Digital Commons Network^™

Examining The Experiences Of Latinx Stem Baccalaureates, Marlene Chavez

Dissertations

Examining the Experiences of Latinx STEM Baccalaureates is a qualitative research study of Latinx who graduated with a bachelor's degree in an area of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The purpose of this dissertation was to learn about the experiences of Latinx who have attained a STEM degree at a four-year university. This study holds implications for educational institutions, policymakers, and educational researchers that serve Latinx populations. More importantly, this dissertation will share the voices and knowledge of Latinx that have attained STEM.

This dissertation examined the following questions: What are the undergraduate educational experiences of Latinx students who …

The Art Of Morals: A Study Of The Influence Of Musicopoetic Arts On Moral Development In Plato's Laws, Daniele Manni

Dissertations

This dissertation's primary goal is to give a detailed account of the employment of musicopoetic arts in the process of moral development in Plato's Laws. Its secondary objective is to propose an explanation for the different evaluations of musicopoetic arts at the end of the Republic and in the Laws.

To achieve the first goal I analyze the elements of the soul involved in the moral psychology of the Laws, as sketched in the famous image of the marionette; I maintain that the process of habit formation is the pivotal aspect of this moral psychology; I indicate that Plato restricts …

The User, The Reader, And The Pocket Cathedral: William Morris's Arts And Crafts Aesthetic And The Decorated Book, Brandiann Molby

Dissertations

In an expansion of Jerome McGann's claims for a "materialist aesthetic" as the defining feature of William Morris's Kelmscott Press books, this dissertation maintains that Morris's book designs are the fullest expression of an Arts and Crafts interpretive model that Morris established over his career as a designer and a craftsman and that decisively intervenes in traditional theoretical discussions of the distinctions between the visual and verbal arts. This dissertation demonstrates that Morris's book designs are predicated on the user's interpretive engagement with the material object to bring together word and image, form and function, and decoration and design in …

Spanish Guided Reading And Phonics Instruction In Primary Dual Language Classrooms: A Self-Study Examining A Principal's Leadership And Actions To Improve Student Outcomes In A Neighborhood Urban School, Antonio Acevedo

Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine a principal's leadership actions while attempting to improve primary student outcomes in reading in a Dual Language (English/Spanish) neighborhood school by supporting teachers in implementing a balanced literacy approach to teaching reading in Spanish. The principal as researcher noticed at the end of the 2014-15 year that primary reading assessment data in Spanish revealed low percentages of Spanish-speaking English Language Learner (ELL) students reading at grade level in Spanish with kindergarten, first, and second grade students' results respectively at 24, 34, and 37 percent. Research in the field of Dual Language Education …

A Case Study Of Literature Discussions With Spanish-English Emergent Bilingual Children, Amy G. Clark

Dissertations

This classroom-based case study examines how Spanish-English emergent bilingual children in a second grade one-way immersion classroom draw on prior knowledge and experiences and use comprehension strategies to discuss and comprehend three texts with different levels of cultural relevance. Through an examination of the rich range of cognitive, cultural-experiential, and linguistic resources evident in children's discussion responses, a detailed sketch of key features of high-level discussion emerges. Findings build a case for the intentional use of culturally relevant texts as part of the literacy curriculum. Teacher pedagogy and classroom conditions also emerge as fundamental components for the achievement of high-level …

Religiosity And Ethnic Identity As Predictors Of Identity Orientation Among African American And Caucasian American Women, Helen N. Rolle

Dissertations

Problem

Research on the role of religion and ethnicity in the identity orientation of women has been largely neglected in psychology for many years. While previous identity studies have attempted to examine a range of variables as it relates to the general population, how women specifically experience identity based on their gender has not been included, resulting in gaps in the research literature. The present study is intended to add to the literature by focusing on the contributing factors of religiosity and ethnic identity to identity orientation and compare how they vary among African American and Caucasian American women.

Method …

Adapting To Change In The Swiss German Media Industry: Identifying And Developing Competencies Needed By Journalists And Editors To Cope With Future Market Needs - A Collective Case Study, Christiane E. Theiss

Dissertations

The global media industry has undergone a tremendous change and massive upheaval during the last two decades. On the one side, media consumption has changed immensely and on the other side, media convergence appeared, a phenomenon which describes the merge of different media production genres (print, TV, radio, digital).

Using a qualitative collective case study approach, this study was able to explore and depict competencies needed by journalists for coping with media convergence in the Swiss German media industry. The requirements for convergent work are the following seven competency themes: technical skills, social and emotional skills, cognitive skills, writing and …

An Application Of Natural Language Processing For Triangulation Of Cognitive Load Assessments In Third Level Education, Luis Alfredo Contreras

Dissertations

Work has been done to measure Mental Workload based on applications mainly related to ergonomics, human factors, and Machine Learning. The influence of Machine Learning is a reflection of an increased use of new technologies applied to areas conventionally dominated by theoretical approaches. However, collaboration between MWL and Natural Language Processing techniques seems to happen rarely. In this sense, the objective of this research is to make use of Natural Languages Processing techniques to contribute to the analysis of the relationship between Mental Workload subjective measures and Relative Frequency Ratios of keywords gathered during pre-tasks and post-tasks of MWL activities …

Assesing Completeness Of Solvency And Financial Condition Reports Through The Use Of Machine Learning And Text Classification, Ruairí Nugent

Dissertations

Text mining is a method for extracting useful information from unstructured data through the identification and exploration of large amounts of text. It is a valuable support tool for organisations. It enables a greater understanding and identification of relevant business insights from text. Critically it identifies connections between information within texts that would otherwise go unnoticed. Its application is prevalent in areas such as marketing and political science however, until recently it has been largely overlooked within economics. Central banks are beginning to investigate the benefits of machine learning, sentiment analysis and natural language processing in light of the large …

An Exploration Of Parliamentary Speeches In The Irish Parliament Using Topic Modeling, Fiona Leheny

Dissertations

The only resource available in the public domain which highlights parliamentary ac tivity is parliamentary questions. Up until the last ten years, manual content analysis was carried out to classify these. More recently, machine learning techniques have been used to automatically classify and analyse these data sets. This study analyses the verbal parliamentary speeches in the Irish Parliament (known as the D´ail) over a ten year period using unsupervised machine learning. It does so by applying a less utilised topic modeling technique, known as Non-negative Matrix Factorisation (NMF), to de tect the latent themes in these speeches. A two-layer dynamic …

Dynamic Cybersecurity Warnings : Subliminal And Supraliminal Approaches, Mini Zeng

Dissertations

People experience many cybersecurity attacks in their daily lives. They may also unnecessarily disclose private information. Computer warnings are used as one of the last lines of defense. Researchers and designers have actively sought to understand how users interact with security warnings and why warnings are often ignored. They want to design warnings to be effective but not interrupt people’s main tasks. In this dissertation, I propose a framework named the Leveled Human Behavior Warning (LHBW) model. We group computer warning designs and evaluations into five levels: warning stimuli, warning perception, warning storage and memory retrieval, decision-making, and behavior. The …

Homonymy And The Comparability Of Goods In Aristotle, Robert Duncan

Dissertations

My dissertation will draw attention to an underexplored problem in Aristotle's theory of the good and advance two alternative proposals about how it can be solved. Aristotle endorses an inconsistent triad of premises concerning homonymy, comparability, and goodness. First, he argues that the good is homonymous: there is no single characteristic, goodness, which is shared by all good things. Rather, he argues that different kinds of good things require different accounts specifying what it is for them to be good. Second, he holds that homonyms are incomparable. If two things are homonymously F, then we are not entitled to claim …

Undoing Giftedness: Considering Adolescent Latina Identity Performativity In United States Public Schools, Jenna Nelson

Dissertations

This dissertation employs a series of literary genres to navigate the reader through the importance of complicating normalized notions of giftedness and Latina identity as well as the interrogating the complexity of subjectivities. Using post qualitative inquiry (St. Pierre, 2014), I blend writing practices typically used in fiction and in theoretical inquiry. Fiction writing such as narratives, scriptwriting, poetry, visual-art, journaling, and poetry are implemented to analyze and represent the individuals in this inquiry. This dissertation consists of three Acts and an Intermission to carry the reader through the various stages of my inquiry. Through writing the dissertation in this …

Analyzing Student-Teacher Relationships Of Cariño And Confianza And Their Impact On Academic Engagement By Latino Males, Nereida Robles Vasquez

Dissertations

Latinos attending California’s public schools often feel disconnected, unwelcome, and unsafe. This qualitative interview study uses the grounded theory approach to provide a platform for the voices of Latino male high school students to explain their experiences. This approach allows for understanding of why a large number of them are transferred from their schools to alternative settings which in turn greatly limit and often prevent them from continuing their education. Many describe experiences of rejection and hostility causing them to drop out, or to have no interest in furthering their education. Findings illustrate the impact of their perception of Required …

The Effects Of Using Expressive Intervention In Group Counseling On Acculturative Stress And Depressive Symptoms Among Korean Immigrant Women In South And Central Texas :A N Experimental Study, Sun-Kyung Chung

Dissertations

This study evaluated the relationship between acculturative stress and depressive symptoms in Korean immigrant women and evaluated the use of expressive group counseling interventions for these women's acculturative stress and depressive symptoms. Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. The intervention group received a total of four sessions of expressive group counseling interventions while the control group was asked to color pictures at home. Pearson correlations found statically significant relationships between acculturative stress and depressive symptoms in Korean immigrant women. The results of a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicated no statistically significant difference in the effect …

Reading As A Disclosure Of The Thoughts Of The Heart: Proto-Halakhic Reuse And Appropriation Between Torah And The Prophets, Kenneth Bergland

Dissertations

How should we then live? This has been the guiding question throughout the study. In a world that offers a myriad of answers to this one question, I have sought the answer in the Bible, more specifically in the Hebrew part of the Bible. Instead of asking the straightforward question as to how the Bible can function as norm for contemporary ethics, the following discussion is based on the assumption that an authentic reading and appropriation of the text needs both to understand and to emulate the ways in which the biblical authors read the Bible. While scholars have examined …

A Theory Base And Mission-Sending Model For The South American Division Of The Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Silvano Barbosa

Dissertations

Problem

Effective missionary work depends on a combination of three preconditions, equally indispensable: (1) a body of committed and adaptable personnel who are prepared to transmit to another cultural group the relevance of the Christian message; (2) an organization that is equipped to recruit, train, fund, send, and care for such a missionary force; and (3) sustained access to international unreached areas. Throughout its history, the missionary movement has been based on these three factors and the absence of one or more of them has resulted in less than optimum achievement and has sometimes led to failure. In 2014 the …

Intercultural Proficiency Of Principals Leading Ib Schools In Urban America, Ahlam Bazzi Moughania

Dissertations

This study, based on the qualitatively rendered experiences and perceptions of racially or ethnically diverse school principals leading International Baccalaureate (IB) public schools in the urban America, argues that intercultural proficiency development and intersectionality of race/ethnicity and gender identity influence school leadership practice. To make this point, I draw on the intercultural competence theoretical framework, intersectionality, and culturally responsive school leadership. Through a qualitative methodology, a comparative three-case study is identified from a larger sample of IB schools reported to be favorably employing the Learner Profile, a learner framework fostering the development intercultural understanding. Interview with school principal and visuals …

How Does The Classroom Teacher Promote Academic Success In The Spanish Native Speaker Class: A Study Of Classroom Teachers' Perceptions Of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy In The Spanish Native Speaker Course At The High School Level, Michael Angelo Ayala

Dissertations

The achievement gap between Latino and White students is a significant problem, prompting the need to address the cultural conflicts that hinder relationships and compromise learning opportunities for Latino students in the United States. This exploratory qualitative study focused on Spanish Native Speaker (SNS) teachers' perceptions and use of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) at the high school level. Framed with theory related to CRP, data were collected through interviews and classroom observations with four SNS teachers who teach a SNS class at various high schools in the suburbs of Cook County. A thematic analysis and an analysis using Herrera's (2010) …

Critical Conversations With Suburban Administrative Leaders On Special Education Disproportionality: Case Studies Of Suburban School Districts, Jennifer Colleen Sterpin

Dissertations

This dissertation study explored high school administrators' beliefs about why racial disproportionality exists, sought to understand the local practices that contribute to disproportionality, and identified interventions and supports that impact disproportionality in the special education referral, eligibility, and placement process. Research shows that students who are disproportionately represented in special education are negatively affected by factors such as stigmatization, substandard instruction, zero tolerance policies, and isolation from the general education setting (Sullivan, Kozleski, & Smith, 2008). Administrators were invited to participate in this study because they have a significant impact on student achievement and system-wide changes in schools.

This research …

Theology And The City In Africa: The Significance Of Contemporary African Urban Experience For Theological Reflection, Dominic Fungai Tomuseni

Dissertations

In African theology, experience is the leading source for theological reflection, ahead of scripture and Tradition. Since the last quarter of the 19th Century, colonialism has shaped African experience such that today, it is a major factor in theological reflections and other intellectual enterprises from the continent. Much African theology understands contemporary African experience as one of disruption of a "true" or pre-colonial African experience by European colonial forces. Hence, Contemporary African Theology has been about recognition and recovery of pre-colonial African experience or rehabilitation of Africa from effects of colonialism. However, such a view of colonial experience excludes and …

Characterization Of Cross-Genre Writing Skills In Children With And Without Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Role Of Language, Handwriting, And Cognitive Processing, Elizabeth Hilvert

Dissertations

It has been estimated that writing is one of the most significant academic problems for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), with as many as 60% of children having a learning disability in writing (Mayes & Calhoun, 2008). The majority of evidence demonstrating this achievement gap, however, comes from research finding global writing deficits, using standardized tests. As a result, a number of questions remain about how the texts constructed by children with ASD specifically align or deviate from typical development. For instance, do these texts differ in terms of vocabulary, grammar, or structure? Are children with ASD better at …

Shaping Black Boys: Exploring School Construction Of Masculinity And The Impact On Black Male Scholastic Perceptions Toward Academic Achievement And Schooling, Kisha V. Jenkins

Dissertations

African American boys face unique challenges. They are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than any other racial group (Losen, 2015). Equally disturbing, African American male students are largely suspended for more subjective and ambiguous reasons such as appearing “threatening or disrespectful” (Verdugo, 2007, p. 60). Research on teacher bias in the classroom has indicated that “African American males are generally viewed as possessing characteristics incongruent with academic success (e.g., laziness), valuing athletics over academic accomplishments, and having a propensity toward aggression and violence” (Thomas & Stevenson, 2009, p. 162). These issues experienced by African American males …

A Mixed Methods Evaluation Of The Social Emotional Needs Of Middle School Students, Vicky Karahalios

Dissertations

Middle school is a critical transition for all school-aged youth. On a personal level they experience rapid changes across several areas of development. Their environment simultaneously adapts as schools’ expectations seem greater and social pressures arise. During this juncture, they are more vulnerable to academic and psychological difficulties. Research findings demonstrate how positive school climates have the ability to moderate the detrimental effects of middle school students’ self-criticism on internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Kuperminc, Leadbeater, & Blatt, 2001). Historically schools have responded to the social emotional challenges students face at an individual level, however these finding points to the importance …

An Investigation Into Factors Which Explain The Scores And Voting Patterns Of The Eurovision Song Contest., Oisín Leonard

Dissertations

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is an annual international television song competition. Participating countries send a group or individual artist to perform an original song at the competition. The winner is decided by all participating countries using a voting system that incorporates both a public televote and an expert jury vote. Countries are excluded from voting for their entry and the country with the highest score wins. A high scoring performance and the voting patterns of the ESC can be explained by a complex set of factors. These factors can be divided into three groups; performance factors, competition factors and …

Image Classification Using Bag-Of-Visual-Words Model, Kaiqiang Huang

Dissertations

Recently, with the explosive growth of digital technologies, there has been a rapid proliferation of the size of image collection. The technique of supervised image clas sification has been widely applied in many domains in order to organize, search, and retrieve images. However, the traditional feature extraction approaches yield the poor classification accuracy. Therefore, the Bag-of-visual-words model, inspired by Bag-of Words model in document classification, was used to present images with the local descriptors for image classification, and also it performs well in some fields. This research provides the empirical evidence to prove that the BoVW model outperforms the traditional …

Talking About Patients: Nurses' Language Use During Hand-Offs, Yvonne Barthel Ford

Dissertations

Miscommunication during end of shift hand-offs between hospital nurses has been implicated as a source of errors in patient care, yet little research evaluates the structure of language during communication in an attempt to understand potential communication errors. Although the functions and meaning of hand-offs for nurses has previously been examined, there is little information about the current state of the structure and language of hand-offs. This research begins to fill that gap in by using genre analysis of transcripts of 43 end-of-shift hand-offs between nurses at four hospitals in the Midwestern United States.

Two analytic techniques common in linguistics …

Homicide And The World Religions, Allen Shamow

Dissertations

Cross-national studies seeking to explain the variation in rates of homicide have examined a multitude of factors including religion, but fewer studies have examined how religion may influence homicide through a society’s institutional structure. Social institutions include entities such as the economy, the family, the political structure, and educational system; and these institutions serve as guides for human action and behavior. Through its emphasis on values, religion may influence the interests and legitimize the functioning within societal institutions. In the present study, I examine how the major world religions of Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism may …

Latino Male College Students' Identities, Psychological Stress, And Coping Mechanisms, Ana E. Ramirez

Dissertations

Latino male college students’ identities impact their personal experiences, academic achievement, and well-being. This qualitative study uses a narrative inquiry approach to research Latino male college students’ racial and ethnic, gender, and academic identities and to investigate how these identities impact their psychological stress and the coping mechanisms they implement to manage their stress. Latino males undergo an identity development in which they engage in negotiating their gender identities in order to prioritize higher education academic requirements. When Latino males are determined to achieve a college degree, they are able to adjust their familism gender role expectations and shift their …

Alabama Classroom Teachers Who Participated In Arts Integration Workshops And Their Implementation Of Music Into The Core Curriculum, Laurie Martin

Dissertations

Effective teachers employ instructional strategies that enhance student engagement and can positively affect student learning. This qualitative study investigated the instructional practices and experiences of classroom teacher who implement music into the academic lesson to increase student engagement and enhance learning.