Digital Commons Network^™

Permission To Play: A District's Initiative To Innovate Kindergarten And Promote Developmentally Appropriate Practices, Cristin Mcdonough

Dissertations and Theses

Kindergarten's original purpose was to promote socialization skills for young children using play. However, recent research has shown an increased focus on teaching literacy and math skills, combined with pronounced increases in more advanced academic tasks and activities. Given this shift in kindergarten, as well as a lack of professional development for teachers to assist them in promoting developmentally appropriate practices, the Kindergarten Innovation Cohort was created in the Portland School District to address these needs for both students and teachers. Using findings from interviews and field notes, the current study addresses the question: What does the implementation of the …

Latine Dual Language Bilingual Education Teachers' Work Experiences, Nelly Noemi Patiño Cabrera

Dissertations and Theses

Given the increasing concern about the scarcity of Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) teachers, it is crucial to understand the trends in teacher retention and attrition from the perspective of DLBE teachers themselves. DLBE teachers departing from their jobs imposes a significant burden on schools and students and affects the implementation of DLBE programs. To delve into this issue, this critical qualitative study focused on the work experiences of Latine K-5 Spanish/English DLBE teachers. Specifically, this study involved six participants divided into two groups of DLBE teachers in the teaching trajectory: three Latine K-5 Spanish/English DLBE teachers currently teaching in …

Sustainable Leadership During Turbulent Times, Paul Marietta

Dissertations and Theses

Teachers, administrators, and staff in schools are leaving the profession at unprecedented rates. The principal pipeline has significantly decreased in the past years and our public school system is at a breaking point. Now more than ever, we need to focus on sustainable leadership during turbulent times and helping the organization, students, families, teachers-and also their leaders-thrive. This dissertation proposal follows the Portland State University (PSU) multi-paper format which comprises a compilation of three papers in a journal article style format, with sole or multiple authors, and although PSU policy does not require it, the topic of the papers in …

Exploring Online Feminist Communities And The Male Allyship Experience, Josephine Saighoe

Dissertations and Theses

There has been a growing involvement of men in the feminist cause. Nonetheless, their own experiences as self-identified feminist allies have received inadequate attention within the academic research. Just like female activists, men who identify as feminist activists also make use of such digital platforms to support the activism and make significant contributions to the feminist discourse. In view of this, this study explores the experiences of Ghanaian male feminist allies in addition to delving into their experiences as feminist activists in the digital world and how they navigate the challenges that come with aligning themselves with this cause. Through …

A Pilot Study Exploring The Effectiveness And Feasibilty Of The Peers® Intervention In A Rural/Non-Metropolitan Setting, Blake Elvrum Warner

Dissertations and Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is classified as a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication and restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior. Autistic adolescents often experience a myriad of mental health difficulties which are worsened by lower overall levels of social support. Higher rates of mental health difficulties are reported in rural and non-metropolitan areas where resources are less readily available. Interventions aimed at increasing social skills in autistic adolescents have proven to be an effective way to increase levels of social interaction and support. The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) intervention was developed …

Therapist Engagement With Patient Nonverbal Behavior: Exploring These Interactions As A Mechanism Of Change In Virtual And In-Person Short-Term Psychotherapy, Elliana Sheriwn

Dissertations and Theses

The individual (intrapsychic) and dyadic (interpersonal) implications of nonverbal behavior have kindled interest among psychologists for decades. Many researchers and clinicians have studied nonverbal communication in the context of attachment and moment-to-moment interactions between parent and infant (Stern, 1977; Beebe et al., 2000). Theorists have also explored nonverbal behavior in the clinical setting as a dynamic relational dimension co-created by patient and therapist (Freedman and Lavendar, 1995). Although the extant literature highlights how nonverbal communication can inform psychotherapy outcome (e.g., by fostering empathy and building rapport), the topic of therapist engagement with patient nonverbal behavior—specifically, how these interactions serve as …

Reporting On Un Security Council: Decoding Media Bias, Alessandra Loiero

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores Western media's representation of the United Nations (UN), focusing on the Security Council's role in global conflict resolution. It examines how UN-accredited correspondents perceive the effectiveness of the Security Council, particularly when the body faces deadlock. The study employs text analysis techniques to identify biases and perceptions in media coverage, using The New York Times' reporting on the Ukraine conflict as a case study. It illuminates framing effects in journalistic narratives, revealing how journalists subtly interject their views when reporting, often revealing unrealistic expectations and shedding light on the limitations of the UN's mandate or its inability …

Explaining The U.S Failure In Afghanistan, Edwar Ramirez

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis offers a comprehensive analysis of the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan spanning multiple administrations from Obama to Biden, contextualizing it within broader shifts in American interventionism since the Cold War. An examination of the Obama, Trump, and Biden eras, delineates the complexities of military interventions, nation-building endeavors, the limitations of incrementalism in addressing the multifaceted challenges of conflict resolution, and the challenges of maintaining stability in conflict regions while avoiding prolonged military engagements. Ultimately, it advocates for a comprehensive and more flexible approach to foreign policy, balancing idealistic aspirations with pragmatic considerations to safeguard national interests, …

The Menstrual Cycle In Psychotherapy: Interventions, Therapist Engagement, And Blind Spots, Rozita Alaluf

Dissertations and Theses

There is a dearth of literature on psychotherapy and menstruation, except for the treatment and diagnosis of issues associated with premenstrual distress. This study aimed to bridge this gap by investigating the frequency and context of discussions about the menstrual cycle, the factors influencing therapists’ engagement with this topic, and the therapeutic approaches utilized to address the menstrual cycle within psychotherapy.

In phase 1, 118 psychotherapists from various theoretical backgrounds completed a survey on menstruation in clinical practice. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. In phase 2, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 7 psychotherapists, primarily identifying their theoretical orientation …

Motherhood In Crisis: A Qualitative Study Of First-Time Mothers Diagnosed With Breast Cancer, Tamzin M. Baker

Dissertations and Theses

The aim of this study is to explore the psychological impact of pregnancy-associated breast cancer (PABC) on a first-time mother’s identity. What effects does life-threatening illness have on the development of maternal identity and connection? This question was explored with a sample of six mothers via semi-structured interview and self-report measure with the aim to shed light on a scarcely studied phenomenon that is predicted to affect a greater number of mothers in the future. These research questions were explored through Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith et al., 2009) resulting in group experiential themes and three theoretical constructs: (1) a …

The Development Of A Computerized Text Analysis Measure Of Differentiation Relatedness: A Pilot Study, Liang Yi Wong

Dissertations and Theses

Self-definition and relatedness are considered two important processes for psychological development. Self-definition refers to an individual’s ability to maintain a stable, agentic, integrated sense of self that is differentiated from others. Relatedness refers to one’s ability to establish and maintain mutually reciprocal, stable, interpersonal relationships. Research shows that impairments in self-definition and relatedness are connected with various forms of personality and psychiatric disorders. Assessing for these impairments may allow clinicians and researchers to identity relevant factors that lead to therapeutic change. One way to assess for self-definition and relatedness is by understanding an individual’s description of self and others, which …

Making Sense Of The Space Between: A Qualitative Study Of Therapist’S Experience And Use Of Therapeutic Enactments, Paul Ballantyne Lafreniere

Dissertations and Theses

This study sought to examine a particular category of technical challenge in therapy: enactments. Enactments, broadly defined, are moments or stretches of time in therapy where both the patient and therapist cannot put their conflicts into words, and instead act them out within the therapeutic milieu. These phenomena frequently elicit shame and guilt on the part of the therapist, and can prove detrimental to treatment. Equally, however, investigation of these moments within treatment can be of considerable clinical utility. In this qualitative phenomenological study, 6 therapists were interviewed about their experiences working with enactments in clinical practice. The strategies which …

Adult Play And Its Relations To The Working Alliance And Psychosocial Dysfunction In Short-Term Psychotherapy, Charlotte B. Gendron

Dissertations and Theses

The importance of play in child development is well-documented: the capacity to play is associated with psychological health, and the cognitive and affective processes involved in play, such as fantasy, symbolism, narrative organization, divergent thinking, and affective expression, relate to areas of adaptive functioning. Research also illustrates that the inability to play is associated with adverse experiences in children, and that play therapy can facilitate the development of play and subsequent psychological health. In addition to its relation to psychological health, the capacity to play in childhood is inextricably linked to the infant-caregiver relationship. There is less literature on what …

The Character Of The Narrator: The Historiography Of Hernan Diaz's Trust And Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive, Sean Mcdonaugh

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

America’S Enabler: How Colson Whitehead’S The Underground Railroad Contributes To Racial Inertia, Cherif Ba

Dissertations and Theses

Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad was met with near universal acclaim and enjoys regard as an important work which illustrates the difficulty and horror that was black life under chattel slavery. This essay argues that despite the work’s stated purpose, its ultimate, if unintended effect is to reify the current racial hierarchy. Drawing primarily from current events and an Afropessimist framework, I attempt to illustrate how this work, and others like it, occupy a specific space in the cultural zeitgeist bent to a specific purpose: obfuscating contemporary liberalism’s current transgressions from its past ones and maintaining a social stratum with …

From Bushwick To Portland: Bori Girls Of The Diaspora Revolutionizing The Puerto Rican Coming-Of-Age Narrative, Lily V. Alvarado

Dissertations and Theses

Trailblazing Puerto Rican women in the diaspora have challenged dominant imagery and fought against patriarchy, U.S. imperialism, and white supremacy through their writing. Writers like Esmeralda Santiago and Nicholasa Mohr have transformed the literary canon via the bildungsroman, highlighting the unique struggles of Boricua girlhood and proving that our stories matter. Two prominent female Boricua writers today, Elisabet Velasquez and Gabby Rivera, have raised the baton that has been passed down to them and revolutionized the Diasporican literary canon. In their respective texts, When We Make It: A Nuyorican Novel and Juliet Takes a Breath, Velasquez and Rivera highlight the …

Complexities Of The Underrecognized: Conceptualizing Erasure And Exposure In Queer Caribbean Narratives, Noemi Saladin

Dissertations and Theses

Queer is not explicitly about homosexuality, it is questioning orientations, identity, and the binary. This work aims to explore the multivalence of erasure and exposure in queer Caribbean narratives, which deconstructs or reconstructs stereotypes, sexuality, and identity. Erasure is defined as the exclusion or suppression of a member of the LGBTQ+ community in history and the present time due to differences in their gender orientation, sexuality, and sexual preference. Exposure allows these suppressed voices to be lifted and rejoiced through inclusivity and awareness. Colonization erased gender diversity in the Caribbean, instilling their Christianity and heteronormative beliefs. Colonization did not only …

An Examination Of The Degree To Which The Bia Models Representative Bureaucracy In Selected Lakota Communities, Melissa Eagle Bear

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation focuses on representative bureaucracy as it applies to the administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and experienced by Lakota people within two Indian reservation communities. There is limited research on the theory and practice of representative bureaucracy within the context of BIA services. This qualitative study rests on the assumption that representative bureaucracy would lead to positive policy outcomes for Indian people. This research focuses on three specific areas of representative bureaucracy: passive, symbolic, and active representation. This phenomenological research takes as given the centrality of a Lakota epistemology: the beliefs, values and practices embodied in …

Crisis Intervention Model Effectiveness In South Dakota City And Rural Schools, Nicole Ann Bechen

Dissertations and Theses

Little information is known on crisis prevention and intervention plans in schools across South Dakota. A review of the existent literature revealed gaps within school-based crisis intervention models, their objectives, and their effectiveness in addressing the psychological and physical safety needs of students, staff, teachers, families, and community members. Gaps in understanding rural crisis response were noted. The purpose of this study was to assess whether crisis prevention and intervention plans in South Dakota schools adequately protected students, staff, families, and community members. To achieve this, a stratified random sample of 53 PreK-12 public schools in the state of South …

Cognitive Engagement During Group Learning Activities In Chemistry Courses: An Analysis Of Student Discourse, Safaa Youssef El-Mansy

Dissertations and Theses

As educators, our goal is to help our students be successful, but in order to accomplish this, we need to understand what factors contribute to student success. One factor, small-group active learning, has been correlated to improved academic outcomes; however, the magnitude of this improvement can vary across different courses, different types of group work, and even across courses that use the same group work structure. Therefore, it is important to understand what aspects of group work contribute to its effectiveness. The work presented in this dissertation investigated one specific aspect: students’ cognitive engagement. This was done by analyzing the …

Critical Analysis Of Anti-Asian Hate In The News, Benardo Douglas Relampagos

Dissertations and Theses

Since 2019, the United States has had an increase in violence against Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities along with an increase of mainstream anti-Asian racist rhetoric. Between 2021 and 2022, The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism reported an overall 164% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. While racism against black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities has been the topic of an ever-growing body of critical discourse, prior to 2019 few publications had addressed racism and injustice regarding language choices and discourse in the context of anti-Asian rhetoric in the US, specifically regarding the intersection of language …

A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Nasa's Instagram Account, Danica Lynn Tomber

Dissertations and Theses

In an increasingly interconnected society where science and technology are advancing at a rapid pace, knowledge dissemination, specifically in terms of public engagement and popularization, must be both encouraged and critically evaluated. As an internationally recognized government agency that is dedicated to the advancement of space exploration and present on several social media platforms, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provides a useful lens from which to analyze large-scale messaging of multimodal scientific information. Although there is a substantial amount of linguistic research into political and government-based messaging in social media, there is not much literature on the …

The Affective Discourses Of Eviction: Right To Counsel In New York City, Hadley Savana Bates

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the interrelationships of urban policy, affect, and power through a critical discourse analysis of New York City's "Universal Access to Legal Services" / "Right to Counsel" ordinance, a 2017 initiative that has persisted amidst the evolving landscape of eviction diversion following the outbreak of Covid-19. By examining archival documents regarding the groundbreaking policy, this research reveals how affective discourses regarding vulnerability, stress, and solidarity situate political actors in relation to urban policy, political movement, and the material conditions of survival. Drawing upon critical policy studies and affect theory, this study underscores the affective dimensions of policy mobility …

The Radical Relationality Of Complex Partnerships: Community-Member Experiences In Critical Community-Based Learning, Amie Riley

Dissertations and Theses

Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical community-based learning (CBL) in higher education offers a praxis for engaging the demanding pedagogical and community challenges we face. When CBL is implemented as both a critical and sustainability pedagogy, as a strategy for social change, the relationships created by CBL partnerships have the potential to generate transformational outcomes for all partnership agents. Using a critical complexity theoretical framework, a bricolage of complexity science and critical theory, this critical qualitative study sought to understand the systemic patterns and behaviors of a community-based learning partnership by elevating community-member voices. …

Beyond First Thoughts: Understanding The Essence Of Equitable Decision-Making, A Phenomenological Study, White Practitioners As Equitable Educational Decision-Makers, Zinnia Un

Dissertations and Theses

This interpretive phenomenological study aims to understand the lived experience of White educational decision-makers (EDMs) as they make equitable decisions for racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse (RCLD) students. Six decades after the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, the landscape of American education changed. Many scholars theorized the impact of colorblindness in decision-making and the connection to disproportionate outcomes for RCLD students.

The Student Success Act (2019) brings an additional $1 billion in investment to schools in Oregon annually. This allocation of school resources required an initial and ongoing community engagement process to ensure funding supports well-rounded education …

Care Remittances: Farmworkers' Political Knowledge And Hemispheric Information Practices During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jennifer Martinez-Medina

Dissertations and Theses

Information is the building block of democracy. Yet, dominant political theories assume different groups within the political system acquire, process, and use information similarly, even as the golden age of globalization has sparked new forms of cross-border political exchanges. Despite a flourishing literature by interdisciplinary social scientists, gaps remain in our understanding of how transnational information circuits shape political knowledge and democratic judgments of groups in host and home countries, especially among so-called "information poor" agricultural workers who often live in precarious conditions. Using a mixed-methods analysis based on the community-engaged Oregon COVID-19 Farmworker Study (OR COFS) and interviews with …

Evaluation Of A Place-Based Asthma Reduction Initiative On Asthma-Related Morbidity Among Children In East Harlem And The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Health Care Utilization And Medication Adherence Among Medicaid-Enrolled Children, Sarah C. Walters

Dissertations and Theses

Background: In New York City, asthma continues to be the leading cause of hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits among children, and disproportionally burdens Black and Latino children in low-income neighborhoods. Place-based, or geographically targeted, programs offer upstream strategies for addressing public health issues in these underserved neighborhoods, and given their targeted nature, quasi-experimental or other observational methods are needed to rigorously evaluate their impact. This dissertation uses multiple methodological approaches to assess the impact of the East Harlem Asthma Center of Excellence (EHACE) – an equity-focused, multi-faceted, place-based asthma mitigation initiative in the East Harlem neighborhood of a New …

Experiences Of People With Serious Mental Illness Seeking Services At Community Mental Health Centers During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Emily Leickly

Dissertations and Theses

Community mental health centers (CMHCs) have been underfunded and overburdened since Reagan-era disinvestment and the United States' move toward neoliberalism. Rates of mental illness have been rising consistently, particularly in Oregon, as CMHCs face continuing financial pressures and staff retention issues. This was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, we are still trying to understand the ongoing pandemic's impact on people with serious mental illnesses (SMI). Most of the studies in this area thus far are quantitative, and first-hand accounts of the pandemic from people with SMI are largely absent. Additionally, research in this area fails to draw on critical alternative …

Main, Mediated, And Moderated Effects Of Participating In An After-School Social And Emotional Learning Program On Young Children's Development Of Social-Emotional Skills, Amy L. Cordier

Dissertations and Theses

Young children's social and emotional skills (SE skills) are highly predictive of the ease with which they transition to kindergarten as well as their success in the K-12 school system and in life after graduation. Children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often enter kindergarten with less well-developed SE skills and lag their peers throughout their school careers. Studies of social-emotional learning (SEL) programs indicate that these programs are successful in teaching SE skills, both in school and in after-school programs. However, less is known about the mechanisms of changes through which SEL programs improve children's SE skills and for …

Increasing Access To Doulas In Oregon: A Delphi Study, Courtney Elizabeth Crane

Dissertations and Theses

Doulas are trained, nonmedical support professionals that provide continuous emotional, informational, physical, and practical support before, during, and after childbirth. Doula care has been shown to reduce the cost of birth-related healthcare, reduce adverse birth outcomes, and increase patient satisfaction and positive birth experience. In 2011 Oregon became the first state to authorize payment expenditures of doula care through Medicaid as a strategy to reduce birth-related health disparities and increase culturally and linguistically appropriate healthcare delivery. The intention of the set of policies and administrative rules was to mandate access to doulas and other types of Traditional Health Workers (THWs) …