Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between The Social Construction Of Race And The Black/White Test Score Gap In, Toriano M. Dempsey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This research is an investigation into the relationship between the resegregation of American

public schools and the social creation of race. This research is based on the popular notion that

American public schools are failing to produce students capable of competing in today's global society.

The proof most often used to assert the failure of American public schools is the Black/White Test Score

Gap. For the purposes of this research the Black/White Test Score Gap is defined as the gap between

the scores on academic standardized tests between Black public school students and White public school

students regardless of …

Community As Metaphor: Dialectical Tensions Of A Racially Diverse Organization, Joseph Jacob Jenkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, a sense of community has declined throughout the United States. Common Point Community Church has responded to this trend by prioritizing "community" as an organizational metaphor. The present study explores how this metaphor is co-constructed through the communication practices of current organizational leaders and members. I begin this process, first, by positioning the study within existing literature on institutional theory, institutional legitimacy, community, community of practice, social construction of race, sensemaking, organizational metaphor, tension-centered approach, and dialectic theory. Building upon more than three years of ethnographic field work, I then outline the study's context and methodology. Next, …

Teachers' Narratives Of Experience With Social Class, Natalie Elizabeth Keefer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Equality of educational opportunity has been a long elusive goal of public education in the United States. This narrative, phenomenological study conducted inquiry into how five teachers in Tampa, Florida construct meaning about social class and academic achievement based on their life experiences as members of a class-based society. Data produced descriptive, narrative stories that contextualize how meaning is constructed about social class based on participants' life experiences. This line of inquiry provides relevant insight into teachers' understandings of social class which may influence the provision of equal educational opportunities to all students. The following study includes a comprehensive analysis …

Semantic Feature Distinctiveness And Frequency, Katherine Marie Lamb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lexical access is the process in which basic components of meaning in language, the lexical entries (words) are activated. This activation is based on the organization and representational structure of the lexical entries. Semantic features of words, which are the prominent semantic characteristics of a word concept, provide important information because they mediate semantic access to words. An experiment was conducted to examine the importance of semantic feature distinctiveness and feature frequency in accessing the lexical representations of young and older adults in an off-line task using features of animals. The McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, and McNorgan (2005) feature norm corpus …

The Rhetoric Of Evidence In Recent Documentary Film And Video, Steven W. Schoen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Documentary is a genre of film that portrays "real" events using depictions that connote the objectivity and facticity implied by the processes of photorealism. Many contemporary documentary theorists and critics observe a constitutive problem in this ethos: despite the apparent constructions and agendas of documentary filmmaking, the framing and assumption of documentary as a window on the world tend to naturalize its own constructions as "real." Critics who engage documentary trace the multitude of ways this problem plays out in particular films. These projects yield many important insights, but they most often approach documentary as a form of inherently deficient …

Improvisational Music Performance: On-Stage Communication Of Power Relationships, David A. Steinweg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project explores how musical improvisational processes come into being through interacting discursive power relationships that are embodied and enacted through performance. By utilizing the concepts of framing and performativity I am able to show how discursive power constitutes the performance of improvisational music. To exemplify this theory, the project presents a case study examining a Grateful Dead cover band named Uncle John's Band that performs at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa, FL. Using an ethnographic methodology, the project articulates the dominant discursive power relationships that constitute Uncle John's Band's improvisational performances. The dominant discursive power relationships revolve around the lived …

A Phenomenological Study Of Teaching Endangered Languages Online: Perspectives From Nahua And Mayan Educators., Dustin De Felice

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language and culture teaching has always been a complex and challenging task. For many educators, their teaching experiences are rooted in their earlier preparation, their classroom situations and their curriculum. In this study, indigenous educators recount their lived experiences with teaching their language and culture at a distance. These educators belong to either Nahua or Mayan speech communities where endangered languages are maintained. Using a transcendental phenomenological approach, my participants described and explained their perspectives and experiences with teaching, studying, and integrating technology. I focused the interviews, the reflective writing tasks and their artifact sharing on their experiences in an …

Senate Bill (A) 52-057 Fy 2012-2013 Annual Budget Bill, Adam Aldridge

Legislative Branch Publications

No abstract provided.

Commencement Convocation Program, St. Petersburg Campus, December 11, 2011, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg

USF St. Petersburg Graduations and Commencements

King O'Neal Awards: Kara B. Harmon, Kristin E. Perkins; Outstanding Graduate: Ivan Bengtson; Regional Chancellor's Award for Civic Leadership: Vyrle Davis

Commencement Convocation Program, Usf, Graduate, December 9, 2011, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

President's Global Leadership Award - Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang

Commencement Convocation Program, Usf, Baccalaureates, December 9, 2011, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

King O'Neal Scholars - Stephen Coder, Chelsea Conley, Chasity Guerra, and Luke Richardson; Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters - Paul Farmer; Honorary Doctor of Education - Michael S. McPherson; President's Global Leadership Award - Young-Sun Lee; Outstanding Graduate - Ryan Spellins

Genocide Studies: An Australian Perspective, Colin Tatz

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The burgeoning field of genocide studies is faced with several concerns. Foremost is the challenge of finding a space for encompassing and embracing the Holocaust with some comfort. The Judeocide is an ally, not an enemy, and not on the margins. Our maturing discipline needs to find a sense of collegiality, consensus on terminology, and yardsticks with which to measure scales, dimensions, and degrees of the crime. Several other themes also need attention: wider perspectives on the prerequisites of genocide, starvation as a genocidal weapon, a clear separa- tion between motive and intent, genocide by omission, the elusive concepts of …

"Not If, But When": Sex, Risk, And Trust In Timing Gardasil Vaccine Decisions, An Exploratory Study Among Healthcare Providers And Middle-Class Parents In The U.S., Kathleen Marie Brelsford

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research explores how values regarding sexuality, morality, responsibility, protection, trust, and risk — expressed through parent, daughter, and healthcare provider relationships and interactions — inform parental decisions regarding the Gardasil® vaccine. In particular, the research examines the competing and conflicting meanings that parents and providers ascribe to vaccination and how actors position the vaccine within a wider set of negotiated, value–laden discourses. Because these narratives are situated within a larger structural field that shapes the landscape in which providers and parents interact, relevant historical and structural factors, including vaccine policy, cost, and compensation are discussed.

A Sociocultural-Theory-Based Study Of The Impact Of Mediation During Post-Observation Conferences On Language Teacher Learning, Jane Harvey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The post-observation conference offers a potentially fecund context for promoting language teacher learning, but very little research has been conducted into how this actually happens. Taking Vygotskian sociocultural theory as its theoretical framework, this study examined the mediational discourse of a series of post-observation conferences between a mentor and two practicing English language teachers to investigate the nature of the discourse and the relationship between the mediational discourse and the language teachers` learning. Features of mediational discourse identified a priori (such as intersubjectivity, graduated and contingent help, and externalization of reasoning) were present in the data, but were found to …

Investigating The Role Of The Internet In Women And Minority Stem Participation: A Case Study Of Two Florida Engineering Programs, Arland Nguema Ndong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite our awareness of the fascination modern humans have with the Internet, little is known about how and why colleges and universities create and maintain Websites. At the most general level, in this case study, I hypothesize that university Websites serve as communication and marketing tools in attracting students. At the most specific level, I postulate that civil engineering programs with Web pages depicting images of women and minorities would be more successful in recruiting and retaining women and students of color than civil engineering programs with Web pages displaying fewer or no images of women and minorities. The primary …

From Cosmogony To Anthropogony: Inscribing Bodies In Vedic Cosmogony And Samskara Rituals, Christine Boulos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the inscription of bodies is necessary in order to constitute the cosmos, gender and sex. A study of the Vedic cosmogonic mythologies of the deities Purusha and Prajapati illustrates the ways in which sacrifice, as a form of inscription, constitutes the cosmos by ordering and fashioning the boundaries of the bodies of the deities through differentiation and unification. An analysis of samskaras, or consecratory rites of The Law Code of Manu, show that they operate as regulatory norms in order to constitute sex and gender. But the instability and unnaturalness of the categories of gender and …

Strategic Plan, Gateway To The World's Information: Nelson Poynter Memorial Library, 2010-2014, Carol G. Hixon, Virginia Champion, Deborah Boran Henry, Tina M. Neville, Gerald A. Notaro

Library Strategic Planning and Background Materials

The strategic plan for 2010 to 2014 for Nelson Poynter Memorial Library at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Mitigating The Exploitation Of U.S. Borders By Jihadists And Criminal Organizations, Todd Steinmetz

Journal of Strategic Security

Following the events of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Government began improving security in large population centers and near potential highvalue terrorist targets. Included in these efforts was the development of a more robust border security program, with an emphasis on reducing the threat of terrorist infiltration at America's borders. However, nearly a decade after 9/11, terrorism and organized crime continue to pose significant threats to the United States. As many of these threats emanate from other nations, improved border security helps mitigate these threats. This article summarizes known terrorist activity along the U.S. northern and southern borders, and highlights …

The Holistic Complementary Structure Of Western Bio-Medicine And Traditional Healing And Achieving Complete Health, Candace Gail Oubre

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Achieving complete health requires a deep understanding of complementary cultural competency sensitivity between physician and patient. This may include but is not limited to access to preventative health care resources, access to health educational resources and access to cultural healing resources, for example, shamans, Ayurvedic physicians, and herbal healers. Advocates of cultural competency emphasize great importance on knowledge of the patients' cultural background; however, the transcendence of this knowledge can be explained further through complementary cultural competency sensitivity. This is when the cultures of the physician and patient complement each other in terms of understanding what is in the patients' …

Commencement Convocation Program, Usf, August 6, 2011, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

King O'Neal Scholars - Nadine Allan-Vaught, Sue Gibbs, Kelsey Henretta, Gabriel Lonsberry, Helmut Mehlhorn, Felicia Walker, and Allison Zangari; Outstanding Graduate - Emily Tocci

Screenshots, Candidate Learning Outcomes For Students In The College Of Education, August 1, 2011, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg. College Of Education

Office of the Dean

Screenshots of a list of Candidate Learning Outcomes (CLOs) for students in the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's College of Education, as well as those for students in Educational Leadership.

Report, Collection Assessment: Education, 2011, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg. Nelson Poynter Memorial Library

All-Library Assessments Reports, Summaries & Misc Reports

A report assessing library collections that support the College of Education programs. Included is a list of electronic journals.

Florida Sentinel Bulletin, July 12, 2011, Gwen Hayes

Florida Sentinel Bulletin Collection

The July 12, 2011, issue of the Florida Sentinel Bulletin.

Communicating Quantitative Literacy: An Examination Of Open-Ended Assessment Items In Timss, Nals, Ials, And Pisa, Karl W. Kosko, Jesse L. M. Wilkins

Numeracy

Quantitative Literacy (QL) has been described as the skill set an individual uses when interacting with the world in a quantitative manner. A necessary component of this interaction is communication. To this end, assessments of QL have included open-ended items as a means of including communicative aspects of QL. The present study sought to examine whether such open-ended items typically measured aspects of quantitative communication, as compared to mathematical communication, or mathematical skills. We focused on public-released items and rubrics from four of the most widely referenced assessments: the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS-95): the National Adult Literacy …

Paralinguistic And Kinesic Codes Of Performance: An Intercultural Gilgamesh, Patrick Michael Finelli

Theatre and Dance Faculty Publications

This paper examines the directing, acting and rehearsal process in transforming the ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh for the stage using performers’ journals as a means of determining the effect of corporeal non-western styles on actors whose prior experience was almost exclusively in naturalistic and text-based theatre. The introduction of theatrical elements from multiple cultures including puppetry and the masks and techniques of Noh drama created a multi-tiered field for intercultural exchange. While Patrice Pavis’s hourglass model for the transfer of theatrical material from a source to a target culture may hold true for productions that use linear modes of transmission, …

The Role Of Libraries And Archives In Disaster Preparedness, Response, And Research: Preface, Kathleen De La Peña Mccook

School of Information Faculty Publications

These Proceedings of the XLI Conference of the Association of Caribbean University, Research, and Institutional Libraries -- The Role of Libraries and Archives in Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Research — reflect the intent of the 2010-2011 ACURIL President, Ardis Hanson, University of South Florida, College of Behavioral and Community Sciences (USA) to inform librarians of best practices through the experiences of others and through research.

Butler To Lead School Organization And Science Achievement Project, June 30, 2011, Melanie Marquez

USF St. Petersburg Campus News and Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Commencement Convocation Program, Usf, Graduate, May 6, 2011, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

Honorary Doctor of Science - Joanna Fowler

Commencement Convocation Program, Usf, Baccalaureates, May 5, 2011, University Of South Florida

USF Graduation and Convocation Programs

King O'Neal Scholars - Amanda Allen, Stephen Aradi, Emmanuel Bassily, Mary Ellen Billington, Heather Cardillo, Melissa Comes, Michael Glidden, Juan Isaza, Anthony Joseph, Killian Kortright, Tony Kurian, Kalie Morris, Lorissa Nolasks, Carolina Quecan, and Kimberly Risebrough; Outstanding Graduate - Alexandra Printz; Distinguished Citizen Award - Olin Mott

Johan Nieuhof’S Cathay: Aspects Of Inventing A Travelogue In Early Modern Europe, Ryan Walsh

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.