Digital Commons Network^™

College Student Perceptions Of Secondary Teacher Influence On The Development Of Mathematical Identity, Kathryn Van Wagoner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Through interviews with college students, this qualitative study explored how the students' experiences with their secondary mathematics teachers affected their relationship with mathematics, known as mathematical identity. The study was rooted in the idea that learning is an experience of identity and in John Dewey's theory that all experiences are inextricably linked to past and future experiences. The eight college students' interview responses were written into biographical narratives and then analyzed within preselected themes related to experiences with secondary teachers and dimensions of mathematical identity. These themes were determined through a review of previously published studies on those topics.

The …

"It Is Not In The Stars To Hold Our Destiny But In Ourselves": Tales Of Saudi Muslim Women Maintaining Their Identities In U.S. Higher Education, Debi Sheridan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The objective of these oral histories was to examine, explain and reveal the success of a small group of Saudia (female Saudis) whose studies at a mid-Western American university through the medium of English (their second or third language). Four students were randomly selected from a group of volunteers, based on their successful completion of the English as a Second Language (ESL) program, plus a year of other academic classes in the university. One student, who had not completed the ESL program, was admitted to the master of English program having passed the Test of English as a Foreign Language …

An Evaluation Of Demand Functions For Attention And Food In Children With Autism, Bistra K. Bogoev

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The dominant approach to treating social dysfunction in individuals with autism views that dysfunction as a skill deficit. However, another plausible interpretation is that social dysfunction in some individuals arises from motivational deficits. The proposed study presents a method to assess motivational deficits for social attention in individuals with autism. By borrowing methods from behavioral economics, we assessed the essential value for social attention and compared it to the essential value for food.

Five individuals diagnosed with autism were included in the project. First, we assessed preference for food by using paired-preference assessment. To identify preference hierarchy for attention, we …

Expert Rural Elementary School Teachers' Planning For Effective Instruction, Lance T. Hatch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Learning how to plan for effective instruction is a critical part of the work performed daily by the elementary school teacher. While some new and struggling teachers in urban school districts have access to professional development on a variety of topics including instructional planning, teachers in rural school districts often struggle to find training opportunities. This study sought to gather information and insight from rural teachers who demonstrate expert instructional planning. The specific planning decisions they made and activities they engaged in while planning were studied. Not only were the planning practices identified, but the reasons said practices were employed …

Teaching Bystander Skills Through Fluency Training, Emilee Hagloch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study examined the effectiveness of an intervention that adds a fluency component to teaching bystanders how to defend other students during a bullying situation. Bystander skills were taught to fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms and fluency training was added to several of these classrooms as an experimental group. Students also filled out rating scales to find out what their participant role in bullying situations was (defender of the victim, outsider, bully, victim of the bully, assistant to the bully). Results showed that there was more growth on the fluency scores for those who participated in the fluency training as opposed …

Beginning Teachers' Perceptions Of Their Novice Year Of Teaching, Rebecca Bingham Rees

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was conducted to understand the perceptions of beginning teachers concerning the training they received in their teacher preparation program helped them with the successes and challenges they faced during their novice year of teaching. Comprehending novice teachers' perceptions of their successes and challenges is important as a method to help beginning teachers avoid feelings of burnout.

A survey was sent to graduates of a teacher preparation program at a large, land-grant university, who were embarking on their novice year of teaching. Responses were received from 16 teachers. In the survey, teachers were asked to answer demographic questions regarding …

Spatial Patterns Of Rural And Exurban Residential Settlement And Agricultural Trends In The Intermountain West, Saleh Ahmed

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Population growth is often linked to negative impacts on agriculture. However, the effects of residential development likely depends on the spatial pattern of development, such as whether housing is clustered or dispersed, and whether it is located near or away from important farmland. For several decades, rural and urban planners have advocated policies to encourage consolidated forms of development as one strategy to protect agriculture and preserve open space. To date, relatively little empirical research has been conducted on the actual effects of different spatial patterns of residential settlement on agricultural. This study aims to fill that gap with a …

Negotiated Settlement And The Durability Of Peace: Agreement Design, Implementation, And Mediated Civil Wars, Chong Chen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Since the end of the Cold War, outright military victories in civil wars have been rare. As a result, the number of peace agreements designed to end civil wars in the post-Cold War era has increased exponentially compared to the entire Cold War period. However, according to some statistics, about a third of those peace agreements failed to secure postwar peace. These failures to get warring parties to live up to their peace agreements not only restarted armed conflict, but they also escalated the violence. Therefore, this project is aimed to explore why some civil war settlements break down within …

A Translational Investigation Of Positive And Negative Behavioral Contrast, Megan A. Boyle

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Applied behavior analysts implement research-based techniques to improve behavior. However, research with nonhumans suggests that intervening to improve behavior in one context may result in a worsening of that same behavior in another context (behavioral contrast). Although there are clinical implications of behavioral contrast, the vast majority of research on contrast has been conducted with nonhuman animals. Results from basic research suggest that contrast is influenced differentially depending on whether a change in conditions follows versus precedes a given context. For example, a child might encounter three contexts each day: home, school, and daycare. An intervention to reduce the child’s …

Dementia Caregiver Personality Traits And Coping Strategies: Association With Care Recipient Outcomes, Christine M. Snyder

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study examined the potential impact of dementia caregivers’ personality traits and utilization of coping strategies on care recipients’ development of severe dementia, institutionalization, and mortality. Generally, the personality traits and coping strategies were not predictive of care recipient outcomes, especially related to the institutionalization of care recipients. However, increased caregiver use of Avoidance predicted time to care recipient development of severe dementia, while increased use of Counting Blessings reduced risk of mortality.

This research was conducted using extant data from a community-wide study examining factors that affect dementia progression. All data were collected by a research nurse and a …

The Effect Of A Class-Wide Training On Prosocial Bystander Behaviors, Charity Deanne Barnes

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to decrease school bullying by teaching defending steps and increasing incentives for bystanders, students who witness bullying but who are not necessarily involved in the violence. An established bullying prevention program was modified to increase the likelihood that bystanders would defend victims of bullying behaviors. The findings of the study suggested that bullying behavior decreased and defending increased. Further, acceptability of the intervention and the skills taught to children were rated as moderately high across all classrooms.

A Painted Void, Kevin Larsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This creative thesis contains four original short stories and a literature review written by Utah State University student Kevin Larsen. The four short stories were written and revised in 2013 under the mentorship and guidance of Professor Jennifer Sinor. Works for the literature review were selected by Kevin Larsen after reading extensively within the horror and magical realism genres.

Horror and magical realism both are well established genres with their own rules and tendencies. By pulling from both genres, these stories explore ideas and themes of horror fiction using the structure and setting that magical realism allows. This isn’t to …

Understanding Myth And Myth As Understanding: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Mytho-Logic Narration, Sandra Bartlett Atwood

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

I wanted to see if there were points of overlap between the various accounts of creation found in folklore, philosophy and physics. In order to justify such a project, I initially considered literature from each of these disciplines regarding the necessity of interdisciplinary dialogue generally and specifically the need for both intuition and logic when considering how anything actually exists. Through my research and casual observation, I hypothesized that opposition seemed to be a universal characteristic of nature. I then looked at how each discipline has described fundamentally opposing pairs and created a list of primary features that those accounts …

Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, Identity Conflict, And Psychosocial Health Amongst Same-Sex Attracted Mormons, John P. Dehlin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Both religiosity and sexuality are acknowledged by the American Psychological Association as important considerations for overall psychosocial well-being. Consequently, the denunciation of same-sex sexuality as sinful by many religious organizations leads many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals to experience significant identity conflict. Historically, conservative religious institutions such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) have offered
developmental (i.e., nonbiological) explanations as to the origins of same sexuality, along with various nonaffirming approaches including: (a) sexual orientation change efforts, (b) increased religious devotion, (c) celibacy, and (d) mixed-orientation (heterosexual) marriage. However, relatively little research has been conducted …

The Use Of Feedback In Group Counseling In A State Vocational Rehabilitation Setting: A Pilot Study, Saara Grizzell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Thirty individuals with disabilities receiving services at a vocational rehabilitation state agency attended a ten week skills based group counseling program. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: feedback or the treatment-as-usual. Prior to each session, participants filled out the Outcome Questionnaire-45, a questionnaire that provides measures of four different aspects of counseling outcomes: level of symptom distress, problems with interpersonal relationships, social role performance, and mental health functioning. Reports were then generated showing each participant’s scores and progress over time. Group counselors and participants in the feedback condition received these weekly reports. At the end of the …

The Legend, The Madman, And The Prophet A Memoir About Fathers And Sons, Erik K. Thalman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Legend, the Madman, and the Prophet is a memoir about fathers and sons, about the experience of being a son of a man of the Rocky Mountains, a legend grown old. The narrative centers around my struggle with the fact that my father had grown old and sick while I was still young, and my consequent search for other fathers, employing two primary examples—a martial-arts instructor from my high-school years who was later exposed as a pedophile, and the eccentric figure of my ex-girlfriend’s wealthy and traditional Egyptian-American father. The memoir relates the story of my father’s impact on …

Propaganda Powers Social Reform: The Visual Rhetoric Of Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, And Norman Rockwell, Shelly Stock Halling

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The scope of this thesis is an examination of visual rhetoric and its societal impacts. The framework is an historical timeline from the end of the 19^th century to the middle of the 20^th century. The thesis is an interdisciplinary activity that embeds Art History in American Studies. It is beneficial to scholars in a variety of fields, including, but not limited to: English, American Studies, Art History, Photography, Sociology, Anthropology, and History. It braids together the theoretical perspectives of propaganda, visual rhetoric, and advocacy. The thesis is based on library research with no outside funding.

Implementation Of Online Tutoring Program To Increase University Student Information Retention, April Litchford

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis discusses an online tutoring program, MasteringNutrition©, that was implemented as a required portion of an entry level collegiate nutrition course. The tutoring program was introduced to test the ability of the program to improve memory of nutrition information taught during the course. The MasteringNutrition© program combines various teaching techniques that have been successful in increasing student learning. The major techniques discussed include: Socratic questioning, metacognition, and problem based learning. These techniques are incorporated into the MasteringNutrition© program.

To test the effect of the Mastering© tutoring program, ten questions specific to course learning objectives were asked of students in …

African American Female Engineering Students' Persistence In Stereotype-Threatening Environments: A Critical Race Theory Perspective, Stacie Lesure Gregory

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

African American women are grossly underrepresented in engineering. Despite their low representation in engineering colleges, some are able to persist and earn their degrees. This qualitative study sought to better understand the strategies 10 African American women employed to help them remain resilient in engineering degree programs. For this investigation, there was an underlying assumption that African American women who persist in engineering must contend with stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is a psychosocial phenomenon in which people in stigmatized social categories fear confirming negative stereotypes about their group.

Ten African American female women who have persisted in engineering degree programs …

Couple Leisure Time: Building Bonds Early In Marriage Through Leisure, Joy Lynne Chavez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

I interviewed couples who had medium to high marital satisfaction and role balance about the leisure they experience together as a couple. The main goal of this
project was to learn more about the positive aspects of couple leisure experiences. I examined couples’ perceptions of leisure benefits and meaning derived from couple participation in leisure, how couples perceive marital satisfaction is affected by couple leisure, the ways couples balance other roles with leisure, how role balance plays a part in couple leisure, as well as the factors that might constrain or facilitate a positive leisure experience.

Couples find a lot …

Successful Paths To Becoming A Lean Organization In The Construction Industry, Robert D. Warcup

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Lean construction is defined as the continuous process of eliminating waste, with the goal of increasing value on construction projects to the owner and to all stakeholders of a project. It has gained considerable momentum since the early 2000s because of its potential for problem-solving and increased productivity, especially as many construction firms still struggle to adapt to an ever-changing industry. This study was designed to assist construction companies, especially company executives and managers, to better understand the requirements of a lean transformation by describing the paths of three highly successful lean construction firms from the U.S.

Nine lean advocates, …

The Effectiveness Of An Intervention Designed To Increase The Positive To Negative Ratio Of Instructor Interactions During After-School Programming, Rikki K. Wheatley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this research was to assess the effectiveness of two interventions used to train instructors to increase PN ratios. The first intervention (workshop training) followed a didactic workshop-training model. The second intervention (coaching) included the components of the didactic workshop model with the addition of modeling, role-play, and performance feedback. In this study four instructors in an after-school program were randomly assigned to one of two groups to participate in training programs. These programs were designed to help them increase PN ratios when interacting with students during homework time in the after-school program. Group 1 received only the …

How Arizona Community College Teachers Go About Learning To Teach, Carolyn J. Hamblin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

New Arizona community college teachers go through a transformative learning process when they learn to teach. They enter the classroom with preformed ways of thinking about teaching. These habits of mind include what they imagine a community college teacher to be. They expect their knowledge and expertise to translate into teaching ability and they are shocked to learn that this is not the case. Classroom teaching involves basic pedagogical skills such as preventing cheating, creating appropriate tests, planning a course calendar, and pacing a lecture. The discomfort that accompanies this revelation causes the teachers to think critically about what good …

Who Cares? Developing A Pedagogy Of Caring In Higher Education, Andrew Shayne Larsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

When students are asked about their motivation to succeed in a course, about whether they enjoyed their instructor, and about their overall satisfaction with the class, answers can often be traced back to an educator who was perceived by the student as caring. Perceived caring occurs when a student feels that a teacher’s positive behaviors directed toward the student are motivated by good intentions and good will.

Research in the area of teacher care has almost exclusively focused on elementary and secondary classrooms, and has advanced the theory that caring teachers and caring classroom environments prompt many positive educational outcomes. …

Sources Of Authority For Leadership And Instructional Technology Coaches' Diffusion Of High Access Teaching And Learning, Gregory M. Proffit

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this qualitative study was to use a leadership theory to explore the professional work of three school-based instructional technology coaches. The leadership theory is drawn from Thomas Sergiovanni’s Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement.

The study used typical qualitative data gathering techniques: participant observations, informal and formal interviews, and the collection of representative workplace professional documents. A single researcher spent two school years in district office meetings and in three secondary schools gathering qualitative data.

The data were analyzed for bureaucratic, psychological, technical rational, professional, and moral sources of authority for leadership. The data …

Romantic Relationship Quality And Technological Communication: Examining The Roles Of Attachment Representations And Rejection Sensitivity, Ron C. Bean

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

It is important to understand normal developmental patterns in romantic relationships, which develop within historical and cultural contexts and are influenced by social and technological advancement. One of the core features of developing attachment in romantic relationships is proximity to the attachment figure, for which technology may be a substitute. This study described patterns of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in young adult relationships. We hypothesized that core relational and personality features were linked to participants’ interpretations of CMC.

For this study, 97 college students provided overall scores for rejection sensitivity, insecure attachment styles, relationship satisfaction, and data about CMC with their …

Ego-Identity And Long-Term Moratoria: Associations With College Attendance And Religious Volunteerism, Mark A. Jackson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The objective of this study was to examine the extent to which college experiences and participation in religious missionary service for an extended period were associated with ego-identity development, specifically in terms of identity exploration and commitment. A sample of late adolescents (N = 425), all of whom had participated in at least some college and of whom 122 had volunteered as LDS missionaries, provided information about their college/missionary experiences that could be related to identity development and reported levels of identity exploration and commitment.

Results indicated that LDS postmissionaries and LDS non-postmissionaries differed significantly only in the variables …

The Relationship Between Attachment, Couple Conflict, And Recovery From Conflict, Nathan C. Taylor

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Advances in technology have opened the door for increased understanding to the physiological changes that influence and are influenced by conflict. The objective of this research was to use these advances in technology to better understand the relationship between attachment and physiological reactivity during conflict, as well as during recovery from couple conflict. Skin conductance equipment was used to measure 10 couples (n = 20) physiological arousal while discussing an area of conflict, and during a recovery section which included a relationship distraction task and discussion. Five multiple regressions were used to analyze physiological reactivity during and after conflict …

"Wires And Lights In A Box": Fahrenheit 451 As A Product Of Postwar Anxiety About Television, Christine V. Shell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This project discusses the ways in which Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 functions as an indictment of media culture. While many analyses of the novel focus on the text’s sweeping themes of literary censorship, this study instead centers on Bradbury’s depiction of media—particularly television—culture and the ways in which Bradbury feared it could be harmful. Although Bradbury wrote about a future society a century beyond his own, his novel serves as a remarkable reflection of his contemporaneous culture’s media consumption and gendered divisions; this thesis discusses Bradbury’s novel alongside such forces, considering the effects such influences may have had on …

Exploring Extension Faculty Members' First-Time Experiences With Funded Couple Relationship Education, Jacquelyn M. Alderete

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) Extension faculty members are increasingly involved in offering couple and relationship education (CRE), but some have limited background in this format of family life education. This study used a phenomological approach to examine the experiences of Extension faculty members who offered CRE in their respective counties for their first time. Data were collected through face-to-face and telephone interviews. Four themes emerged from the interview data. First, considerations for offering this type of education included valuing CRE, having sufficient and specific knowledge about the needs of the county for CRE, and access to other forms of …