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Making The Significant Significant: A Discourse Analysis Examining The Teacher's Role In Negotiating Meaning Of Text With Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Students, Keith Standiford Wheeler

Dissertations

This study reports data from a three-month discourse analysis of a fifth-grade teacher`s language used to negotiate meaning of text with linguistically and culturally diverse students. Specifically, I use Gee`s (2005) discourse analysis methodology to examine the teacher`s language-in-use for seven building tasks of language--significance, activities, identities, relationships, politics (the distribution of social goods), connections, and sign systems and knowledge--in a micro level analysis for eight teaching episodes covering reading and/or social studies instruction. In doing so, I conceptualize categories and subcategories of language use for each of the language building tasks. I find that the teacher used instructional language …

The Tale Of Mental Causation: Fact Or Fiction?, Chia-Lin Tu

Dissertations

Mental causation is with us all the time. Being a table is different from being a human---although we are composed of physical particles, we have understanding, reason, or perception, which are able to make a difference in the physical world. In this dissertation, I have detail discussions of contemporary substance dualism, the mind-brain identity theory, and Jaegwon Kim's functionalism, and thus conclude that none of them can provide an appropriate account to the problem of mental causation. By distinguishing the mind from the body, substance dualists face the pairing problem: How does this particular mind unite with this particular body …

Effects Of Enrollment In Co-Teaching Classes On The Academic Performance Of High School Students Without Disabilities, Linda Elaine Buerck

Dissertations

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Linda Elaine Buerck, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Curriculum and Instruction, presented on November 12, 2009, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: EFFECTS OF ENROLLMENT IN CO-TEACHING CLASSES ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WITHOUT DISABILITIES MAJOR PROFESSOR: D. John McIntyre, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, Ed.D., University of Syracuse This study examined the impact of enrollment in co-teaching classes on the grades earned by high school students without disabilities. The study also included analyses of teacher responses to a survey regarding their experience with the co-teaching model at the …

Breeding Productivity, Nest Distribution, And Population Ecology Of Wood Ducks In Floodplain And Upland Forests Of Southern Illinois, Robert Gray Anderson

Dissertations

Wood ducks are thought to depend on mature hardwood forests juxtaposed with palustrine wetlands but these habitats have been continuously degraded or destroyed since European settlement. Wood ducks are adaptable and the use of marginal habitats and nest boxes has extended their range and probably was important to the recovery of wood duck populations. Until now no study has analyzed the contribution of upland nesting to local population growth and maintenance. I investigated predation effects on nest site selection using wood duck nests and simulated nests placed in natural cavities. Using demographic data collected on wood ducks in southern Illinois, …

The Modulation Of Covert Attention By Emotion: Automatic Processing Of Emotional Versus Neutral Valenced Cues In A Covert Attention Paradigm, Jonathan Hammersley

Dissertations

Selective attention has been studied extensively and it is shown, for example, that individuals with conditions such as anxiety show attention bias to threat-related stimuli. It has been proposed that humans are predisposed or that it is naturally adaptive to selectively attend to emotional stimuli (Lang, 2000). Similarly, LeDoux (1996) and others have proposed limbic brain networks allowing for quick and automatic, but sometimes inaccurate, processing of emotion which bypasses primary cortical areas. Along these lines, automatic attention bias to subliminal image cues in an adapted Posner Covert Attention Task was examined in the current study. A sample of 64 …

The Contributions Of The Unwanted, Claudia Estela Chavez Mckay Phd

Dissertations

According to the U.S. Constitution as construed by the Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982) Supreme Court Case, all children in the United States - from kindergarten through grade twelve - have a right to a free public education regardless of citizenship; however, undocumented students seeking to continue their education beyond high school face multiple barriers. Little is known about the actual experiences of undocumented students who have acquired a university degree. The purpose of this study was to understand the collegiate experiences of undocumented students, specifically the process of persisting through college graduation and their contributions to society …

Parent Information Nights: An Elementary School Principal’S Search To Increase Parent Input And Affect The Learning-At-Home Environment, Stan Ponder

Dissertations

Although the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires schools to create initiatives to increase parental involvement, the development, implementation, and effectiveness of these initiatives are left to the individual schools and their leadership teams. This qualitative study focused on a program designed to increase parental involvement and education to affect the learning-at-home environment as it relates to student learning. By using an action research model, parents of students in a small, rural elementary school in the Midwestern United States attended two cycles of meetings designed to increase awareness of educational concerns. These meetings were conducted with the desire …

Act Scores As Predictors Of Success: A Correlation Study Between Act Scores And The Lindenwood University Business Capstone Course, Karolina Lapinska-Schneider

Dissertations

Business schools across the nation, to meet the accreditation standards of the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), must incorporate results of certain outcomes assessments for evaluation of programs efficacy and continuous improvement purposes. The Educational Testing Service Major Field Test in Business Administration (ETS MFT-B) helps business institutions to evaluate their programs and to make improvements through changes in the curriculum. This study examined if the ACT scores, Cumulative Grade Point Average, and Term Grade Point Average determined the performance on the ETS MFT-B. The sample consisted of 59 business students enrolled in the Management Policy course …

Exploring Differences In Teacher Attitudes And Instructional Strategies Between Traditional And Block Schedule High Schools: A Comparison Of Two Small Schools, Timothy Leonard Reller

Dissertations

As high schools have struggled to increase the academic performance of their students to meet state and national guidelines, all aspects of the schools' operations have been reviewed. This includes the type of schedule, block or traditional, used by the school. This study was a comparison of teacher attitudes and teaching strategies between two high schools with a block schedule and two high schools with a traditional schedule. Traditional schedule classes meet every day for 45–55 minutes, while block schedule classes meet every other day for 80–100 minutes. In 2007 several local school districts switched from the block schedule back …

Exploring Differences In Teacher Attitudes And Instructional Strategies Between Traditional And Block Schedule High Schools: A Comparison Of Two Large Schools, Jerry Randolph Raines

Dissertations

As schools continue to strive to meet federal testing requirements, many schools have been looking at ways to improve. During the 1990’s many school districts thought they had found the method, tool, or program, with which to accomplish this goal: the block schedule. This study was a comparison of the teaching strategies and attitudes of teachers at two high schools with a block schedule and two high schools with a traditional schedule. The researchers began showing interest in this topic when several local schools decided to abandon the block schedule at their high schools, because of the increased cost associated …

Shared Presence: Caring For A Dying Spouse, Lana Sue Mclouth Kanacki Phd, Ms, Rn

Dissertations

There is limited research on female spouses and their end-of-life experience with their dying husbands. The purpose of this study was to explore wives' perceptions of hospital and hospice care at their husbands' end-of-life. The grounded theory method was used for this study. Data were collected over thirteen months and then transcribed and coded for meaning. Participants were 25 elderly widows (62-103 years of age) with 19 husbands' deaths in a hospice setting and 6 in the hospital. They were widowed from 6 months to 10 years after the death of their spouses. They were good informants with excellent recollections …

Evaluation Of 6 + 1 Trait Writing And The Professional Development Training Used To Implement The Program, Bruce E. Werkmeister

Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the 6 + 1 Trait Writing program on student achievement and to explore the teacher perceived effectiveness of the 6 + 1 Trait Writing program on student achievement. This study concentrated on student achievement, as determined by the Missouri Assessment Program test, and the teachers’ perception of the impact 6 + 1 Trait Writing had on the curriculum. The study also focused on the perceived effectiveness of the 6 + 1 Trait Writing professional development opportunities provided to teachers as determined by surveys and roundtable discussions. The 2007, …

Investigating The Self-Assessment Of Adult Literacy Learners With Dyslexia Across Several Cognitive Domains, Kelli Sandman-Hurley Edd

Dissertations

The dissertation evaluated the ability of adult literacy learners with dyslexia to assess their cognitive abilities in two separate domains: reading and memory. This study also evaluated the effect that one-on-one tutoring had on the learner's ability to accurately self-assess these cognitive abilities. Twenty adult literacy learners (n = 20) with dyslexia were tested in both domains. This study also included a control group of 10 good readers (n = 10) who were administered the same three standardized tests. This data was collected by administering three standardized assessments. This was a quantitative study that used analysis of variance (ANOVA), repeated …

Tuberculosis Awareness And Public Opinion On Expanding Health Insurance Coverage, Belal A. Saadeh Phd, Msn, Rn

Dissertations

This quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study examined the effect of TB awareness and demographic variables on the level of support for expanding health insurance coverage for all residents, including undocumented immigrants. A modified 13-item tool developed by Morisky et al. (1990) was used to measure TB awareness; a single item created by the researcher assessed personal opinion regarding expansion of health insurance coverage; and a demographic questionnaire was used to collect data from 281 registered voters in San Diego County. The majority of San Diego County voters participating in the study supported at least some expansion of health insurance coverage. ANOVA …

Multiple Roles: The Conflicted Realities Of Community College Mission Statements, Mark David Mrozinski

Dissertations

Questions of efficacy have always plagued the use of mission statement as a strategic planning tool. In most planning models, the mission statement serves to clarify goals and guide the formation of strategies. However, little empirical evidence exists validating that mission statements actually improve the performance of organizations, even though regional accrediting commissions in higher education include mission statement and affiliated processes as criterion for accreditation. For community colleges, the question is how can mission statements best be used to move the institution forward in a climate of change and challenges?

The purpose of this study is to explore the …

Direct Instruction In Reading In Special Education: Evaluation Of An Innovation, Sherry D. Jackson

Dissertations

All children can learn. Each child learns in numerous ways and at a different pace. When children are given opportunity, appropriate foundation, support, and precise instruction, learning is enhanced and encouraged. This study investigated an instructional approach for teaching reading to elementary students who were determined to have a learning disability and had an active Individualized Education Plan in the area of reading. Direct Instruction is a curriculum specifically intended to provide an exclusive structured and systematic method to teaching English language reading. The Direct Instruction program begins every student with a concrete review of phonemic awareness and letter sound …

Perturbed Spherical Objects In Acoustic And Fluid Flow Fields, Manmeet Kaur

Dissertations

In this study, the time averaged acoustic radiation force and drag on a small, nearly spherical object suspended freely in a stationary sound wave field in a compressible, low viscosity fluid is to be calculated. This problem has been solved for a spherical object, and it has many important engineering applications related to segregation and separation processes for particles in fluids such as water. Small but significant errors have occurred in the predicted behavior of the particles using the existing approximate solutions based on perfect spheres. The classical approach has been extended in this research to objects that deviate slightly …

Soft-Error Resilient On-Chip Memory Structures, Shuai Wang

Dissertations

Soft errors induced by energetic particle strikes in on-chip memory structures, such as L1 data/instruction caches and register files, have become an increasing challenge in designing new generation reliable microprocessors. Due to their transient/random nature, soft errors cannot be captured by traditional verification and testing process due to the irrelevancy to the correctness of the logic. This dissertation is thus focusing on the reliability characterization and cost-effective reliable design of on-chip memories against soft errors.

Due to various performance, area/size, and energy constraints in various target systems, many existing unoptimized protection schemes on cache memories may eventually prove significantly inadequate …

Institutional Controls And Brownfield Redevelopment, Ronnachai Tiyarattanachai

Dissertations

Institutional controls (ICs) are used to reduce risks to human health and environment from exposure to contaminants at Brownfield sites. Regulators approve use of ICs in Brownfield redevelopment with the expectation that ICs will remain effective over the long-term under proper oversight mechanisms. However, a recent review of compliance statuses of Brownfield sites with ICs implemented in Massachusetts and New Jersey indicated a significant percentage of the sites are out of compliance status.

Implementation of ICs depends on compliance efforts by humans. Thus, consistency of implementation over the long-term is questionable because there are several potential problems due to human …

Motion Coordination And Control In The Development Of A Gait Rehabilitation System, Yazan Ahmad Manna

Dissertations

While most take their ability to walk for granted, some are unable to walk due to any number of pathologies, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury (SCI), and Parkinson's disease. Decreased activity has been shown to be associated with rapidly deconditioning. Rehabilitation techniques that afford patients the ability to begin reconditioning through walking sooner may ultimately enhance their return to a better quality of life. To assist the functional recovery of such patients, an appropriate afferent input to the spinal cord will help in the therapy of the patient. Manual training is labor intensive, costly, and ergonomically …

Modeling And Quasi-Monte Carlo Simulation Of Risk In Credit Portfolios, Bo Ren

Dissertations

Credit risk is the risk of losing contractually obligated cash flows promised by a counterparty such as a corporation, financial institution, or government due to default on its debt obligations. The need for accurate pricing and hedging of complex credit derivatives and for active management of large credit portfolios calls for an accurate assessment of the risk inherent in the underlying credit portfolios. An important challenge for modeling a credit portfolio is to capture the correlations within the credit portfolio. For very large and homogeneous portfolios, analytic and semi-analytic approaches can be used to derive limiting distributions. However, for portfolios …

Algorithms In Comparative Genomics, Satish Chikkagoudar

Dissertations

The field of comparative genomics is abundant with problems of interest to computer scientists. In this thesis, the author presents solutions to three contemporary problems: obtaining better alignments for phylogeny reconstruction, identifying related RNA sequences in genomes, and ranking Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) in genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

Sequence alignment is a basic and widely used task in bioinformatics. Its applications include identifying protein structure, RNAs and transcription factor binding sites in genomes, and phylogeny reconstruction. Phylogenetic descriptions depend not only on the employed reconstruction technique, but also on the underlying sequence alignment. The author has studied and established a …

Understanding Cognitive Differences In Processing Competing Visualizations Of Complex Systems, Madhavi Mukul Chakrabarty

Dissertations

Node-link diagrams are used represent systems having different elements and relationships among the elements. Representing the systems using visualizations like node-link diagrams provides cognitive aid to individuals in understanding the system and effectively managing these systems. Using appropriate visual tools aids in task completion by reducing the cognitive load of individuals in understanding the problems and solving them. However, the visualizations that are currently developed lack any cognitive processing based evaluation. Most of the evaluations (if any) are based on the result of tasks performed using these visualizations. Therefore, the evaluations do not provide any perspective from the point of …

Operating Characteristics Of Passenger Screening Processes And The Development Of A Paced Inspection System, Geraldine Kelly Leone

Dissertations

The airport checkpoint security screening (ACSS) system is an important line of defense against the introduction of dangerous objects into the U.S. aviation system. Recently, there has been much interest in modeling these systems and to derive operating parameters which optimize performance. In general there are two performance measures of interest (i) the waiting time of the arriving entities, and (ii) the allocated screening resources and its utilization. Clearly, the traveling public would like a zero waiting time, while airports are limited both in terms of space and resource capital. The arrival and exit entity in the ACSS system are …

Service Oriented Networking For Multimedia Applications In Broadband Wireless Networks, Ehsan Haghani Dogaheh

Dissertations

Extensive efforts have been focused on deploying broadband wireless networks. Providing mobile users with high speed network connectivity will let them run various multimedia applications on their wireless devices. In order to successfully deploy and operate broadband wireless networks, it is crucial to design efficient methods for supporting various services and applications in broadband wireless networks. Moreover, the existing "access-oriented" networking solutions are not able to fully address all the issues of supporting various applications with different quality of service requirements. Thus, "service-oriented" networking has been recently proposed and has gained much attention.

This dissertation discusses the challenges and possible …

Nonlinear Evolution Of Annular Layers And Liquid Threads In Electric Fields, Qiming Wang

Dissertations

The nonlinear dynamics of viscous perfectly conducting liquid jets or threads under the action of a radial electric field are studied theoretically and numerically here. The field is generated by a potential difference between the jet surface and a concentrically placed electrode of given radius. A long-wave nonlinear model that is used to predict the dynamics of the system and in particular to address the effect of the radial electric field on jet breakup is developed, Two canonical regimes are identified that depend on the size of the gap between the outer electrode and the unperturbed jet surface. For relatively …

Relationship Between Photospheric Magnetic Fields And Coronal Activities, Changyi Tan

Dissertations

Coronal emission comes in two forms, a steady component where the corona is heated to million degrees and a much hotter transient component of solar flares. Both components are known to be related to the evolution of surface magnetic fields. This dissertation studies the evolution of photospheric magnetic fields and flow fields and their relation to the properties of these two coronal emission components.

The key issue in the study of the steady coronal emission is the coronal heating problem: how the corona is heated to millions of degrees while the underlying solar photosphere is only a few thousand degrees. …

Cooperative Retransmission Protocols In Fading Channels : Issues, Solutions And Applications, Igor Stanojev

Dissertations

Future wireless systems are expected to extensively rely on cooperation between terminals, mimicking MIMO scenarios when terminal dimensions limit implementation of multiple antenna technology. On this line, cooperative retransmission protocols are considered as particularly promising technology due to their opportunistic and flexible exploitation of both spatial and time diversity. In this dissertation, some of the major issues that hinder the practical implementation of this technology are identified and pertaining solutions are proposed and analyzed. Potentials of cooperative and cooperative retransmission protocols for a practical implementation of dynamic spectrum access paradigm are also recognized and investigated. Detailed contributions follow.

While conventionally …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Metal Oxide Semiconductors For Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Production, Sudhakar Shet

Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to investigate the properties of metal-oxide thin films on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO)-coated glass substrates, prepared by using radio- frequency (RF) reactive magnetron sputtering for photoelectrochemical (PEC) applications. Metal-oxide thin films as a photoelectrode are of special interest for PEC systems to produce hydrogen in an aqueous solution by solar energy due to their low cost and potential stability.

The following list represents some of the accomplishments and results of this work:

• Narrowing of N-incorporated ZnO (ZnO:N) was achieved by reactive sputtering in a O₂/N₂ mixture ambient, and ZnO:N films with …

Booklet Of Selected Theses From The Ma In Criminology, Ma In Law, And Ma In Child, Family And Community Studies 2007- 2009., Kevin Lalor, Claire Hamilton, Fergus Ryan, Brian Mccarthy

Dissertations

No abstract provided.