Digital Commons Network^™

Stop Making Sense: Exploring Basic Properties And Clinical Applications Of Coherence, Michael James Bordieri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the ways in which people make sense of ambiguous tasks and the degree to which people prefer contexts where coherent responding is possible. Relational frame theory contains a foundational assumption that coherence (i.e., making sense) is reinforcing for verbally competent humans. That is, it is assumed that humans relate ambiguous stimuli in ways that go together because they have an extensive learning history where others have given praise, positive attention, and other reinforcement for this behavior. This study was designed to empirically investigate this core assumption of relational frame theory by analyzing response patterns to ambiguous stimuli …

Development Of A Physical Activity Intervention Targeted At Middle-Aged Males: A Mixed Methods Research Study, Sheryl L. Chatfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Black Existential Philosophy: Truth In Virtue Of Self-Discovery, James B. Haile

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past 20 years, within the discipline of philosophy there has been a burgeoning interest in the fields of Race theory, Africana, and African American philosophy, especially in the scholarship and questions concerning the experience and meaning of black existence; that is, within black existential philosophy. Despite this interest, though, there has yet to be a sustained study of the categories of black existential philosophy nor its concepts--there seems to have been the acceptance of traditional European existential categories and concepts merely applied to the questions of black existence. This work, though, offers a sustained examination of the existential …

Utilizing Improvement Science To Advance A Stem Improvement Effort: Increase The Number Of Underserved And Underrepresented Students Who Pursue A Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematic Education By Building Collective Capacity, David Andrew Kristofic Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of this dissertation in practice is to provide educational leaders with a roadmap for investigating barriers that prevent underserved and underrepresented (USUR) students from entering STEM careers in order to strategically plan their local STEM improvement effort. It offers the educational leader seven guiding principles, along with descriptions and illustrations of Improvement Science tools that include an improvement map, driver diagrams, and examples of one leader's efforts to address his district's unique needs. These Improvement Science tools will enable educational leaders to begin their STEM improvement effort. Improvement Science uses the theory of Profound Knowledge, which combines …

University Education In A Postmodern Era: Building A Narrative Ethic Of Civil Communication In The Classroom, Jill Dishart Leontiadis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project responds to the question: How can educators quell communicative classroom incivilities (CI) that are currently harming teaching and learning? Sources of CI in a postmodern United States university classroom involve: student entitlement, lack of institutional support for a growing contingent faculty, and incongruent values about appropriate classroom communication. Unlike preceding historical time periods that maintained a shared communicative ethic stemming from antiquity to modernity, postmodernity presents an unprecedented challenge to teaching and learning where there can be no assumed shared ethic of appropriate communicative classroom communication. Postmodernity as an age of coexisting and contentious narratives, this project argues …

The Smartpen As A Mediational Tool For Learning Language And Content Areas: The Case Of English Learners In Mainstream Classrooms, Rae Mancilla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of mobile devices for supporting the instruction of second language (L2) learners is an emerging and rapidly growing area of inquiry. Previous research on mobile assisted language learning (MALL) has concentrated on the development of isolated linguistic skills through a common set of mobile technologies, such as PDAs and iPods, with limited attention given to alternative mobile devices or situations of L2 learning that require the simultaneous learning of language and academic content (Wu, Jim Wu, Chen, Kao, Lin, & Huang, 2012; Viberg & Grönlund, 2012; 2013). In particular, little is understood about how English Learners (ELs) educated …

The Open Class Authorship Attribution Problem: A Comparison Of Mixture-Of-Experts Methods Within The Jgaap Framework, James Orlo Overly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, we seek to describe, test, evaluate, and compare methods of open class attribution that utilize multiple unique closed class attributions in a voting framework. By applying statistical techniques to the proportion of closed class attributions indicating individual candidate authors, we seek to determine if the author is present in a set of suspected authors or not. The final answer to an open class attribution problem is either one of the authors in the set of candidate authors or "None of the above." We test nine different methods of open class attribution grouped into three distinct voting paradigms. …

C. S. Lewis And The Premodern Rhetorical Tradition: The Abolition Of Man As Rhetoric And Philosophy Of Education, Nicholas Ryan Pertler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This interpretive project begins with the following question: How does The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) function as a rhetoric and philosophy of education to open up meaningful alternatives to modern education? Although Lewis originally composed and delivered the text as three lectures in response to the felt educational concerns of his age, in its published form The Abolition of Man still offers relevant insight on the topic of education in contemporary times. Scholarship on Lewis has yet to fully appreciate exactly how his educational ideals align with the premodern rhetorical tradition, but this project argues that …

Italian Immigration In The United States, Giuseppe Piccoli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is a historical research that used content analysis of secondary sources (newspapers, magazines, literature, movies and sociological studies) in order to describe Italian immigration in America. The research is focused on Italian-American communities in the areas of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston.

Between 1880 and 1920, Italian-Americans became one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States. For a long period, they faced discrimination and lived at the edge of the American society. Education, immigration and urban policies influenced the social structure of the Italian communities. Later, second generation immigrants started writing books and making …

Effects Of Semantic Feature Analysis+Multimodal Communication Program For Word Retrieval And Switching Behavior In Primary Progressive Aphasia, Alicia M. Rebstock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by language and cognitive decline. Word retrieval deficits are the most common PPA symptom, and contribute to impaired verbal expression. Intense semantic interventions show promise for improving word retrieval in people with PPA. Additionally, people with PPA may learn to use alternative communication modalities when they are unable to retrieve a word. However, executive function impairments can cause people to struggle to switch among modalities to repair communication breakdowns. This study examined the effects of a combined semantic feature analysis and multimodal communication program (SFA+MCP) on word retrieval accuracy and switching …

Nietzsche And Comedy: Provocative Laughter Amidst A Tragic Philosophy, Michael C. Rudar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Friedrich Nietzsche is well known as the philosopher of the tragic view of life. Because we are part of the world of becoming the tragic view maintains that human beings are given over to certain limits that we cannot transcend. These include ourselves as finite beings, the recognition that noumenal knowledge is not possible and, because we are subject to the flux of existence, that life can be both painful and destructive. However, for Nietzsche the tragic view of life ought not result in humorless resignation. Just as he appeals to ancient Greek tragedy to demonstrate how the ancients remained …

Graduate Students' Perception Of Curriculum-Based Efficacy Of The Acquisition Of Multicultural Counseling Skills, Demond Ethridge Bledsoe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The United States is undergoing a period in which the demographics of the population are shifting drastically. The profession of counseling is tasked with providing services to diverse groups of clients, many of whom may have experienced racism, prejudice, and oppression as a result of their cultural or ethnic identity. Literature suggests that cultural and ethnic minority clients have poorer outcomes than their majority counterparts, and a significant factor in gaining positive treatment outcomes is the multicultural skill development in the clinician; however, little research focusing on effective delivery methods for multicultural skill development in counselor trainees has been conducted. …

Communication And Response-Ability: Levinas And Kierkegaard In Conversation, Beth A. Walter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project contends that hope for ethical communication in a postmodern age lies in the ability to rethink ethics in terms of "existential pathos." To that end, this study locates communicative responsibility in the responsive element of the self-other relation by relying primarily on the work of the twentieth-century Lithuanian-born French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. I maintain that Levinas's disruption of the philosophical tradition informs a communication ethic comprised of dialectical, dialogical, and rhetorical modes of interpersonal interaction that are fundamentally rooted in an existential understanding of human striving. Further, I assert that these dialectical, dialogical and rhetorical components are best …

The Underrepresentation Of Black Students In Advanced Placement Classes: A Local Response To A National Issue, Tia Wanzo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A pertinent educational issue in our country is the black and white achievement gap. One specific program that has been developed and implemented over the last several years in an effort to provide strong academic curriculum and raise student achievement, including minority student achievement, is the College Board's advanced placement (AP) Program. The AP Program courses are widely recognized as providing students with academically challenging curriculum, facilitating their acceptance to colleges and supporting their preparation for post-secondary education. The emphasis of this work relates to the concern that although the AP program has been in existence for decades and is …

Comprehension Of Science Text By African American Fifth And Sixth Grade Students: The Effects Of A Metalinguistic Approach, Karen Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scientific literacy has been at the forefront of science education reform for the past 20 years, particularly for students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds (Lee et. al., 2005; Pearson, Moje & Greenleaf, 2010). The ability to extract meaning from text is an important skill. Yet many students struggle with effectively comprehending what they read, particularly in content areas of science, math and history. According to the National Assessment Educational Progress (NAEP, 2013) report, adolescents are not acquiring advanced literacy skills needed to succeed in the workplace and academic setting. Literacy experts have called for the use of disciplinary …

Effects Of Narrative Writing And Post-Writing Processing Instructions On Ptsd, Laura Mcintire

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Functional Scaffolding For Musical Composition: A New Approach In Computer-Assisted Music Composition, Amy K. Hoover

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While it is important for systems intended to enhance musical creativity to define and explore musical ideas conceived by individual users, many limit musical freedom by focusing on maintaining musical structure, thereby impeding the user's freedom to explore his or her individual style. This dissertation presents a comprehensive body of work that introduces a new musical representation that allows users to explore a space of musical rules that are created from their own melodies. This representation, called functional scaffolding for musical composition (FSMC), exploits a simple yet powerful property of multipart compositions: The pattern of notes and rhythms in different …

A Multiple Case Analysis Of Technology Integration Knowledge By Practicing Elementary Teachers In An Urban Charter School, Kendra Lynn Minor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the perceived and demonstrated technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of practicing elementary teachers in an urban charter school setting. Contextual factors that influence teachers' abilities to apply technology integration knowledge were also identified. A qualitative research design with multiple case study strategy was used to study practicing teachers in a charter school setting in two phases. The first phase of the study included nine participants and used the Teachers' Knowledge of Teaching and Technology Survey to garner insight on teachers' perceived technological pedagogical content knowledge. Descriptive statistical procedures were used to calculate …

Uncovering The Sub-Text: Presidents' Emotional Expressions And Major Uses Of Force, Elias Assaf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The global context of decision making continues to adapt in response to international threats. Political psychologists have therefore considered decision making processes regarding major uses of force a key area of interest. Although presidential personality has been widely studied as a mitigating factor in the decision making patterns leading to uses of force, traditional theories have not accounted for the emotions of individuals as they affect political actions and are used to frame public perception of the use of force. This thesis therefore measures expressed emotion and cognitive expressions in the form of expressed aggression, passivity, blame, praise, certainty, realism, …

Objectively Defining Scenario Complexity: Towards Automated, Adaptive Scenario-Based Training, Robert Dunn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Effective Scenario-Based Training (SBT) is sequenced in an efficient trajectory from novice to mastery and is well-grounded in pedagogically sound instructional strategies and learning theory. Adaptive, automated SBT attempts to sequence scenarios according to the performance of the student and implement the sequence without human agency. The source of these scenarios may take the form of a matrix constructed by Instructional Systems Designers (ISD), software engineers or trainers. The domain being instructed may contain procedures or concepts that are easily differentiated thus allowing quick and accurate determination of difficulty. In this instance, the sequencing of the SBT is relatively simple. …

Global Perspectives Of Pre-Service Teachers: A Comparative Study, Cynthia Poole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The importance of global education cannot be overstated in modern American society. A crucial first step to promoting global perspectives in the K-12 classroom is to ensure that the teachers have developed their own global perspectives. Multiple global education frameworks have suggested that two keys to globalizing teacher education curricula are the integration of global content courses and participation in co-curricular cross-cultural experiences. Therefore, this study sought to determine the extent to which global content courses and co-curricular cross-cultural experiences had been integrated into the teacher preparation of pre-service teachers in multiple certification areas at a large public university in …

Impacts Of Complexity And Timing Of Communication Interruptions On Visual Detection Tasks, Sally Stader

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Auditory preemption theory suggests two competing assumptions for the attention-capturing and performance-altering properties of auditory tasks. In onset preemption, attention is immediately diverted to the auditory channel. Strategic preemption involves a decision process in which the operator maintains focus on more complex auditory messages. The limitation in this process is that the human auditory, or echoic, memory store has a limit of 2 to 5 seconds, after which the message must be processed or it decays. In contrast, multiple resource theory suggests that visual and auditory tasks may be efficiently time-shared because two different pools of cognitive resources are used. …

Development Of The Taiwanese Mandarin Main Concept Analysis And Linguistic Communication Measure: Normative And Preliminary Aphasic Data, Chun-Chih Yeh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aphasia is a language disorder resulting from damage to brain areas that control language expression and reception. Clinically, the narrative production of Persons with Aphasia (PWA) provides valuable information for diagnosis of aphasia. There are several types of assessment procedures for analysis of aphasic's narrative production. One of them is to use quantification systems, such as the Cantonese Linguistic Communication Measure (CLCM; Kong & Law, 2004) or the Main Concept Analysis (MCA; Kong, 2009), for objective quantification of aphasic's discourse. The purposes of this study are (1) to translate the MCA and CLCM to a Taiwanese Mandarin Main Concept Analysis …

Practical Issues In Gpram Development, Yin Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, two parts of practical issues in the GPRAM system design are included. The first part is the coding part. The sum-product decoding algorithm of LDPC codes has been refined to fit for the GPRAM hardware implementation. As we all know, communication channel has noise. The noise in telecom system is different from that in GPRAM systems. So the noise should be handled well in the GPRAM design. A noise look-up table was created for FPGA and those noises in the table are quantized. The second part of the thesis is to convert perfect images in video stream …

The Effects Of Anxiety On Second Language Acquisition, Jingjing Tu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety occurs in second/foreign language learning. A large body of previous research has demonstrated the effect of language anxiety on second/foreign language learning. Many studies have found anxiety has a debilitating effect on language learning. Factors associated with anxiety have also been investigated widely. This study focuses on the effects of the interlocutor(s) and communication contexts on language anxiety experienced by a group of ESL students studying at a flagship university in the Southeastern United States. A background questionnaire and an adapted instrument called Second Language Speaking Anxiety Scale were utilized in order to report the anxiety that students experienced …

Glorious Adornment: The Social Function Of Cloth And Clothing In Israel's Tabernacle, Selena Billington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the tabernacle narratives of Exodus, the LORD instructs the Israelites to build a tabernacle and to make special garments in which to consecrate Aaron (proto-type high priest) and his sons (proto-type priests). The garments are to be for Aaron's and his sons' "glorious adornment." Detailed descriptions of the special garments are provided, and the description shares much in common with the descriptions of the cloths which comprise the tabernacle complex. What is there about the unique clothing of Aaron and the cloth of the tabernacle that causes Aaron and the tabernacle to be glorified? What is being said about …

Max Scheler's Critical Theory: The Idea Of Critical Phenomenology, Eric J. Mohr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work explores the way core elements of phenomenology map on to the critical theory program in order to demonstrate phenomenology's relevance for ideology critique. "Critical phenomenology" means putting the findings of phenomenology to work for the sake of social critique. I argue that phenomenology gains a critical edge precisely where many critical theorists suggest phenomenology withdraws from a critical function: on the basis of their theory of intuition. While Adorno takes phenomenological intuition to be another version of identity philosophy, he overlooks the significance of the way in which phenomenological givenness is incommensurable with, and at best only symbolized …

Pound's Progress: The Vortextual Evolution Of Imagism And Its Poetic Image, Justin Kishbaugh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although previous Imagist scholarship considers its subject from chronological, technical, and historical viewpoints, rarely does it combine two-let alone all three-of those perspectives. Undoubtedly, each of those critical lenses contributes to the overall understanding of Imagism. Yet, by not weaving the technique and theory of Imagism into a linear account of its development, those studies tend to view those aspects of Imagism as if they were discrete and stable entities. To counteract that trend, this dissertation argues that Pound's Imagist program-due to the ambiguity and developing definitions of several of its key terms-allowed the Imagist poets to produce a richly …

Sojourning In The Margin: Living As Wives Of International Students, Mengchun Chiang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Whereas concerns for international students frequently appear in existing literature, little attention is paid to wives of international students (WoIS). This study aims at describing and understanding lives of WoIS in the United States as sojourners in the margin. The research begins with a literature review and an examination of theoretical frames: from the cultural shock literature, acculturative stress literature, to atheoretical studies; and from cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, to indigenous psychology. Methodologically, this study is qualitative in nature, utilizing interview data from WoIS. In addition to a description and interpretation of the WoIS's narratives, the study also wrestles with …

The Conceptual Field Of Proportional Reasoning Researched Through The Lived Experiences Of Nurses, Deana Deichert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Proportional reasoning instruction is prevalent in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schooling. The concept of proportional reasoning is used in a variety of contexts for solving real-world problems. One of these contexts is the solving of dosage calculation proportional problems in the healthcare field. On the job, nurses perform drug dosage calculations which carry fatal consequences. As a result, nursing students are required to meet minimum competencies in solving proportion problems. The goal of this research is to describe the lived experiences of nurses in connection to their use of proportional reasoning in order to impact instruction of the procedures used …