Digital Commons Network^™

Increasing Reading Fluency In Ell Learners, Jennifer N. Patton

Graduate Research Papers

I am creating a project on how to effectively teach fluency to ELL students. To do so, I had to first research. Recent researches have revealed that English Language Learners (ELLs) face certain challenges that threaten their academic success, especially their reading fluency, and as a result, make learning difficult. To achieve the purpose of this research, this chapter is focused on providing a deeper analysis into the problem of fluency and how it affects ELLs. The target with this is to review shared knowledge around reading fluency development in ELLs. This chapter, therefore, entails reviews of the literature on …

Psychological Traits And Public Attitudes Towards Abortion: The Role Of Empathy, Locus Of Control, And Need For Cognition, Jiuqing Cheng, Ping Xu, Chloe Thostenson

Faculty Publications

In the summer of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the historic Roe v. Wade ruling, prompting various states to put forth ballot measures regarding state-level abortion rights. While earlier studies have established associations between demographics, such as religious beliefs and political ideologies, and attitudes toward abortion, the current research delves into the role of psychological traits such as empathy, locus of control, and need for cognition. A sample of 294 U.S. adults was obtained via Amazon Mechanical Turk, and participants were asked to provide their attitudes on seven abortion scenarios. They also responded to scales measuring empathy toward the …

Impact Of High School Climate And Bullying On Depression And Anxiety In Emerging Adulthood, Tyler K. D. Larson

Honors Program Theses

Depression and anxiety disorders are a significant public health concern, especially among adolescents and emerging adults. Education is a central component of adolescents’ lives that shapes their development and experiences. School climate refers to the overall nature and quality of a school’s environment. Social relationships, teaching and learning practices, school facilities, safety, and school connectedness all contribute to school climate. Previous studies have found that positive school environments serve as a protective factor against adverse mental health outcomes. However, many of these studies focus on a single aspect of school climate, and there is conflicting evidence on how school climate …

Gender Socialization And Social Media In College Students' Fear Of Crime, Ashlyn C. Miller

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between gender (socialization), viewing crime related material on social media, and fear of crime experienced by college students. While violent crime rates have fallen, the majority of college students report levels of crime are increasing. Many individuals lack both knowledge and experience related to crime, leading media exposure to influence their levels of fear. Previous research has focused on television media related to fear of crime with little research on social media, the preferred media source of young adults. College students (n = 124) from a midwestern university completed a …

Information Provided By State Human Trafficking Websites: A Content Analysis, Brooklyn Dilley

Honors Program Theses

Human trafficking evolved from the legal and regulated slavery of the past and has likely been in existence throughout human history. Slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, and slavery and servitude were prohibited globally through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (United Nations General Assembly, 1948). Nevertheless, modern-day slavery has still thrived in the form of human trafficking. There have been many global and national efforts to combat human trafficking, including the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (OMCTP). The Trafficking Victims Protection …

A Qualitative Case Study Of Montessori Approaches To Learning Amidst The Covid-19 Pandemic In Iowa, Ellie Penick

Honors Program Theses

This research focused on the unique and innovative ways two Montessori Schools handled the pandemic in the context of Iowa’s COVID-19 regulations. Research focused on the state of Iowa due to its relevance and proximity to the researcher and its notably relaxed approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the purpose and scope of this study, research focused on two Montessori contexts within the state of Iowa. While this research is not representative of all Montessori schools in Iowa, it provides useful insight into the topic that can support further research on Montessori approaches to COVID-19.

The driving question behind this …

The Effects Of Exercise In Cognitive Function In Older Ad, Josephine Sagan

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.

How Pizza And Stickers Drove My Kids To Read And Kept Them Reading, Tiya Montaño

Graduate Research Papers

Walk into any English/Language Arts (ELA) classroom across the country and you will find books on bookshelves, students on computers or cellphones, and a teacher struggling to garner the attention of their students long enough to make it through the short story, poem, or novel they are reading. This has become an all too familiar image that ELA teachers struggle with. Why won’t the students engage? Are the readings too difficult? Are the readings too boring? Am I teaching them all wrong? All these questions and more fly through our brains as they work towards trying to get the students …

Environmental Information Avoidance Motives On A U.S. Campus, Mary Beth Deline, Laura N. Rickard, Jared V. Worwood, Pei Geng, Elisabeth Reed

Iowa Journal of Communication

Although communication, broadly, is often identified as a key factor across campus sustainability initiatives, few studies have examined specific information behaviors that can affect reception of such efforts. We therefore seek to characterize motives for a key communication barrier to campus sustainability efforts: environmental information avoidance (IA), and to investigate whether these motives differ in relation to known or unknown information. This exploratory study thematically analyzed answers from an open-ended question on a questionnaire with faculty, staff and students on a U.S. university campus. We identified six environmental IA motives, ranging from information overload to efficacy constraints. Correlational analysis found …

Small Business Burnout: Reversing The Entrepreneurial Exit, Adele Kuruppu

Honors Program Theses

This thesis aims to review the current literature on entrepreneurial burnout, identify critical issues, evaluate and assess the research findings, and produce a plan for both new and experienced entrepreneurs to both avoid and minimize burnout. As a business and entrepreneurship student interested in opening a small business myself, I have become drawn to the topic of burnout and how it affects the family dynamic. Qualitative interviews revealed correlations between entrepreneurial characteristics and burnout as well as work-family conflict and burnout. By drawing from current literature and insight from small business owners, this study seeks to identify fundamental causes, symptoms, …

Reexamination Of College Students’ Behaviors And Knowledge Of Recycling, Ella Hilbrant

Honors Program Theses

The motivation for and consistency of recycling behavior varies widely from person to person. For some, motivation stems from concern for the environment, while others lack motivation to recycle at all or will only recycle if convenient. Within college students, differences in motivation and recycling habits may depend on factors such as personal demographics, involvement in specific classes or student groups, recycling habits before college, etc. Recycling behaviors can also stem from environmental literacy, which is how individuals understand, process, and use environmental information needed to make informed, sustainable, and environmentally friendly decisions (Null et al. 2021). Furthermore, on-campus recycling …

Iowa Journal Of Communication, Volume 56, Number 1, Fall 2024 [Download Entire Issue]

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Mediation: Mcluhanisms For The Quantum Era, Erik Gustafson

Iowa Journal of Communication

The 21st century has been characterized as a time of expansive and rapid technological change, particularly regarding the internet, digital technologies, and now artificial intelligence. Both scholarly and popular conversations have rushed to make sense of the technological phenomenon as they occur. Now, the “second quantum revolution” and the race for “quantum supremacy” threaten to push technological knowledge and applications even further from public understanding. As such, the present article sought to provide a host of theoretical and practical tools that may aid the public and scholars alike in understanding and combatting the overwhelming features of technology that may come …

How Influencer Marketers Inspire Trust: The Case Of Sadaf Beauty, Maryam Amini

Iowa Journal of Communication

This article presents a qualitative case study of Iranian beauty influencer Sadaf Masaeli (Sadaf Beauty), focusing on how she has cultivated her followers’ trust on her Instagram account. Sadaf was identified as the second most influential beauty influencer of 2019 in the world by Forbes magazine (Caludet, 2019). Her example provides insight into how influencer marketing has become a popular way to increase brand awareness, find new customers and enhance purchase intention. In particular, her case highlights the effects of a contradiction shaping influencer marketing. On the one hand, influencers appear as authentic social media users, to attract followers whilst, …

Integrating Music In Pk-12 Classrooms To Impact Behavior, Improve Academics, And Support Developmental Milestones In Children, Emily Grace Manis

Honors Program Theses

As a child, music was always a part of my life, and I believe this immersion has greatly impacted how I view music’s role in the world of education. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, but it wasn’t until I started courses at the University of Northern Iowa that I really decided to focus on early childhood and social emotional learning. My desire to teach, combined with my passion for all things music, led to my decision to focus on how music integration can be a useful tool in every classroom. Specifically I want to focus the research and …

Why Play? Exploring The Realities Of Play-Based Learning In Kindergarten, Sofia Josephine Steele

Honors Program Theses

By nature, children are curious and love to explore the world around them. Play is one way that children can fulfill that innate curiosity. Through play-based learning, educators can utilize that innate curiosity and wonder in children to create valuable learning experiences that will engage and teach them. This pedagogical approach is used in early childhood education to help children develop their academic, social, and emotional skills through appropriate learning experiences that consider their abilities and interests. However, in recent years, there has been a shift away from play-based learning in kindergarten classrooms. The reasoning behind this shift may be …

The Relationship Between Athletes' Competitive State Anxiety And Self-Confidence And Coaches' Behaviors, Derek Anderson

Honors Program Theses

Competitive state anxiety (CSA) and self-confidence are prominent issues in athletics and can cause detrimental effects on athletic performance. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of perceived coach anxiety and perceived coach self-confidence on athlete competitive state anxiety and self-confidence. It was predicted that as perceived coach anxiety increases, athlete competitive anxiety will increase. Furthermore, as perceived coach self-confidence decreases, athlete self-confidence will decrease. Ninety-six Division I athletes from three sports (men’s/women’s track and field, women’s soccer, women’s softball) were recruited. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years of age (M = 20.33, SD …

The Impact Of Sexual Assault And The Influence Of Leadership Within The Military, Holly Rigel

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between service member’s resilience levels and leadership’s response to sexual assault and sexual harassment. This research is conducted based on a quantitative study utilizing secondary data analysis of data collected by the Office of People Analytics on gender relations (2023) that is composed of several topics such as perception of the military and servicemembers’ resilience. Conducting both a univariate and a bivariate analysis of the data, the findings in the research revealed a statistically significant relationship between service members’ resilience levels and leadership’s response. The more positive leadership response is …

Racial Competence Among Human Resources Leaders: A Quantcrit Analysis, Steven D. Parker

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

No abstract provided.

What Is Working And How Do We Know? Examining The Literacy Curriculum In An Elementary School After Years Of Filling The Holes: A Qualitative Study In Improvement Science, Kimberly Graven

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Administrators and teachers are overwhelmed with initiatives and expectations that they are supposed to juggle on a daily basis. When a problem of practice is identified, how do they know what to do about it? In this study, an administrator and leadership team members of a small, rural elementary school use Improvement Science as a framework to tackle their problem of practice.

Fluency reading proficiency scores have been on a slow decline at South Falls CSD over the past five to six years. Educators have been attempting to identify the holes in the curriculum and “filling the gaps” with various …

How Rural Identity, Self-Reliance, And Stoicism Relate To Attitudes Toward Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Iowans, Taylor Brown

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Rural residents tend to seek help for psychological concerns at lower rates than urban residents (Caldwell et al., 2004; Kirby et al., 2019) despite similar rates of mental illness (Morales et al., 2020). Elevated stoicism and a preference for self-reliance may explain this decrease in help-seeking behaviors, as people in these communities may have a more self-reliant and stoic self-image and therefore be less willing to seek help. Thus, I designed a study to investigate whether rural identity correlated with self-reliance, stoicism, or attitudes toward psychological help-seeking and whether the relation between rural identity and help-seeking attitudes was mediated by …

Positioning Paperback Books As Americana: Cultural And Historical Impacts Of The Wadle Pocket Book Collection, Jake Volk

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The first book in the form of a codex was bound around 300 BCE, but the earliest material used to record writing appeared around 3000 BCE. From these documents recording proto-writing of human history, people have sought to analyze and preserve writing, which continues as a contemporary work of scholars across multiple disciplines to form the field of the history of the book. As the book changed physical form from illuminated manuscripts on vellum to cheaply produced, paperback books, which appeared in the early 1800s, historians have documented these changes; however, more analysis is needed to categorize and interpret how …

Retrospective Analysis On The Impact Of Increased Set Volume On Back Squat And Bench Press One Repetition Maximums In Freshman Ncaa Di Fcs American Football Players, Colin T. Klatt

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Title: Retrospective Analysis on the Impact of Increased Set Volume on back squat and bench press one repetition maximums in Freshman NCAA DI FCS American Football Players

Introduction: American football is the most popular sport in the United States. Over the past few decades, American football has experienced a notable transformation, with a growing emphasis on the necessity for increased strength and power gains. The evolving physical demands in American football underscore the importance of players adapting to these changing conditionings to thrive in the sport. With American football being a sport linked to physical attributes such as size and …

Dog-Training Programs For Incarcerated Women, Susan Grover

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Prison dog-training programs are a fairly new rehabilitative practice in women’s prisons. This study seeks to identify the effects dog-training programs have on women while incarcerated and then once reintegrated back into their family and community. This study includes an analytic literature review of the research on animal training programs and dog training programs in general. Most of the existing research, however, focuses on men and boys and shows that while prison-based dog-training programs are largely beneficial, they are less so for boys and do create unique vulnerabilities in men’s prisons. This study extends the previous research by examining the …

Boxes With Curves: The Necessity For School Leaders To Empower And Engage Through Culturally Competent Lenses, Priscilla Culp

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this qualitative research study is to examine the experiences and perspectives of an urban elementary school principal in relation to culturally competent practices. As schools become increasingly diverse, school leaders must possess a number of cultural competencies to effectively administer and lead. Cultural competency, for this research, is defined as a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or amongst professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations (Cross et al., 1989). Culturally competent school leaders realize the process of change begins with …

An Exploration Of The Relationship Between Burnout, Resilience, And Psychological Safety Within The Workplace, Riley Elenz

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

No abstract provided.

Traumatic Brain Injury And Public Stigma: The Effect Of Perceived Responsibility, Mackenzie Grenko

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

No abstract provided.

Suspected Vs. Diagnosed Mental Illness, Race, And The Ngri Plea, Alexa Roudabush

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

No abstract provided.

Commencement [Program], December 16, 2023, University Of Northern Iowa

UNI Commencement Programs

The program of the commencement ceremonies, including a list of institutional leadership, a list of the departments by college, awards given at the ceremonies, and a list of undergraduate and graduate degree candidates. This commencement program is not an official graduate list.

Contents:

--- Iowa Board of Regents ... 2
--- Institutional Leadership ... 2
--- The Academic Procession ... 3
--- Academic Honorary Organizations ... 4
--- University Ambassador Organizations ... 5
--- University Honors Program ... 6
--- Legacy Graduates ... 6
--- Order of Events ... 7
--- College of Education ... 10
--- College of Humanities, …

A Critical Systematic Literature Review Of Global Inclusive Education Using An Affective, Intersectional, Discursive, Emotive And Material Lens, David Isaac Hernández-Saca, Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, Susan Larson Etscheidt

Faculty Publications

We conducted a critical systematic literature review on global inclusive education and law. The critical review questions were: (1) how have scholars theorized, conceptualized, and studied global inclusive education? (2) How do scholars define global inclusive education? (3) And what do scholars cite as prominent international inclusive education law? We ask such questions given the ongoing global crises that situate historically marginalized groups in even more precarious positions—including students with dis/Abilities. Given this framing, we employed a critical systematic literature review that is cognizant of our positionalities, writing from the Global North, so that we can identify lines of inquiry …