Digital Commons Network^™

Report, Collection Assessment: Sustainability Studies, October 2017, Patricia C. Pettijohn

All-Library Assessments Reports, Summaries & Misc Reports

A report assessing library collections that support the Sustainability Studies program.

Film Review: Stealing A Nation, Rahat Imran

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Social Norms, Heinrich Popitz

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Remembering To Prevent: The Preventive Capacity Of Public Memory, Kerry E. Whigham

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

It is without doubt the case that memory of the past has been and is being used in certain places to justify radical intolerance and unspeakable violence. But for every instance where that is the case, a dozen alternative cases exist where memory creates cohesion, positive change, and a less violent society. This article focuses on the instances where memory does the latter. It first discusses why and how the formation of a public memory culture can be preventive of future violence. Next, it introduces several categories of memory practices, each of which exemplifies the embodied nature of public memory, …

Full Issue 11.2

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Why Music Matters: How Participation In A Professional Learning Community Can Expand The Role Of Music Educators, Melanie M. Harris Ed.D.

Journal of Practitioner Research

Facing steady decline and elimination of music programs due to high-stakes testing coupled with tighter budgets, music educators are searching for ways to show their relevancy within an accountability culture. One potential way for a music educator to contribute to student achievement is through participation in a professional learning community (PLC) with academic teachers to support their shared students’ learning. The purpose of this study was to document the PLC collaborative experiences of a music educator and two core academic subject teachers who worked together to understand, develop, implement, and assess how the music teacher can support academic teachers in …

Using Pre-Assessments To Make Decisions About Differentiation In A Detracked High School Biology Classroom, Michelina Macdonald

Journal of Practitioner Research

This article describes how one teacher used practitioner research to study the role that pre-assessment played when making decisions about student grouping and differentiated instruction within a detracked, honors biology classroom. Much detail is provided in this article describing the study design around a unit on protein synthesis and the steps taken in data analyses to contextualize this study within a practitioner research methodology. The teacher discusses her findings using a claim, evidence, and reasoning framework common in scientific inquiry to illustrate the effectiveness of using pre-assessment to group students for tiered instruction.

Introduction To “The Crisis Of Liberal Democracy And The Path Ahead: Alternatives To Political Representation And Capitalism”, Bernd Reiter

School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Learning To Think Slower: Review Of Thinking, Fast And Slow By Daniel Kahneman (2011), Samuel L. Tunstall, Patrick N. Beymer

Numeracy

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 499 pp. ISBN 978-0374275631.

As an expansive review of Kahneman and others' work over the past half-century in understanding human decision-making, Thinking, Fast and Slow provides Numeracy readers much to consider for both pedagogy and research. In this review, we outline Kahneman's core argument—that humans use both rash (emotional) System 1 thinking and slow (logical) System 2 thinking—then discuss how such systems might be addressed in a quantitative literacy classroom.

Statistics Education For Undergraduate Sociology Majors: Survey Findings Across Institutions, Natalie M. Delia Deckard

Numeracy

The need to close the quantitative literacy gap for sociology majors is a perennial topic in discussions of undergraduate sociological training. More and better statistical education with a greater focus on active research and engaged analysis is recommended by the major disciplinary association, as well as virtually all pedagogical agencies. This project explores these differences in the implementation of these recommendations, employing a survey (n=90) to report on the structure of quantitative training for undergraduates majoring in sociology. It finds that the type and extent of this education available to, and required for, sociology majors varies widely across not only …

Measuring Numeracy In A Community College Context: Assessing The Reliability Of The Subjective Numeracy Scale, Kate S. Wolfe, Sarah L. Hoiland

Numeracy

In this paper, our goals were to assess the suitability of the Subjective Numeracy Scale (SNS), developed for health-care use, in a new context with predominantly minority students at a South Bronx community college and to identify any race/ ethnicity, gender, and ESL enrollment effects. The scale assesses perceptions of quantitative reasoning skills and preferences for data presentation. This scale was given to a convenience sample of students in behavioral sciences classes. Results show that the SNS scale was reliable with our sample using the full thirteen-question scale or the shorter eight-item version. Gender, race/ ethnicity, and English as a …

Ten Years, Twenty Issues, And Two Hundred Papers Of Numeracy: Toward International Reach And Transdisciplinary Utility, H. L. Vacher

Numeracy

This issue completes the first ten years of Numeracy. The purpose of this introductory editorial is to review what has happened to the journal in those ten years. In the twenty issues, Numeracy’s output has been 201 papers counting the one or two editorials per issue. More than 50% of the papers are full, peer-reviewed articles, including 13 papers in two theme collections. The others are peer-reviewed notes and perspectives, editor-reviewed book reviews (15% of the total), and a column by contributing co-editor, Dorothy Wallace. The current issue marks an upswing in the number of notes, and our …

An Exploratory Study Of Macro-Social Correlates Of Online Property Crime, Hyojong Song

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the recent decreasing trend of most traditional types of crime, online property crime (OPC), referring to crime committed online with a financial orientation such as online frauds, scams, and phishing, continues to increase. According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, the number of reported complaints about OPC have increased by approximately sixteen fold from 16,838 cases in 2000 to 288,012 cases in 2015, and referred financial losses have also increased about sixty times from $17.8 million in 2001 to $1 billion in 2015. The increase in OPC might be directly related to advanced online accessibility due to the accelerated …

Examining Forty Years Of The Social Organization Of Feminisms: Ethnography Of Two Women’S Bookstores In The Us South, Mary Catherine Whitlock

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At the height of their popularity in the 1990s, there were 140 feminist bookstores in the US and Canada (Onosaka 2006). Today, in 2017, there are thirteen left. Feminist bookstores began opening in the 1970s promoting ideas about lesbian separatism, woman only spaces, and nurturing a feminist community. Although many functioned as for-profit stores, many also operated community centers and non-profit organizations. Feminist bookstores provide an excellent site for scholars view decades of social movement organizing merging theory, practice, activism, and academics. As a social movement organization, feminist bookstores as are the quintessential node of academia and activism. Of the …

Annual Report, Research & Instruction Department, 2016-2017, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg. Nelson Poynter Memorial Library

Library Department and Committee Reports

Annual report for the Research and Instruction Department at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's Nelson Poynter Memorial Library for the period July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017.

Comparing Civilian Support For Terrorism, Srobana Bhattacharya

Journal of Strategic Security

Terrorism is an extreme form of political violence, that is inherently abhorrent in nature. Yet, it continues to attain enough support to continue and survive. The recent proliferation of Islamic State and its ever increasing domestic and international civilian support base urges immediate attention to this question. While most research holds that provision of public goods by terrorist groups is the primary cause for high levels of civilian support, I argue that, terrorist groups are more interested in resource extraction rather than resource provision. Additionally, these studies pay scant attention to existing resource structure, especially territorial and political control to …

Containing Terrorism: A Dynamic Model, Giti Zahedzadeh

Journal of Strategic Security

The strategic interplay between counterterror measures and terror activity is complex. Herein, we propose a dynamic model to depict this interaction. The model generates stylized prognoses: (i) under conditions of inefficient counterterror measures, terror groups enjoy longer period of activity but only if recruitment into terror groups remains low; high recruitment shortens the period of terror activity (ii) highly efficient counterterror measures effectively contain terror activity, but only if recruitment remains low. Thus, highly efficient counterterror measures can effectively contain terrorism if recruitment remains restrained. We conclude that the trajectory of the dynamics between counterterror measures and terror activity is …

Adverse Childhood Experiences And Their Role As Mitigators For Youthful And Non-Youthful Offenders In Capital Sentencing Cases, Jessica R. Trapassi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their role as mitigators in capital sentencing is an important, yet relatively unexplored, topic in criminological literature. Using data from the North Carolina Capital Sentencing Project, this study explores the role of ACEs as mitigating factors for youthful and non-youthful capital offenders: whether youthful offenders are less likely to be sentenced to death, whether or not ACEs are effective as mitigating factors, and whether ACE mitigators are more effective for youthful or non-youthful offenders. Results show that youthful capital offenders are less likely to be sentenced to death than adult capital offenders, and while ACE …

Behind The Curtain: Cultural Cultivation, Immigrant Outsiderness, And Normalized Racism Against Indian Families, Pangri G. Mehta

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation uses an Indian dance studio based in the suburbs of a mid-sized Florida city as an entry point to examine how racism impacts the local upwardly mobile Asian Indian community. Utilizing two and a half years of ethnographic data collected at the studio as a Bollywood instructor, 24 in-depth interviews with Indian immigrant parents and their children, 12 self-portraits drawn by children during their interviews, and home visits with 13 families, this project examines the strategies of accommodation and resistance that Indian families use to construct a sense of home and belonging. Applying socialization, visual research methods, …

Space-Time Transportation System Modelling: From Traveler’S Characteristics To The Network Design Problem, Mohsen Parsafard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traditional network design problems only consider the long-term stationary travel patterns (e.g., fixed OD demand) and short-term variations of human mobility are ignored. This study aims to integrate human mobility characteristics and travel patterns into network design problems using a space-time network structure. Emerging technologies such as location-based social network platforms provide a unique opportunity for understanding human mobility patterns that can lead to advanced modeling techniques. To reach our goal, at first multimodal network design problems are investigated by considering safety and flow interactions between different modes of transport. We develop a network reconstruction method to expand a single-modal …

Black Girl Magic?: Negotiating Emotions And Success In College Bridge Programs, Olivia Ann Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews, this project explores the extent to which race, class, and gender shape the socialization that Black women receive about their emotions and attitudes in a college bridge program. It unpacks the ways that dominant emotion cultures can inform the emotional socialization practices of a college bridge program in ways that resist and reproduce larger cultural narratives about Black women. To operationalize this emotional socialization, I introduce a concept called emotional respectability, which suggests that emotional reactions and demeanor must always align with the larger emotion cultures and goals of institutions such as family and …

“You Know Who I Am, Don’T You? I’M The One They’Re Writing About In The Newspapers And On Tv”, Casey Killen Crane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

News media play a key role in U.S. society, helping to inform members of the public as gatherers and reporters of information, as well as by serving as government watchdogs. In the ongoing search for and reporting of information, media professionals must be aware of how they report on crime by being cognizant of how they represent killers, victims, and their families, and by being aware of how they represent any gratifications those groups may receive from the media coverage. This study considers the interactions between serial killer Dennis Rader, investigators and media organizations, and how some of these groups …

Role Of Civil Society Organizations In Conflict And Post-Conflict Situations In Rwanda, Masabo Francois

Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies

This article explores the role of Civil Society Organizations in conflict and post-conflict situations that affected the Rwandan society. Their role is directly connected with the broad history of the country, their relationship with the regime on power and external donors, and their capacities to achieve their respective mission and vision. Different sources of information including primary data collected using a questionnaire demonstrated that CSOs in Rwanda are at middle level undermined by genocide ideology, lacking skills to empower constituencies and to allow them to participate in public policy formulation and implementation process. CSOs are experiencing financial and ideological dependence …

Social Cohesion Through Cooperative Contact: A Theoretical Perspective, Ezechiel Sentama

Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies

This paper aims to contribute to the theoretical debate when it comes to how to successfully achieve social cohesion after violent conflicts. Using the premises of contact hypothesis, and qualitative approach, the paper’s theoretical conclusions are drawn from the experience of the relational effects of contact, in the cooperative organization, between antagonistic groups in post-genocide Rwanda—genocide survivors and genocide perpetrators, as well as their respective family members. The paper discusses the nature, the form and the degree of the relational effects resulting from contact, in the cooperative organization, between post-genocide sides and suggests that, by virtue of its guiding values …

Music Alumni Play A Different Tune: Reflections On Acquired Skills And Career Outcomes, Angie L. Miller, Amber D. Dumford, William R. Johnson

Department of Leadership, Policy, and Lifelong Learning

This study explores how a variety of music alumni perceive the skills that they learned at their institutions in comparison to their diverse career outcomes using data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). Focusing on alumni with music education, music theory, and music performance majors (16,317 respondents from 105 different arts undergraduate and graduate colleges or arts programs within larger universities), the study demonstrates how a survey of skills learned and career outcomes is a meaningful way of measuring student achievement and skill. Similarities and differences between these three majors are further investigated using inferential statistical analyses. There …

Examining Cross-Cultural Affective Components Of Global Competence From A Value Perspective, Nadia Awaida-Nachabe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore perceived importance of cultural values and affective components in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and their relationships. This study identified which of the nine affective components of global competence and four higher order cultural values were perceived to be important in the MENA region. It also examined the correlations between cultural values and affective components and whether significant differences existed based on gender, age, and country of citizenship.

This research involved the combination of Wallenberg-Lerner’s Affective Component Questionnaire (ACQ) and Schwartz’s Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ). In conjunction with a …

Lost In The Crowd: Are Large Social Graphs Inherently Indistinguishable?, Subramanian Viswanathan Vadamalai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Real social graphs datasets are fundamental to understanding a variety of phenomena, such as epidemics, crowd management and political uprisings, yet releasing digital recordings of such datasets exposes the participants to privacy violations. A safer approach to making real social network topologies available is to anonymize them by modifying the graph structure enough as to decouple the node identity from its social ties, yet preserving the graph characteristics in aggregate. At scale, this approach comes with a significant challenge in computational complexity.

This thesis questions the need to structurally anonymize very large graphs. Intuitively, the larger the graph, the easier …

“Can You Believe They Think I’M Intimidating?” An Exploration Of Identity In Tall Women, Elizabeth Joy Fuller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States today, there is a dominant cultural narrative telling us that tallness is desirable and enjoyed by those who experience it. Much of the existing research on height correlates tallness with promotions, higher salaries, and general happiness. However, this research does not take into account the limitations of some of the previous research which tends to accept tall people’s vocabulary of motives at face value as the totality of their experience as a tall person. In particular, tall women tend to have much more to say about their lives as tall women than simply that it has …

Chinese National Identity And Media Framing, Yufeng Tian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the relationship between Chinese national identity and media framing and priming effect by combining the two paradigms, the literature of group identity and the discourses of media cognitive effect. Extending social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981), self-categorization theory (Turner, et al., 1987) and subjective group dynamics theory (Marques, Paez, & Abrams, 1998), the current study drew the distinction between descriptive (cognitive/perceptual) and prescriptive (affective/subjective) fit of the social norms that contributed to social identity. After deliberating the macro concept (the ascribed vs. acquired) of a national identity (Westle, 2014), as well as the social, political, economic and cultural …

The Role Of Specificity And Apologies In Excuse Messages Following Train Delay, Emiel Cracco, Nicolas Dirix, Christopher P. Reinders Folmer

Journal of Public Transportation

An important issue in public transport is punctuality. Because delays are often caused by external factors, an efficient way to mitigate passengers’ negative reactions is to point out these factors in an excuse. The current study investigated whether excuses following train delay can be optimized by making minor changes to their content. Specifically, we compared the effectiveness of specific and non-specific excuses. Furthermore, we investigated whether adding different types of an apology influenced the effectiveness of the excuse. The results indicated that specific excuses resulted in more forgiveness and a reduced intention to avoid public transport in the future. Further …