that First-generation students struggle to develop an academic identity which contributes to their drop-out rate (Penrose 437-61). However, there is little research at the classroom level concerning First-generation students and their academic identity. This indicates a gap in composition research. This dissertation seeks to …

Enchanting Memes: Memetic Politics In The Face Of Technocratic Control, Jonathan Carter

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation examines emerging trends in networked politics through an analysis of the rhetorical forms and functions of internet memes as a unique response to the increasing force of technocratic rhetorics. Frequently dismissed as mere trivialities of networked discourses, memes have increasingly been mobilized to articulate new positions and structures of feeling around the significant issues of the day. As new iterations of memes are rapidly developed and circulated across networked public spheres, these rhetorical technologies provide new opportunities for amateur participation in the development of symbolic content. Such participation is particularly important as the intensification of control society has …

Acuta Journal Of Telecommunications In Higher Education

ACUTA Journal

In This Issue

President's Message

From the Editor

lT-Style Alphabet Soup

Software-Defined WAN (SO-WAN)- Moving Beyond MPLS

loT: The lnternet of Things

ls the LPWAN in Your Future?

lngredient for Wireless Success: DAS

Hot lssues in Communications Technology Law

lnstitutional Excellence Award: CSU Fullerton's Shared Cloud Services

DlDs for ELINs?

lSE...ERP... KnowBe4

[Tsa Web Pages For] Symposium 2016 -- Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port Textile Society Of America’S 15th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The web pages for the 2016 Savannah Symposium (archived in pdf).

The 2016 Textile Society of America Symposium will take place in Savannah, Georgia on the campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. To maximize scholarly interchange, the Symposium will consist of multiple, concurrent sessions, plenary and keynote speakers, a poster session and curated exhibitions that will intersect with the scholarly program. In addition to the symposium sessions and exhibitions, there will be a series of dynamic pre- and post-conference workshops and study tours to local and regional art institutions and …

Echoes Of The Past: Stylistic And Compositional Influences In The Music Of Sergei Bortkiewicz, Jeremiah A. Johnson

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

Despite the wide array of his compositional output in the first half of the twentieth

century, the late Romantic composer, Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952), remains relatively

unknown. Bortkiewicz was born and raised near Kharkov, Ukraine, but considered

himself Russian. Bortkiewicz studied in St. Petersburg and Leipzig, lived in Berlin, and

later returned to Kharkov during World War I. During the Russian Revolution, he fled to

Istanbul as a refugee. Eventually, he returned to Berlin and then to Vienna, where he

would remain during World War II and for the rest of his life. Substantial modern-day

recording efforts have rekindled interest in …

Critical College Experiences Of The Middle Third Of The High School Graduating Class, Nathan Kaoru Keikiokamakua Hanamaikai

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Seven recent graduates from a large, open access university in the Western United States who also graduated from high school in the middle third of their graduating class were interviewed to examine what they considered critical decisions during college and what effect those decisions had on their progress towards graduation. More than 45 critical incidents were identified by the participants. All incidents involved interaction with another person to some degree. All but 11 of the incidents were with people outside of institutional employees. Of the 11 incidents, the majority involved faculty members in either positive or negative situations. Upon further …

Self-Perceived Competence And Social Acceptance Of Young Children Who Stutter: Initial Findings, Naomi H. Rodgers, Patricia Zebrowski Ph.D

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose: The goals of this study were to determine whether young children who stutter (CWS) perceive their own competence and social acceptance differently than young children who do not stutter (CWNS), and to identify the predictors of perceived competence and social acceptance in young speakers.

Method: We administered the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children (PSPCSA; Harter & Pike, 1984) to 13 CWS and 14 CWNS and examined group differences. We also collected information on the children’s genders, temperaments, stuttering frequencies, language abilities, and phonological skills to identify which of these factors predicted PSPCSA scores. …

In This Issue [Of Tesol Quarterly, On Language Teacher Identity], Monka M. Varghese, Suhanthie Motha, Gloria Park, Jenelle Reeves, John Trent

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Our decision to propose a special issue of TESOL Quarterly on language teacher identity (LTI) grew out of our growing recognition of the profound embeddedness of LTI within the research, teaching, and policy practices of (multi)lingual professionals and the immense interest generated by LTI work within the disciplines that engage with language education. We use (multi) in (multi)lingual to underscore our desire to move beyond a monolingual lens in TESOL and to highlight potential extensions to the notion of multilingualism, such as (pluri), (trans), (ethno), and (racio). This allows us …

Translanguaging In The Writing Of Emergent Multilinguals, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article discusses the findings of an empirical study that investigated the writing practices in a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya. The study was undergirded by Bakhtin’s heteroglossia. Analysis of texts indicated that these emergent multilinguals used multiple semiotic resources to maximize the chances of meeting the communicative goals through translanguaging. However, the translanguaging process in writing was a tension-filled process in terms of language separation and correctness. The emergent multilingual writer went through tensions in the process of finding a balance between authorial intentions and the authoritarian single voicedness required by the school and the national curriculum. The …

The Technological Factors Of Reddit: Communication And Identity On Relational Networks, Jennifer Kienzle

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The relational network reddit is one of the most popular and visited websites on a global and national (United States) level. Communication on reddit lends itself to intergroup communication in that reddit users engage with audiences from ingroup, outgroup, and mixed audience compositions. Reddit’s voting system allows for negative and positive feedback to enhance or impede on one’s message. I examine how these technological factors influence a number of communicative and identity processes: (a) identity salience, (b), identity gaps, (c) group and interpersonal evaluation, and (d) accommodative language. Drawn out of intergroup contact literature and theories about group processes and …

Stylometry With R: A Package For Computational Text Analysis, Maciej Eder, Jan Rybicki, Mike Kestemont

The R Journal

This software paper describes ‘Stylometry with R’ (stylo), a flexible R package for the high level analysis of writing style in stylometry. Stylometry (computational stylistics) is concerned with the quantitative study of writing style, e.g. authorship verification, an application which has considerable potential in forensic contexts, as well as historical research. In this paper we introduce the possibilities of stylo for computational text analysis, via a number of dummy case studies from English and French literature. We demonstrate how the package is particularly useful in the exploratory statistical analysis of texts, e.g. with respect to authorial writing style. …

English Language Learners And Special Education: One District's Journey Through The Collaborative Problem-Solving Process, Laura S. Salem

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

English Language Learners are a growing population in schools in the United States. There are many challenges that face this group of students in addition to learning English as a new language. A major issue for teachers, schools, and districts is determining whether an English Language Learner is experiencing academic difficulties based on issues primarily related to language acquisition or whether a learning disability is contributing to the academic challenges. As a result, English Language Learners are often misidentified for Special Education services and may be placed in classrooms that are not adequately prepared or appropriate to meet their needs. …

Acercamiento Al Pensamiento Mágico Y La Superstición En El Discurso Literario De La Primera Modernidad Española: Miguel De Cervantes Y María De Zayas, Miguel Magdaleno Santamaria

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this thesis is to serve as a first approach to magical thinking and superstition in the literary discourse of Early Modern Spain, by examining these topics in Miguel de Cervantes’ first Quijote (1605) and María de Zayas’ Novelas Amorosas y Ejemplares (1637). The methodology followed in this thesis fundamentally includes the points of view of four fields of study. These are: anthropology, history, literature and historical linguistics. Accordingly, this study is thematically divided into four big sections: first, a discussion around the concept of ‘magical thinking’ in relation to religion (from an anthropological point of view); second, …

How Open Science Helps Researchers Succeed, Erin Mckiernan, Philip E. Bourne, C. Titus Brown, Stuart Buck, Amye Kenall, Jennifer Lin, Damon Mcdougall, Brian A. Nosek, Karthik Ram, Courtney K. Soderberg, Jeffrey R. Spies, Kaitlin Thaney, Andrew Updegrove, Kara H. Woo, Tal Yarkoni

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Open access, open data, open source, and other open scholarship practices are growing in popularity and necessity. However, widespread adoption of these practices has not yet been achieved. One reason is that researchers are uncertain about how sharing their work will affect their careers. We review literature demonstrating that open research is associated with increases in citations, media attention, potential collaborators, job opportunities, and funding opportunities. These findings are evidence that open research practices bring significant benefits to researchers relative to more traditional closed practices.

The Impact Of Implementing A Culturally Responsive Latino Poetry Unit To Examine Language, Identity, And Culture In A Middle School Language Arts Classroom, Kari Loecker

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

The purpose of this practitioner research study was to examine the implementation of a culturally responsive poetry unit in a majority Latino middle school in Nebraska. The experiences of Latino and non-Latino eighth-grade language arts students were documented in an effort to understand the level of engagement and conclusions drawn from the poetry. This study also explores the effectiveness of using a multicultural poetry unit to address state standards. Data sources include student written work, whole-class and individual discussions, pre and post surveys, and daily entries in a teacher research journal. Latino students found the poetry to be representative of …

Linguafolio® Implementation At The Classroom Level: A Collective Case Study Of North Carolina Teachers, Amanda Romjue

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

LinguaFolio® is a language learning portfolio with a rich history rooted in educational research. This study explores the evolution of LinguaFolio®, a learning and self-assessment tool whose origins can be traced back to the European Language Portfolio (ELP). LinguaFolio® is a learning tool designed to promote self-regulated language learning through goal-setting, task-based language learning, and self-assessment and reflection. This study examined the implementation of LinguaFolio® by five experienced, exemplary teachers in order to better understand how LinguaFolio® can best be integrated into the language classroom.

LinguaFolio® is a highly customizable language learning portfolio that teachers are encouraged to adapt to …

"A Mother For All The People": Feminist Science And Chacoan Archaeology, Carrie C. Heitman

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In 1997, Alison Wylie outlined an epistemic and ontological critique of archaeological inquiry to advance feminist science studies. Wylie’s work, I argue, remains relevant and potentially transformative for analysis of the cultural florescence that took place in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico during the ninth through twelfth centuries A.D. Archival, archaeological, and ethnographic data presented here suggest that women had important and undertheorized roles to play in the social transformations that defined emergent Chacoan society. Legacy data made available through the Chaco Research Archive provide evidence in support of Lamphere’s (2000) ritual power model interpretation of the Chacoan florescence. The advent …

A Study Of Home Emergent Literacy Experiences Of Young Latino English Learners, Guy Trainin, Stephanie Wessels, J. Ron Nelson, Patricia Vadasy

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This empirical study explored the home environment literacy practices of young Latino English learners and their families. The participants were 217 incoming Kindergarten Latino EL students and parents. The data collection included a completed HLEQ by the parents. In addition, children were administered the PPVT, the pre- LAS, the PALS-K screening, the Woodcock Reading Mastery assessment, and the Wide Range Achievement test. All of the literacy assessments given to the children provided the researchers with comprehensive look at their literacy knowledge base. The results of this study indicate that there were two significant paths for students’ achievement: availability of books …

Cultivating A Learner’S Stance For Engagement In Teacher-Inquiry: An Aim For Writing Pedagogy Education, Jessica Rivera-Mueller

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation argues that writing teacher educators (WTEs) can more purposefully advance their commitment to sponsoring inquiry-oriented teacher development by helping pre-service and practicing writing teachers examine how they are developing as inquirers. Building from scholarship in Composition and English Education and the findings from a narrative-based qualitative study that included four secondary and post-secondary teachers of writing, I have named this attention to how teachers learn and grow their inquiry processes a learner’s stance for engagement in teacher-inquiry. This stance is a readiness to see and engage professional work with an eye toward growing one’s ability to engage …