Digital Commons Network^™

Three Reading-Intervention Teachers’ Identity Positioning And Practices To Motivate And Engage Emergent Bilinguals In An Urban Middle School, Jung-In Kim, Kara Mitchell Viesca

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

This study investigated three urban middle-school teachers’ practices with respect to motivating and engaging emergent bilinguals in reading-intervention classrooms by exploring the teachers’ identity positioning. The three teachers’ sociocultural and sociopolitical positioning of their students (e.g. students as individuals, as monolithic learners, or as problems) was found to be related to their practices for motivating and engaging the students (e.g. hybrid, calibrated, or imposed practices). The teachers’ historical and current resources partially shaped how they positioned their students. The findings support that teachers should not only learn motivational practices but also reflect critically on positioning processes in the classroom.

Personal Practical Knowledge Of Teacher Educators, Vicki Ross, Elaine Chan

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

We introduce the notion of personal practical knowledge (PPK) and, then, explore complexities of knowledge and knowing in the lives and work of teacher educators. To do so, we draw heavily on existing literature based upon and addressing personal practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988) to better understand tensions at play in the field of teacher knowledge, and to offer research literature and methods that value, document, and fold in details of teachers’ experiences to inform understanding of the work of teacher educators.

We begin with a definition of the term ‘personal practical knowledge’, proposed by Connelly and Clandinin (1988), …

The Impact Of A Common Approach To Instruction Within A Nebraska Rural School District, Bret Allan Schroder

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

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the instructional understanding and effectiveness of a district wide implementation of a Common Approach to Instruction. This research study provided a greater understanding of the affects that such an implementation had on certified staff regardless of grade level, experience, subject, or gender.

This explanatory, sequential, mixed methods study was conducted during the summer, spring, and fall of 2014-2015. The study initially gathered data using an online survey, based on Marzano’s 41 instructional elements, in a single class-B school district in Nebraska. All certified staff members within this school district were …

Adherence And Dosage Contributions To Parenting Program Quality, Thomas J. Gross, W. Alex Mason, Gilbert R. Parra, Robert Oats, Jay Ringle, Kevin P. Haggerty

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

Objective—The 3 most frequently examined elements of treatment fidelity are adherence, dosage, and quality. The relationships between these fidelity elements are complex, and additional research is needed to provide clarity. Improving clarity may be especially relevant to parenting programs, which tend to include direct explicit instruction (DEI) elements (i.e., instruction, modeling, and practice). The adherence to and dosage of these DEI elements are frequently assumed to improve program quality; however, little information is available to determine if such adherence and dosage affect program quality. This study examines whether adherence to and dosage of DEI elements predict quality ratings for …

Teacher Perspectives On Professional Development Needs For Better Serving Nebraska's Spanish Heritage Language Learners, Janet Marie Eckerson

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

A growing number of heritage language speakers of Spanish are enrolling in Spanish language courses during secondary school. Current scholarship has suggested that these heritage language learners (HLLs) have very different instructional needs than learners of second or foreign languages. Because Spanish language instruction in Nebraska secondary schools has been traditionally conceptualized only as foreign language instruction, classroom teachers may not be adequately prepared to meet the needs of HLLs. This dissertation examined the experiences of Nebraska secondary Spanish teachers who worked with HLLs in order to inform the creation of relevant professional learning experiences for pre- and in-service teachers. …

From Literacy To Literacies: Negotiating Multiple Literacies In The English Classroom, Breanne S. Campbell

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

This dissertation is a narrative description of my teaching moves as I attempted to negotiate within my classroom both traditional print literacy and new literacies afforded by emerging technology. In this study, I sought to reconcile my rhetoric with my reality (Zeichner, 1999) by teaching students how to read and design multimodal compositions within the traditional framework and curriculum required by my school district. Students composed traditional memoirs and then participated in the synaesthesia process by remediating their memoirs using technology. Students were also asked to write a Statement of Goals and Choices (Shipka, 2011), reflecting on their own rhetorical …

Motherhood As Contested Ideological Terrain: Essentialist And Queer Discourses Of Motherhood At Play In Female–Female Co-Mothers’ Talk, Elizabeth A. Suter, Leah M. Seurer, Stephanie Webb, Brian Grewe Jr., Jody Koenig Kellas

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of motherhood in female–female co-motherhood. Analysis identified two competing discourses: (1) discourse of essential motherhood (DEM) and (2) discourse of queer motherhood (DQM). Speakers’ invocation of the DEM reinscribes the mainstream US cultural discourse that children can have only one authentic (i.e., biological) mother, whereas invocation of the DQM denaturalizes the DEM’s presumptions of authentic motherhood as biological, interrupts monomaternalism, destabilizes the patriarch, and troubles the equation of biological with moral motherhood. Whereas interpenetrations of the DEM and DQM were typically sites of adversarial discursive struggle, in a few …

Assessing The Sociocultural Impact Of Special Events In The Context Of Germanfest In Nebraska, Usa, Yanli Wang

Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The present study examined the sociocultural impact of special events based on the cultural festival of GermanFest in Syracuse, Nebraska. A total of 143 (71.5%) local residents responded to the self-administered survey. The dimensions of the sociocultural impact, the important reasons for celebrating the festival, the relationship among festival stakeholders, the levels of community involvement, and the improvement of the quality of life in the community as impacts of the festival and demographic information were investigated separately.

The Festival Social Impact Attitude Scale (FSIAS) was utilized to identify the dimensions of the sociocultural impact of GermanFest. Three dimensions were identified …

Canola: A Modern Crop For A Modern Era, Kenneth J. Roché

Doctor of Plant Health Program: Dissertations and Student Research

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Doctor of Plant Health program is a professional doctorate program with a comprehensive approach to plants and agriculture. The program emphasizes a broad interdisciplinary education across all plant-related disciplines, practical learning, research, and experience through internships. For my final required internship, I worked as a senior agricultural research intern with Research Designed for Agriculture (RD4AG) in Montana. RD4AG is a contract research organization based in Yuma, AZ with over thirty-years of experience. During my three month internship at RD4AG in Montana, a large portion of my responsibilities centered on managing regulated canola trials that were undertaken …

Investigating The Influences Of Language Delay And/Or Familial Risk For Dyslexia On Brain Structure In 5-Year-Olds, Nora Maria Raschle, Bryce Larkin Chessell Becker, Sara Smith, Lynn Valérie Fehlbaum, Yingying Wang, Nadine Gaab

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Early language delay has often been associated with atypical language/literacy development. Neuroimaging studies further indicate functional disruptions during language and print processing in school-age children with a retrospective report of early language delay. Behavioral data of 114 5-year-olds with a retrospective report of early language delay in infancy (N = 34) and those without (N = 80) and with a familial risk for dyslexia and those without are presented. Behaviorally, children with a retrospective report of early language delay exhibited reduced performance in language/reading-related measures. A voxel-based morphometry analysis in a subset (N = 46) demonstrated an association between reduced …

International Doctoral Students, Their Advising Relationships And Adaptation Experiences: A Qualitative Study, Katherine Najjar

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

Thirty four international doctoral students were interviewed to determine what types of advising and mentoring experiences were effective and beneficial, and what experiences had been difficult or unhelpful. The students reported a high level of satisfaction with their advisors and with their program of studies. However, during the interviews, students began to describe other factors that contributed to their well-being and their experiences.

Issues described included language difficulties and problems developing relationships with other students. Although most students developed close, personal relationships with advisors or departmental colleagues, few students reported having large numbers of friends and associates outside of their …

Life Beyond The Like: Uses And Gratifications Of Sharing Business Facebook Page Content, Sara M. Nash

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

One of the main reasons businesses create a Facebook Page is to solidify relationships with existing customers who are Facebook users and to leverage those relationships to gain new customers. Many studies have asked Facebook users to articulate the gratifications they receive when “liking” a business Facebook Page. These studies help explain what gratifications users gain by connecting to businesses via Facebook. To expand on these findings, the current pilot study applied the uses and gratifications theory to identify Facebook users’ motivations to “share” business Facebook content within their own personal network. Understanding users’ reasons for “sharing” will help businesses …

Women's And Gender Studies Fall 2015, Chantal Kalisa

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Information and Materials

This year marks the end of my tenure as the Director of Women’s & Gender Studies. It has been has an honor and a pleasure to serve you. I am thankful to those who serve in many capacities in order to grow our program. Core and affiliate faculty are key in reflecting our committment to interdisciplinarity through their research, teaching, and service. I also thank campus community members such as those who run the Women’s Center and LGBTQ+ Resource Center. They are dedicated to making women’s issues visible on campus, and also offer invaluable internship and professionalization opportunities for our …

A Computational Translation Of The Phaistos Disk, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

For over a century the text of the Phaistos Disk remained an enigma without a convincing translation. This paper presents a novel semi-automatic translation method that uses for the first time a recently discovered connection between the Phaistos Disk symbols and other ancient scripts, including the Old Hungarian alphabet. The connection between the Phaistos Disk script and the Old Hungarian alphabet suggested the possibility that the Phaistos Disk language may be related to Proto-Finno-Ugric, Proto-Ugric, or Proto-Hungarian. Using words and suffixes from those languages, it is possible to translate the Phaistos Disk text as an ancient sun hymn, possibly connected …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 27:2 — Fall 2015, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

Letter from the Editor
Introducing Caroline Charuk, TSA's New Membership & Communications Coordinator
Letter from the President
First Three Fellows of TSA Announced: Sheila Hicks, Jack Lenor Larsen, and Ann Pollard Rowe
R. L. Shep Ethnic Textile Book Award: 2014 Awardee Announced [Ralph Isaacs, Sazigyo, Burmese Manuscript Binding Tapes: Women Minisatures of Buddhist Art]; Call for 2015 Book Nominations
Textiles Close Up Report: International Folk Art Market, Santa Fe, July 9–12, 2015
Announcing TSA's Spring 2016 Programs: Asia in Amsterdam at the Peabody Essex Museum and Chin Weaving at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
TSA 2016 Symposium Comes to …

A Computational Study Of The Evolution Of Cretan And Related Scripts, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Crete was the birthplace of several ancient writings, including the Cretan Hieroglyphs, the Linear A and the Linear B scripts. Out of these three only Linear B is deciphered. The sound values of the Cretan Hieroglyph and the Linear A symbols are unknown and attempts to reconstruct them based on Linear B have not been fruitful. In this paper, we compare the ancient Cretan scripts with four other Mediterranean and Black Sea scripts, namely Phoenician, South Arabic, Greek and Old Hungarian. We provide a computational study of the evolution of the three Cretan and four other scripts. This study encompasses …

A Dispositional Account Of Gender, Jennifer Mckitrick

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

This paper argues that one’s gender is partially constituted by extrinsic factors. In Sect. 2, I very briefly explain my understanding of sex, gender, and transgender. In Sect. 3, a survey recent accounts of gender as a socially constructed or conferred property, ending with Judith Butler’s idea that gender is a pattern of behavior in a social context. In Sect. 4, I suggest a modification of Butler’s idea, according to which gender is a behavioral disposition. In Sect. 5, I develop my dispositional account by responding to a worry that it is too essentialist. In Sect. 6, I defend my …

Involvement Of The Right Hemisphere In Reading Comprehension: A Dti Study, Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, Yingying Wang, Elena Plante, Scott K. Holland

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

The Simple View of reading emphasizes the critical role of two factors in normal reading skills: word recognition and reading comprehension. The current study aims to identify the anatomical support for aspects of reading performance that fall within these two components. Fractional anisotropy (FA) values were obtained from Diffusion Tensor images in twenty-one typical adolescents and young adults using the Tract Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) method. We focused on the Arcuate Fasciculus (AF) and Inferior Longitudinal Fasciculus (ILF) as fiber tracts that connect regions already implicated in the distributed cortical network for reading. Our results demonstrate dissociation between word-level and …

The Role Of Critical Thinking In Reader Perceptions Of Leadership In Comic Books, Renee Krusemark Edd

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This study qualitatively explored how readers use critical thinking to perceive leadership in The Walking Dead comic books. Sixty-nine participants gave responses regarding their thoughts about leadership in the comic via an online survey. A majority of the participants indicated a wide range of values for comics as a learning experience. Most participants perceived leadership in the comic books as an individual who protects others and makes decisions. After completing the online survey, 22 participants gave acceptable and relevant responses about their perceptions of leadership and how they form these perceptions. Information was collected through email interviewing. The study concluded …

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Pim Pedagogy: Toward A Loosely Unified Model For Teaching And Studying Comics And Graphic Novels, James B. Carter

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The article debuts and explains "PIM" pedagogy, a construct for teaching comics at the secondary- and post-secondary levels and for deep reading/studying comics. The PIM model for considering comics is actually based in major precepts of education studies, namely constructivist foundations of learning, and loosely unifies constructs inherent therein with other available frames and frameworks for studying comics. As such, the article fills a dire need in the scholarly literature on comics pedagogy and paves a way for those who seek to teach comics courses in the future but who need direction and for those who seek to study/read comics …

Tacit Cultural Knowledge: An Instrumental Qualitative Case Study Of Mixed Methods Research In South Africa, Debra Rena Miller

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Notwithstanding the dramatic expansion of mixed methods research, research methodologies, methods, and findings are culturally situated. Problematically, studies conducted outside the global north often embrace canonical methodologies aimed at understanding concepts more explicit than tacit. Learning about the needs of researchers and participants in South Africa may bring to light taken-for-granted assumptions in Anglo-American orientations of mixed methods. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore aspects of tacit cultural knowledge that contextualize mixed methods research in South Africa.

In-person interviews among South African professors as well as a corpus of books, sections, journal articles, and theses informed the …

Children's Implicit Beliefs About Intelligence, Carly Champagne

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Young children are commonly perceived as highly optimistic and confident, and therefore seldom arouse concern as to how they are impacted by academic failure. However, there is evidence to suggest that young children can indeed be negatively affected by failure experiences. Implicit theories of intelligence can provide individuals with a framework by which to perceive failure, though little is known about when these theories begin to develop. The current study explores whether children as young as three and a half to four years of age demonstrate patterns indicative of incremental or entity theories of intelligence as a response to challenge …

Resilience Thinking And Structured Decision Making In Social–Ecological Systems, Noelle M. Hart

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Natural resource management may be improved by synthesizing approaches for framing and addressing complex social-ecological issues. This dissertation examines how structured decision making processes, including adaptive management, can incorporate resilience thinking. Structured decision making is a process for establishing a solid understanding of the problem, values, management options, and potential consequences. Adaptive management is a form of structured decision making in which uncertainty is reduced for iterative decisions through designed monitoring and review. Resilience thinking can help conceptualize complex social-ecological systems and draws attention to the risks of managing for narrowly-focused objectives.

This dissertation provides practical advice to managers and …

The Strict Higher Grothendieck Integral, Scott W. Dyer

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis generalizes A. Grothendieck’s construction, denoted by an integral, of a fibered category from a contravariant pseudofunctor, to a construction for n- and even ∞-categories. Only strict higher categories are considered, the more difficult theory of weak higher categories being neglected. Using his axioms for a fibered category, Grothendieck produces a contravariant pseudofunctor from which the original fibered category can be reconstituted by integration. In applications, the integral is often most efficient, constructing the fibered category with its structure laid bare. The situation generalizes the external and internal definitions of the semidirect product in group theory: fibration is …

Increased Resting-State Functional Connectivity Of Visual- And Cognitive-Control Brain Networks After Training In Children With Reading Difficulties, Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, Mark Difrancesco, Benjamin Kay, Yingying Wang, Scott K. Holland

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

The Reading Acceleration Program, a computerized reading-training program, increases activation in neural circuits related to reading.We examined the effect of the training on the functional connectivity between independent components related to visual processing, executive functions, attention, memory, and language during rest after the training. Children 8–12 years old with reading difficulties and typical readers participated in the study. Behavioral testing and functional magnetic resonance imaging were performed before and after the training. Imaging data were analyzed using an independent component analysis approach. After training, both reading groups showed increased single-word contextual reading and reading comprehension scores. Greater positive correlations between …

Exploring Cultural Proficiency: A Case Study Of A Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Middle School In A Predominantly White School District, Jared Peo

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

Issues of diversity continue to plague our nation. Recent events and Supreme Court cases have revealed a side of the United States that many wanted to believe was only part of our nation’s past. Diversity is a reality and predictions about future population demographics estimate an increase in diversity. As diversity increases, conflict becomes more frequent because “difference threatens dominance” (Howard, 2006, p. 57). The academic achievement and socioeconomic gaps between minorities and the dominant culture have been extensively researched and debated. However, they have not diminished despite legislation aimed at reducing them. This begs the question: how will the …

Conceptual Thinking: How To Quantify Meaning In Projects And Processes Through Structured Non-Linear Thinking, Marijn Van Der Poll

Interior Design Program: Student Creative Activity

Things have meaning. Your job, your smartphone, even your insurance has another layer of meaning than its intended reason for existence. Products have become complex combinations of applications and features so small, that their shape no longer characterizes them. As people we have evolved into empowered consumers looking for purpose in our lives and in the things we buy. Advertising discovered the power of meaning more than a century ago. Since then, what has proven difficult is to quantify meaning. The skills we are taught in our educational system and the processes we apply in business fall short of identifying …

Room Acoustic Effects On Speech Comprehension Of English-As-Second-Language Talkers And Listeners Versus Native-English-Speaking Talkers And Listeners, Lily M. Wang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Approximately 21% of the children in the United States school system speak a language other than English at home, but are being taught in English at school. English is additionally being used more and more often as a common language in international settings, even though participants at these international events again are not native English speakers. How do adverse room acoustic environments, including higher background noise levels and longer reverberation times, impact English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) talkers and listeners versus native English-speaking talkers and listeners? This presentation focuses on two recent studies at the University of Nebraska that investigate how assorted room …

Reported Literacy, Media Consumption And Social Media Use As Measures Of Relevance Of Spanish As A Heritage Language, Isabel Velázquez

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

Aims and objectives: This paper explores one dimension of language maintenance among college-aged heritage speakers of Spanish (HSS) in three communities of the U.S. Midwest. The aim was to understand whether Spanish was relevant at a point in life in which they were developing their own networks away from their families. Research questions: Were reading and writing in Spanish relevant for the participants? Did they use Spanish when on social media? Did they text in Spanish? Was Spanish relevant for them when consuming content on electronic media?

Methodology: This analysis is part of a larger study on HSS in communities …