Digital Commons Network^™

Transitions To U.S. Private Schools: Perceptions Of Six Immigrant Elementary School Boys, Philip Manwell

Doctoral Dissertations

"The United States is faced with the privilege and challenge of educating immigrant children, not only in a second language and other skills, but also in the many and varied dimensions of life in this country" (London, 1990; p. 287).

Whether these children have fled rigid dictatorial regimes or wars, whether they came to the U.S. directly or spent time in refugee camps or detention centers, whether they have little more than what they are wearing at the time, or their families have planned the migration carefully, leaving their countries of origin legally and peacefully, bringing currency and the promise …

Final Vows: Organizational Dilemmas And Emergent Status-Reconstruction Of The Contemporary American Nun, Mary Anne Wichroski

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effects of societal, institutional, and structural change on the status of Roman Catholic nuns. Based on interviews with 34 members of female religious orders, archival materials, Church documents, and participant observation, two case study orders (apostolic and cloistered) are compared in terms of structural change since Vatican II and their relative viability in the 1990s. As members of declining organizations, apostolic sisters are reconstructing their roles by drawing upon sources that pre-date formal hierarchical structures, as well as aspects of gender-status. Although active sisters show some congruence with feminist beliefs on work-related issues, other aspects of …

Islands Of Deutschtum: German Americans In Manchester, New Hampshire And Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1870-1942, Robert Paul Mccaffery

Doctoral Dissertations

The history of the German-American communities of Manchester, New Hampshire and Lawrence, Massachusetts raises several important issues about German immigration to the United States. Comprising only a small percentage of the population of the two cities German immigrants founded a distinctive culture--islands of Deutschtum--as vibrant as those in the "German belt" of the Midwest. The historiography has generally concluded that German-Americans could not unite in common cause, and that World War I ended German culture in America. However, not only did Germans in Manchester and Lawrence unite, but they maintained Deutschtum through World War I into World War II.

Several …

Let Us Now Praise Famous Students: A Qualitative Study Of High School Students With Learning Disabilities, Judith Elizabeth Day

Doctoral Dissertations

This study used qualitative methodology in order to gain understanding of the school lives of high school students with learning disabilities in the areas of reading and writing. Two resource room sections of students were observed, using methods of participant observation over a year long period and four case studies of students from these sections were conducted. Classroom work of all students was studied and special education files of those chosen as case studies were reviewed. Students and school personnel involved in the education of the students were interviewed.

Research findings suggested that, despite years of intervention, high school students …

Becoming Visionary: Reading And Living In The Existential Mode, Michael Anthony Reardon

Doctoral Dissertations

This study identifies, defines and analyzes a sub-genre of modern Anglo-American fiction distinguished by the presence of "visionary" characters, who possess the ability to see acutely into the contingency and anguish of the human condition in this world rather than--as with the popular conception of "visionary"--our potentialities in another. Their experience of vision flows from an "existential moment," a type of epiphany which discloses the essential Nothingness that exists beneath the systems, structures, attitudes and assumptions through which we attempt to order our daily lives. Most importantly, the visionary's heightened consciousness leads to an existence defined by individual choice, responsibility …

A Computer Model Of The Role Of Text Integration In The Solution Of Arithmetic Word Problems, Mark David Leblanc

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding arithmetic word problems involves a complex interaction of text comprehension and mathematical processes. This work presents a computer model of the hypothesized processes that are required of a young student solving arithmetic word problems, including the processes of sentence-level leading and text integration. Unlike previous computer simulations of word problem solving, which neglect the early stages of text processing, this model forces a detailed consideration of the linguistic process, which is being increasingly recognized as a primary source of difficulty. Three experiments were conducted to isolate critical test comprehension processes. Children's probability of solution was analyzed in regression analyses …

Culturally Responsive Talk Between A Second-Grade Teacher And Hawaiian Children During Writing Workshop, John Timothy Rynkofs

Doctoral Dissertations

This study addresses issues of linguistic and cultural differences in the context of writing workshop in a second grade classroom in Hawaii. The major purpose of the study was to look at the ways a native born teacher responds orally to her students who share her own bidialectical background. Most of the students are part-Hawaiian and speak a nonprestigious dialect called Hawaii Creole English (HCE) as their primary language and standard English (SE) as their secondary language. Not only do these students speak a dialect particular to the Hawaiian Islands, but their classroom interactions can be strikingly different from those …

A Participatory Study Of The Self-Identity Of Kibei Nisei Men: A Sub Group Of Second Generation Japanese American Men, William T. Masuda

Doctoral Dissertations

At one time, the Kibei were perceived as "a minority within a minority" (Me Williams, 1944: 322) who were "distrusted in both America and Japan" (1944:321). But today, the Kibei are hardly distinguishable from the Nisei as they both enter the evening of their lives. Raised in both America and Japan, but strongly influenced in their formative years by Japanese cultural values and beliefs, they were often perceived differently by their own family, by the Japanese American community, and by the American community at large. The apparent marginality of this group, living on the fringes of or in the space …

Someone Shot The Rainbow: Emergent Writing Patterns Of Securely And Insecurely Attached, Inner-City First Graders, Cindy Matthews

Doctoral Dissertations

The mother or primary caretaker of an infant establishes a communicative bond which has long-term implications for the child as a symbolizer and learner. John Bowlby's theory of attachment claims the mother is the secure base from which an infant, and later the child, can explore and master her environment, develop a sense of autonomy, and relate to peers. Attachment theory sheds light on the process and products of inner-city, first-grade children's written symbolization, yielding many patterns cogent to the study of emergent literacy.

Fifty-nine first graders participated in a study involving projective measures of attachment and language ability and …

On Her Mouth You Kiss Your Own: Lesbian Conversations In Exile, 1924-1936, Luita Deane Spangler

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the work of four American lesbian expatriate novelists living and writing in Paris in the years between the two World Wars. Altogether six novels are discussed: The Uncertain Feast (1924), The Happy Failure (1925), and This Way Up (1927) by Solita Solano; The Cubical City (1925) by Janet Flanner; The One Who Is Legion (1930) by Natalie Clifford Barney; and Nightwood (1936) by Djuna Barnes.

Guided by recent conjectures on the significance of sexuality and gender development proposed by such feminist theorists as Luce Irigaray and Monique Wittig, this dissertation explores these six novels for evidence of …

Genetic And Morphological Variation And Differentiation Of South Korean Natural Populations Of Wild Soybean, Glycine Soja Sieb And Zucc, Hongrun Yu

Doctoral Dissertations

Genetic variation is the basis of crop improvement. As genetic background narrows in the cultivated germplasm, genes need to be introduced from new sources. Glycine soja is a wild relative of the cultivated soybean, glycine max (L.) Merr. It can be used in soybean breeding. Evaluation of wild soybean populations is not only necessary for use in cultivar improvement, will also provide information about origin, migration, evolution and natural selection of this species. Seeds were collected from six natural populations in South Korea to study the genetic variation and differentiation of wild soybean.

The study was divided into two parts: …

Postmodernism As The Sociocultural Deconstruction Of Modernity, Steven Craig Ward

Doctoral Dissertations

This work seeks to provide a description of the theoretical positions and cultural expressions of postmodernism and to provide a sociological critique of its conclusions. The work uses the writings of the Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Lacan, and Baudrillard, as well as arguments in neo-pop art and postmodern architecture, as representatives of the postmodern position on the issues of referentiality, subjectivity, and rationality. Postmodernism is treated as a skeptical theoretical and cultural system which levels all ideational distinctions between belief and knowledge and truth and rhetoric. This work argues that a social or constructivist epistemology can provide a different way of …

Writing Relationships: Reading Students, Reading Ourselves, Lad Tobin

Doctoral Dissertations

If we want to understand how students learn to write in a college composition course, we need to pay more attention to the context in which that writing and the teacher's reading occurs. What we need is a definition of context broad enough to account for the interactive and dialectical nature of the composing and reading processes, but still narrow enough to tell us what not to take into account. My argument in this dissertation is that we can best accomplish this by viewing context in composition as primarily determined by the interpersonal, classroom relationships--between the student and teacher, between …

Vivencias: Writing As A Way Into A New Language And Culture, Meg Joanna Peterson-Gonzalez

Doctoral Dissertations

Because of its relation to thinking processes, writing has been used "across the curriculum" to promote learning in different subject areas. Writing allows for revision and reflection, forces authors to be more specific because of its different context, and imposes organization through conventional forms. Writing has not been used extensively however, in second language teaching. It is viewed, rather, as a skill to be practiced and its potential to catalize language learning has remained largely untapped. Writing has been used in cross-cultural training, but generally this use takes the form of journals kept in the native language, which, while valuable …

Playful Literacy: First-Graders As Meaning-Makers In The Literacies Of Play, The Creative Arts, And The Language Arts, Judith Macdonald Fueyo

Doctoral Dissertations

This ethnographic study of a first grade classroom examines the interdependence and synergism of multiple symbol systems. Children's oral language, their idiosyncratic use of time and space in the classroom, as well as their play and artmaking all suggest dynamic interrelationships with their writing. Simply put, the study asks, How do play, work in the creative arts, and the language arts influence each other?

Historically, language arts studies have been verbocentric. Such an exclusively verbal conception of language arts limits expressive potential in general, and in particular, limits writing development. Nearly a decade ago, Janet Emig asked writing researchers, "...for …

Breaking The Rules: Teaching And Learning Writing In The High School, Ann Bruthwell Vibert

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the development of student- and process-centered writing classrooms within the context of a traditionally structured, curriculum-centered high school. The focus of the study is on how teachers and students experience and address contradictions between assumptions implicit in writing process pedagogy and assumptions implicit in the structure and organization of the high school.

An eight-month ethnography of two high school English classrooms, the study is a descriptive narrative of the classroom and school events punctuated by the reflective comments of teachers and students in intensive and extensive interviews. The classrooms are "placed" within the school, the teachers within …

Charisma As Attachment To The Divine: Some Hasidic Principles For Comparison Of Social Movements Of Gandhi, Nasser, Ben-Gurion, And King (Volumes I And Ii), David Henning Fluharty

Doctoral Dissertations

This study provides a comprehensive theory of charismatic relationships which, consistent with the original meaning of the term charisma, emphasizes the followers' belief that their leader is attached to their perception of the divine. In that the process of theory development shows its application to several modern leader-follower relationships, analysts can use the theory to examine such relationships in a variety of social settings.

The theory was developed from an ideal type model based on Hasidism, a significant Jewish religious movement which centers on the zaddik. Literally, zaddik means "righteous" and is applied to an individual who is believed to …

Metaphors In The Construction Of Theory: Ramus, Peirce And The American Mind, Laurel Warren Trufant

Doctoral Dissertations

This study argues for the mutual impenetration of logical, legal and scientific metaphors and attempts to determine the role played by them in the construction of theory. Specifically it attempts to discover the impact which the metaphors of topical logic may have had on the construction of American ideology.

Chapter 1 offers a brief discussion of logical metaphors and their relation to the social and intellectual settings which generate them. Chapter 2 extends that discussion to principles of positive law and political order as they developed in the unstable atmosphere of 16th Century Europe. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 attempt …

British Romanticism And Composition Theory: The Traditions And Value Of Romantic Rhetoric, Sherrie L. Gradin

Doctoral Dissertations

My study examines, through the philosophies and writings of the British Romantic poets, particularly those of Wordsworth and Coleridge, their beliefs about education, their theories on composing, and their interaction with the political and social climate as they relate to current expressivist rhetorical theories and pedagogies. I explore the ways in which Romantic assumptions surface in subsequent philosophers, educators, and rhetoricians such as Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey, and more recently, Ann Berthoff, Donald Murray, and Peter Elbow. I argue that like the Romantics, current expressivists are interested in cultivating an imaginative intellect in their writing students. …

A Conceptual Design Of A Propulsion System For An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Gerald Sedor

Doctoral Dissertations

The need for developing propulsion systems to support missions of increased endurance for autonomous underwater vehicles is investigated and a conceptual system is proposed, based on currently available technology and desired system characteristics.

The investigation evaluates and ranks alternative energy sources and proposes the use of a closed Brayton cycle gas turbine power plant using a chemical energy heat source with a metallic fuel. A thruster system using electric propulsion motors and screw propellers is selected. Evaluation factors include reliability, depth independent operation, weight, endurance, quietness and efficiency. Reliability of the proposed system is analyzed and the design modified to …

Authors Of Pictures, Draughtsmen Of Words, Ruth Shagoury Hubbard

Doctoral Dissertations

Human thought is unique. We have the ability to create and share meaning through the use of various kinds of symbol systems. This study explored the shared dynamics of visual and verbal symbolic thought processes and their consequences for the acquisition of literacy. In particular, the study focused on the writing, reading, and drawing processes of the children in a process-based first-grade classroom.

Research methods included participant/observations, open-ended interviews, audio-taped classroom discussions and interviews, and samples of the writing and drawing of the children in the entire class, with a special focus on five of the students. A detailed analysis …

Academic Discourse: An Ethnography Of The Public And Private Literacies Of University Students, Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is about the various meanings that being literate holds for two students in an academic setting. The study begins in a description of a prose writing classroom where informants are located and then goes on to follow two students from prose writing into other settings across the curriculum to consider how talk, reading, and writing are used in these classrooms. The data was collected using a number of field methods such as participant observation and intensive interviews as well as non-interactive methods such as textual and transcript analysis. Two extensive case studies form the center of the study. …

The Sociological Significance Of Gadamer's Hermeneutics, Thomas G. Mcgowan

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is a social-theoretical analysis of Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Special attention is paid to Gadamer's analysis of the nature of interpretation, which is based in part on Martin Heidegger's concept of the fore-structure of understanding. This Heideggerian concept, which implies that interpretation cannot proceed without a prior understanding of its object, reappears in Gadamer's work in his notion of the prejudiced condition of interpretation. According to Gadamer, interpretation is prejudiced because it involves the application of preconscious linguistical concepts the truth status of which is assumed during their moment of application. Gadamer rejects a strictly pejorative view of …

A Descriptive Study Of The Process Of Superordination In Community College Writers, H Eric Branscomb

Doctoral Dissertations

Using analyses of speak aloud writing protocols, this study describes the cognitive processes of community college writers as they use a series of drafts to derive superordinating statements about their experiences.

During the 1985-1986 school year, ten students from Northern Essex Community College volunteered to give a protocol as they completed a writing task. Five of the writers were from a Basic Writing course, and five were from advanced writing courses. The task asked them to generate details for and then draft narratives of three related personal experiences. Then the writers combined the three narratives into one draft, which ideally …

Gender And Journals: Life And Text In College Composition, Cinthia Lee Gannett

Doctoral Dissertations

Since journals were introduced into the composition curriculum in the 1960's, they have become increasingly important components both of writing and writing across the curriculum courses. Yet the available literature shows we know little about the historical and social contexts of journal and diary keeping. This dissertation looks at the ways gender informs our students' attitudes toward and experience with journal keeping in both academic and nonacademic settings.

Using three men's and three women's journals as the focal point of my discussion, I find striking sex differences both in the quantity and in the "qualities" of the journals they wrote. …

Intensional Reasoning About Knowledge, Oliver B. Popov

Doctoral Dissertations

"As demands and ambitions increase in Artificial Intelligence, the need for formal systems that facilitate a study and a simulation of a machine cognition has become an inevitability. This paper explores and developes the foundations of a formal system for propositional reasoning about knowledge. The semantics of every meaningful expression in the system is fully determined by its intension, the set of complexes in which the expression is confirmed. The knowledge system is based on three zeroth-order theories of epistemic reasoning for consciousness, knowledge and entailed knowledge. The results presented in the paper determine the soundness and the completeness of …

The Relationship Of Short-Term Visual Memory To Written Spelling : In Average Fifth-Grade Readers When Sequential And Simultaneous Presentation Is Compared, A. Terry Richardson

Doctoral Dissertations

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The Effects Of Word Length, Word Frequency And Word Repetition In Auditory Memory (Lexicon, Verbal Ability, Psycholinguistics), Judith Lutzhoff Scharff

Doctoral Dissertations

Four auditory lexical decision experiments were run to assess the effects of word frequency, word length, and word repetition. Experiment I examined the effects of word length, word frequency, and stimulus repetition on RT. The results demonstrated a significant main effect for length and frequency and a significant length by frequency interaction. Long words showed the greatest frequency effect. There was no significant repetition effect. In this experiment the repeated stimuli were separated by at least seven minutes. Experiment II examined the effect of stimulus repetition with the repeated stimuli separated by 0-15 stimuli. This experiment demonstrated a significant repetition …

A Craving For History: Immigrant Themes In Jewish-American Literature, Jeffrey Saperstein

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a cross-generational study of three immigrant themes in Jewish-American literature: transformation, freedom, and connection. It covers a number of twentieth century writers whose central concerns revolve around issues of assimilation. Chapter I gives a brief overview of the topic.

Chapter II examines the various means by which the immigrant sought to achieve American status. Writers discussed include Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska, Elias Tobenkin, Michael Gold, Norman Podhoretz, and Saul Bellow. Chapter III is an in-depth study of Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), a rags-to-riches story of a poor immigrant's rise up the ladder of …

The Development Of Picture-Generated Stories, Dina Lee Anselmi

Doctoral Dissertations

Recently, certain aspects of story production, comprehension, and recall have stirred up much interest within psychology. Most of this research has focused on these story processes in adults; less work has been done on the development of story knowledge in young children. This dissertation explored the similarities and differences among nursery school, first and second grade children, and adults. Each individual was asked to produce an oral story after having viewed a set of story-book pictures.

The stories were evaluated on several different dimensions which included: the thoughts, intentions and emotions of the characters, how single elements from the pictures …