Digital Commons Network^™

Volume 68 Issue 1 (Spring/Summer 2014)

Utah Science

2 Growing Risk for Alzheimer’s Alzheimer’s disease is more than just forgetfulness. It robs people of their abilities to think, remember, reason and control their behavior. A combination of genetic and environmental factors contributes to the disease’s development, but the process may begin decades before symptoms appear. Researchers are working to discover what those factors might be and how people might decrease their risk of developing the disease.

8 Measuring Quality in Baby Steps Each day thousands of children in Utah spend part of their day in the care of someone other than their parents. The quality of daycare affects …

Un Pacto Tácito: Escritura Y Poder En Autobiografía Del Esclavo Poeta De Juan Francisco Manzano, Alexandra Gonzenbach Perkins

Decimonónica

Como género literario, la autobiografía tiene una estructura rígida y depende de una identificación absoluta entre el autor, el narrador y el protagonista. Al cumplir con este requisito el texto asume el “pacto autobiográfico” tal y como lo plantea Philippe Lejeune. El pacto autobiográfico es “the affirmation in the text of this identity [of the author- narrator-protagonist], referring back in the final analysis to the name of the author on the cover” (Lejeune 14). Existe también un pacto tácito entre la obra autobiográfica y el lector en el cual se sobreentiende que el lector reconocerá automáticamente el intercambio entre el …

Shots In The Dark: The Presence Of Absence In Imaginative Literature (Iw), Gene Washington

English Faculty Publications

Western metaphysics and IW can be described as a search for "first" presences, not absences. With the exception of philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Aristotle, writers like Lord Rochester (John Wilmot), Jonathan Swift and Philip Larkin, no one, to my knowledge, has taken absence as a "first" and consequently as also a "last." This essay is a modest attempt to open the door, if only a crack, for investigations into the metaphysics and meaning of absence as a means of creating, and understanding an interesting IW—from the perspective of the presence of absence as "first" and as "last."

Faith And Doubt As Partners In Mormon History, Gregory A. Prince

Arrington Annual Lecture

No abstract provided.

Educational Policies Committee Minutes, December 5, 2013, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Subcommittee Reports
• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Educational Policies Committee Agenda, December 5, 2013, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Subcommittee Reports
• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Course Approvals
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, December 5, 2013, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Department of Applied Economics

• Prerequisite Change

School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education

• New Course

Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Sciences

• Course Description Change

Department of Plants, Soils and Climate

• Prerequisite Change

Department of Art and Design

• Title Change, Course Description Change
• Title Change, Credit Hour Change, Prerequisite Change, Remove Repeatable for Credit, Course Description Change
• Title Change, Credit Hour Change, Course Description Change
• Prerequisite Change

Jon M. Huntsman School of Business

• Title Change, Prerequisite Change, Course Description Change

Department of Management

• New Course
• Prerequisite Change, Course Description Change

Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation

• New Course
• Course …

Curriculum Subcommittee Minutes, December 5, 2013, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Department of Applied Economics

• Prerequisite Change

School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education

• New Course

Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Sciences

• Course Description Change

Department of Plants, Soils and Climate

• Prerequisite Change

Department of Art and Design

• Title Change, Course Description Change
• Title Change, Credit Hour Change, Prerequisite Change, Remove Repeatable for Credit, Course Description Change
• Title Change, Credit Hour Change, Course Description Change
• Prerequisite Change

Jon M. Huntsman School of Business

• Title Change, Prerequisite Change, Course Description Change

Department of Management

• New Course
• Prerequisite Change, Course Description Change

Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation

• New Course
• Course …

Appropriating The Mormon Past: Faith, Intellect, And The Reformation Of Mormon Identity, Scott Marianno

Arrington Student Writing Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Funds Of Knowledge And Literacies In Latino/A Youths' Community-Based Engineering Design Work, Amy Wilson-Lopez, Joel Alejandro Mejia, Indhira María Hasbún, Daniel L. Householder, Chris Hailey

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

STEM fields in the US continue to be dominated by people whose cultural backgrounds are White, English-speaking, and middle class (National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council, 2009). Many reasons have been offered to explain this phenomenon: Students’ backgrounds may include worldviews, beliefs, and communicative practices that do not cohere with those practiced in STEM classrooms (Aikenhead & Jegede, 1999; Lee, 1999); instructional materials may present STEM fields as a-cultural, decontextualized practices with no evident connection to students’ lives and communities, such as the routine completion of numerical exercises (O’Halloran, 2005); students’ identities—shaped in part by their desired life …

Skill Finder: Automated Job-Resume Matching System, Thimma Reddy Kalva

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Skill Finder is a tool which ranks the student skills from the resumes to the job requirements from Employers, Department and Faculty looking for student interns, full-time employees and also Research, Graduate and Teaching Assistants. Skill Finder hosts student resumes, Academic history and contact information. Authorized users from the Department can post jobs, view job applicants and the Skill finder automatically sorts the students resumes based on the degree of match with the job. Skill finder also sends e-mail alerts to students about the jobs posted and keeps track of employer’s history by maintaining the complete history of jobs posted …

Examining Written And Spoken Fast-Mapping Abilities In Children With And Without Language Impairment: A Feasibility Study, Brooke Rice

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Linguistic skills foundational to literacy success are skills such as phonology, morphology, and orthographic knowledge. Phonological awareness, the awareness of specific units of sounds within words, and morphological awareness, the meaningful units which make up words, have been studied in depth and received recent attention in research. Phonological awareness has been attributed to increased literacy abilities of written word decoding, syllable analysis, and word recognition (Stackhouse, 1997). Additionally, morphological awareness has been attributed to increased literacy abilities of sight word reading, decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling (Carlisle, 1995, 2000; Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993; Wolter, Wood, & D’zatko, 2009). Orthographic awareness, …

The Modern Language Classroom: Individuality, Technology, And Context, Eric Sims

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is a compilation of the author’s research-supported ideas on what good language teaching looks like. The central component is the teaching philosophy, in which the author explains that respect for individuality, use of technology, and use of culture as context for learning are the three elements seen as most important for successful language learning.
The teaching philosophy is supported by artifacts about peer feedback in language learning, literacy in adult English as a Second Language learners, and autonomy in culture learning. Finally, in three annotations the author branches out from the pillars of the teaching philosophy and examines …

Curriculum Subcommittee Minutes, November 7, 2013, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Provost’s Office

• Title Change, Credit Hour Change, Grade Mode Change, Course Description Change

School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education

• Grade Mode Change

Department of Agriculture Systems and Technology

• New Course
• Prefix Change, Title Change, Course Description Change
• Prefix Change
• Prefix Change, Title Change
• Prefix Change, Title Change, Credit Hour Change
• Add Multiple List, Course Description Change
• Add Multiple List
• Add Multiple List, Title Change, Course Description Change

Department of Plants, Soils and Climate

• Multiple List Change

Department of Art and Design

• Prerequisite Change

Department of Music

• New Course
• Delete Course

Department of Theatre Arts

• New Course
• Removal of University …

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, November 7, 2013, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Provost’s Office

• Title Change, Credit Hour Change, Course Description Change

School of Applied Sciences, Technology and Education

• Grade Mode Change

Department of Agriculture Systems and Technology

• New Course
• Prefix Change, Title Change, Course Description Change
• Prefix Change
• Prefix Change, Title Change
• Prefix Change, Title Change, Credit Hour Change
• Add Multiple List, Course Description Change
• Add Multiple List
• Add Multiple List, Title Change, Course Description Change

Department of Plants, Soils and Climate

• Multiple List Change

Department of Art and Design

• Prerequisite Change

Department of Music

• New Course
• Delete Course

Department of Theatre Arts

• New Course
• Removal of University Studies Designation

Department …

The Utah Statesman, October 3, 2013, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Forward Steps And Missteps: What We’Ve Learned Through The Process Of Conducting Cbpr Research In Rural Alaska., Jordan P. Lewis, Keri Boyd

Journal of Indigenous Research

Historically, research in Alaska has disregarded community input, creating mistrust among tribal communities toward researchers, and resulting in communities limiting their involvement in research projects. Over the past few years, tribal communities are becoming more involved in the research process; including developing their own tribal review boards and approval processes. This has resulted in the development of rigorous tribal approval processes that protect both the tribal communities and the researchers and can be time consuming. The communities are also taking a more active role in the research projects. This paper highlights some of the challenges we have faced while conducting …

Educational Policies Committee Program Proposal, Emma Eccles Jones College Of Education And Human Services, July 19, 2013 – Institute For Interdisciplinary Transition Services, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Utah State University requests approval to create the Institute for Interdisciplinary Transition Services (IITS), effective Fall, 2013.

Liberalis, Summer 2013, Utah State University

Liberalis

Freedom to Think, Discover, and Create. The alumni magazine for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Utah State University.

A Typology Of Actional-Operational Modes In Earth Science And Implications For Science Literacy Instruction, Amy Wilson-Lopez

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

Framed in theories of social semiotics, this multiple case study describes and categorizes the actional-operational modes used by three middle school earth science teachers throughout the course of one school year. Data included field notes, photographs, and video-recordings of classroom instruction, as well as periodic interviews with the teachers. A constant comparative analysis of the data resulted in the creation of a typology of actional-operational modes according to how they fulfilled the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions of communication. Six categories of actional-operational modes were identified: gesture, embodied representation, moving objects on flat surfaces, moving objects through three-dimensional space,material representations, …

The Development And Evaluation Of An In-Service Training For Informing Elementary School Personnel About Culturally Responsive Assessment And Instruction For English Language Learning Students, Mallory Whitney Poole

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this project is to develop and present a training session for elementary school teachers and other Personnel who teach and work with English Language Learners (ELL). The training provides information on evidence based instructional strategies to help teachers improve their teaching methods with students who speak languages other than English. The lack of teacher knowledge in utilizing culturally and linguistically responsive teaching methods may be contributing to the over identification of ELLs in special education. This situation reinforces the need for additional teacher training for those who teach students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This creative …

"Idilemmas" And Humanities Education: Redefining Technology Literacy Pedagogy And Practice, Steven Richard Watts

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Humanities educators at U.S. colleges and universities face sustained challenges in building effective technology literacy practices. As theories of technology literacy evolve, humanities topics are increasingly relevant in technology discussions, as rhetorical and critical analysis, textual analysis, and student learning theory are deeply embedded in current definitions of technology literacy. As such, humanities scholars have dramatic opportunities to become more involved in technology studies generally, and have a voice in technology policies that affect their institutions and students.

However, critical research, classroom teaching methods, and curricula in ICT literacy have fallen behind current needs, and many institutions struggle to define …

Exploring Three Fifth-Grade Teachers' Understanding Of Historical Thinking: A Case Study, Deanne Rigby Murray

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Deanne R. Murray at Utah State University conducted a qualitative case study aimed at examining the understanding and practice of historical thinking of three fifth-grade teachers. These three teachers had each been a participant for 3 years in a federally funded Teach American History (TAH) grant project aimed at increasing teachers' historical knowledge and classroom practices. This TAH project in Utah was particularly focused on teachers learning to use cultural tools in socially mediated settings with the ultimate goal of improving their students' performance in history.

This study sought to understand the development of these three teachers' historical thinking through …

Transcending The Material Self: Reading Ghosts In Samuel Richardson's Novel Clarissa, Jeffrey G. Howard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

For thousands of years, many people have retained a belief in the existence of those supernatural entities known as ghosts, and the question of their existence has been vital to the political, religious, and personal ideologies of many interested parties. This thesis will not join that discussion because the question of the ghostly existence cannot be answered in a manner satisfactory to all sides. It merely acknowledges that such a debate continues and that the conflict between belief and empiricist logic can expect no real resolution any time soon. The issue at the heart of this project, however, actually involves …

Spanish-Speaking Parents' Negotiation Of Language And Culture With Their Children's Schools, Ronda L. Bickmore

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Latinos are now the largest public school minority population in the U.S. Because of a shift in the states, cities, and counties where Latinos are choosing to live, many schools that did not previously serve substantial numbers of Latinos are doing so now. Additionally, many of the Latinos in these new settlement areas are recent immigrants who speak little or no English. This qualitative study examined how immigrant Latino parents who speak little or no English supported their children in the English-speaking school system of the U.S. It specifically examined how 12 Spanish-speaking parents negotiated language and culture with their …

Maintaining Spanish In An English-Speaking World, Audrey Constance Juhasz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As the Latino portion of the United States population continues to grow each year, more and more children in the United States leave their Spanish-speaking homes and enter English immersion schools. Throughout their lives, these children are likely to shift language preferences from their home language, to the language of the community. However, maintaining development in their first language would be a benefit to them in multiple ways. Identifying factors within bilingual homes that influence English and Spanish language development in preschool-aged children will help researchers and practitioners encourage families to cultivate the optimal learning environment.

This study endeavored to …

A Controlled Study Of The Flipped Classroom With Numerical Methods For Engineers, Jacob L. Bishop

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Recent advances in technology and new ways of using it have led to new possibilities for education research. Increasing tuition costs and free, online course offerings are two influences that have led researchers to re-consider the wisdom of conventional teaching methods and to consider alternatives. The flipped classroom is a new teaching method, which uses video lectures and practice problems as homework, while group-based problem-solving activities are used in the classroom. It combines aspects of two learning theories once thought to be incompatible—constructivism and behaviorism. Active, problem-based learning activities are based on the theories of constructivism, and direct instructional (video) …

A Longitudinal Study Of English Narrative Discourse Development In Young Spanish-English Bilinguals, Abbie Olszewski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Producing oral narratives is the best predictor of later literacy functioning. The ability to use performance on oral narratives as a way to identify children who may be at- risk for academic and language problems is helpful for educators. For example, it is likely that children who are identified with language impairments or who are learning English as a second language may have difficulty creating narratives due to the inherent language complexity of creating narratives. Research has demonstrated that similar to English monolingual children, narrative ability has been shown to underlie literacy development for bilingual children. Although there are numerous …

The Differential Contributions Of Auditory-Verbal And Visuospatial Working Memory On Decoding Skills In Children Who Are Poor Decoders, Katie E. Squires

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study investigated the unique contributions of simple and complex auditory-verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) in isolation or in conjunction with other skills known to affect decoding such as phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and nonverbal and verbal intelligence. Thirty-two second-grade students and 22 fifth-grade students, all identified as poor decoders, participated in this study.

For the second-grade students, a measure of complex auditory-verbal WM was correlated with word attack (reading psuedowords). For fifth-grade participants, there was a negative correlation between a complex visuospatial WM measure and word attack. A measure of simple auditory-verbal WM was correlated to word identification …

Citizenship Education And Foreign Language Learning: Deconstructing The Concept Of Good Citizenship Embedded In Foreign Language Curricula In China And America, Juanjuan Zhu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Under conditions of globalization and massive social, economic and political changes, the world in the last two decades has witnessed a wave of revived interest in
citizenship and citizenship education as well as the emergence of foreign language education as an important but under-researched site for the education of citizens. In this study, I critically examined the concept of good citizenship embedded in current foreign language curricula in China and the U.S. to see what it means in the two different contexts. I conducted a comparative critical discourse analysis of four data sets: (a) foreign language policies and/or curriculum standards …