Digital Commons Network^™

Common Strategies Used By Kindergarten Teachers To Instruct Reading To English-As-A-Second-Language Students, Emma Kaye Penn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research was designed to describe, analyze, and interpret what reading strategies experienced kindergarten teachers believe are essential to instruct English-as-a-Second-Language learners how to read. Through in-depth interviews, experienced kindergarten teachers were given a voice to describe what they consider essential reading strategies to instruct English-as-a-Second-Language learners to learn how to read.

The participants were four licensed, non-probationary kindergarten teachers instructing reading in English to a minimum of 51% English-as-a-Second-Language population. Selected kindergarten programs were consistent in program design. Processes were influenced by the gateway approach. The stories teachers told about their experiences in teaching ELLs how to read was …

Why Two Swords Were Enough: Israelite Tradition History Behind Luke 22:35-38, Kevin Lee Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jesus' charge in Luke 22:35-38 that his apostles should buy swords is one of the most enigmatic texts in the gospels. Although previous studies made use of a wide range of standard critical methods, none of these approaches satisfactorily revealed the pericope's meaning. In a fresh re-examination of Luke's sword-logion this project interweaves biblical and cultural intertextuality and asserts that the sword-logion is a Lukan literary foil that repudiates a well-known hagiographic tale. The provenance for this legendary saga (i.e., the "two-sword" traditum) was Gen 34 whose routine refraction in later Jewish writings led to its inclusion as part …

Flaming Red Wig, Carla Christina Howl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Flaming Red Wig" is a collection of short stories and prose poems with a critical preface. Both the preface and the creative work explore notions of artifice, apposition and entering into a text (both written and character) with stillness or intrusion. I try to create an examination and communion with language on much the same level, ultimately yielding a musicality that creates a rhythmic discourse and dynamic between the significance and the notion. The title of my thesis refers to the obvious motif of artifice and the reoccurring theme of emotional pain attached to gender and humanistic role within specific …

A Critical Realist Exploration Of The Relationship Between Personal And Professional Value Systems In Social Workers And The Impact On Motivations For Participation In A Social Work Community Of Practice, Philip Jonathan Osteen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study addresses questions about the nature of relationships between personal and professional value systems and between personal and professional identities, about motivations for engaging in a social work community of practice, and about alternative statistical methods for evaluating the psychometric properties of an original measure of motivation for participation in a social work community of practice. By merging communities of practice theory, derived from social learning theory, and critical social realist theory, this study bridges an ideological gap between the origins and evolution of personal and social identities. The study utilizes a mixed-method approach to (1) develop a measure …

Effectiveness Of Teacher Preparation Programs As Perceived By First Year Teachers, Loren Harriet Brevik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High rates of teacher attrition, particularly among those within their first years of teaching, have prompted studies aimed at identifying issues and recommendations for analyzing and improving teacher preparation programs. This study used a mixed methodology to investigate effectiveness of teacher preparation programs as perceived by first year teachers. Preliminary focus groups were formed to promote conversation and identify perceived strengths and weaknesses of preparation programs. Feedback from the focus groups combined with topics from extant literature resulted in a survey instrument that was administered to novice teachers as they completed their preparation/certification programs and began their first year of …

Creating An Indian Space In The City: Development, Maintenance, And Evolution Of Cultural Identity And Cultural Connectedness Among Multiple Generations Of Urban American Indians, Nancy Marie Lucero

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the cultural identity and cultural connectedness of multiple generations of American Indians whose families had been living continuously in an urban area for 40 to 50 years. The intent of the current study was to better understand how members of this group developed and maintained their cultural identities while living away from a tribal community and as a small percentage of the population of a large and culturally diverse metropolitan area. The study also sought to identify what constituted cultural connectedness--a term used frequently amongst urban Indians that appears to encompass factors of importance to being American …

One Of Us: Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes And A Personal Record, Torgeir Ehler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This present work explores the relationship of Joseph Conrad's status as a Polish exile to his creative and biographical work. Its main focus is on the tandem publications of the novel Under Western Eyes and his autobiographical volume A Personal Record, both published within a year of each other and written contemporaneously. The first chapter is a short biographical survey of Conrad's life and addresses some later biographical works by his wife, among others. An overview of critical works that deal with Under Western Eyes is presented in the second chapter. An investigation into narrative structure and its use in …

English Teachers And English Language Learners In Middle School Classrooms: Perspectives And Practices, Elmer Celso Manzanares

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public school classrooms in the United States are composed of an increasingly diverse population of learners. The number of students with limited proficiency in English has grown exponentially across the United States, yet their level of academic achievement lags significantly behind that of their language-majority peers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes, opinions and practices of middle school language arts/reading teachers regarding the inclusion of ELL students and the support they receive in their classrooms. The researcher administered a survey to 171 language arts/reading middle school teachers and interviewed six teachers from fourteen schools in a …

Encountering The Religious 'Other': Limitations Of Confining 'Religious' Conversation In Interreligious Dialogue In Denver, Adam Buchanan Westbrook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963).

Technology, the Internet, and the ability to communicate with one another instantaneously in any place on the globe, at any point in time have made Dr. King's remarks increasingly evident in the 21st century. We now have the unprecedented ability to communicate with people of all groups, all over the world, but are lacking the proper tools for understanding them. The interreligious dialogue movement has strived to utilize religion as one …

The Ties That Bind: An Examination Of Outgroup Relationships As A Deviant Behavior, Carrie L. Shamos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contact programs, such as Seeds of Peace, subscribe to the assertion that an essential element to co-existence between groups with a violent history is to provide situations in which out-group members are encouraged to form new relationships. Although the individual may have positive feelings toward out-group members at the conclusion of the program, he or she must return home to existing social networks, which may not hold the same tolerant attitudes. This research explores what happens when individuals present new out-group relationships to existing peer groups. Under what circumstances, if any, can participants sustain new relationships when they return to …

Struggling, Coping, And Thriving: Sense-Making In Stepfamily Couples' Narratives About Coparenting, Andrea L. Smith Sisk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The term coparenting implies a bioparental dyad that often excludes the stepparent's role in sharing parenting across joint-custody households. Focusing solely on this dyad also precludes gaining an understanding of how stepfamily couples manage together the communication and sharing of parental responsibilities with the parent(s) in the shared children's other home. In a departure from this bioparental dyad-focused approach, this study locates the stepfamily couple at the center of an inquiry into managing coparenting across households. This mixed methods design study included in-depth interviews of 32 stepfamily couples whose narratives about coparenting were analyzed using grounded theory methods. Forty-one percent …

The Old South And Continental Europe : A Transatlantic Conversation, M. Benjamin Gilstrap

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Parental Involvement With Special Needs Children In A Rural School District, Mary Elizabeth Lenda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Formalized education has been around for a long time and the role of the parents has been to facilitate their child's academic success. The quality of parenting can vary widely. This study will explore parental involvement in their special needs child's educational process. More specifically, parental involvement with special needs children in a rural school district is the focus explored in the south western New York quadrant of Chautauqua County. Using Baumrind's (1967) research on parenting styles as a framework, the purpose of study is to (a) investigate the styles of parental involvement with children of special needs in rural …

Bloudy Tygrisses: Murderous Women In Early Modern English Drama And Popular Literature, Alexandra Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines artistic and literary images of murderous women in popular print published in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. The construction of murderous women in criminal narratives, published between 1558 and 1625 in pamphlet, ballad, and play form, is examined in the context of contemporary historical records and cultural discourse. Chapter One features a literature review of the topic in recent scholarship. Chapter Two, comprised of two subsections, discusses representations of early modern women in contemporary literature and criminal archives. The subsections in Chapter Two examine early modern treatises, sermons, and essays concerning the nature of women, the roles and …

Je Parle Avec La Bouche Des Morts : Tracing Neruda In The Poetry Of Malek Haddad, Jacob Newberry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Culture Care Beliefs, Meanings And Practices Related To Health And Well-Being Of South Sudanese "Lost Boy And Lost Girl" Refugees, Margaret Bowles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this ethnonursing study was to describe, analyze and interpret the culture care beliefs, meanings and practices related to health and well-being of South Sudanese "Lost Boy and Lost Girls" following resettlement in the United States. Leininger's theory of culture care diversity and universality and the ethnonursing method provided the organizing framework for studying the domain of inquiry. Interviews were conducted with nineteen general informants and ten key informants, all who lived in the Midwest United States. Extensive analysis of digitally recorded interviews together with the researcher's participant observations and field notes revealed nine data categories and five …

"Falling To A Devilish Exercise": Magic And Spectacle On The Renaissance Stage, Shayne Confer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The enormous amount of research on the subject of early modern magic indicates clearly that magical thought occupied a significant place in contemporary mental patterns. Its existence was widespread enough to cause popular prejudice against its most esoteric forms combined with tacit acceptance of "folk" magic, the kind employed by local men and women for the benefit of their neighbors. The early playwrights who dramatized the magus were thus fairly constricted in how the magus could appear without unduly scandalizing the popular audience. Robert Greene, Anthony Munday, and Christopher Marlowe all drew upon characters from popular chapbook romances and dramatized …

Dialogues Between Feminists And Jacques Lacan On Female Hysteria And Femininity, Katerina Catherine Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This theoretical dissertation aims to initiate a dialogue between Lacan and Irigaray, Butler, and poststructuralist Anglophone feminists on the relationship between hysteria and femininity. The very existence of hysteria has been called into question by the majority of Anglophone feminists, who have criticized its diagnostic proliferation, claiming that it has negative implications for social change and has played a central part in women's oppression. The Anglophone feminist tradition views Lacanian psychoanalytic theories of sexuation and hysteria with a critical eye, arguing that Lacan's oeuvre is another version of patriarchal discourse, another reductionistic paradigm of female suffering, and another essentialist scheme …

An Examination Of The Factors Underlying The Motivation And Learning Strategies Of Generation 1.5 Korean American Students, Rosa Cho Stoffa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Comprehensive research into student learning has established that the effective use of learning strategies will enable students to take responsibility for their own learning, enhance their motivation in the learning process, and improve their academic success (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2001). However, little research has investigated the learning strategies used by immigrant students and how these strategies relate to academic excellence. While survey instruments currently exist for assessing these constructs in the general population, the construct validity of theses scales has yet to be examined within immigrant populations.

The subjects who participated in this study were randomly selected from the Korean …

A Unity Of Contraries: Dorothy Day And The 'No-Alibi' Rhetoric Of Defiance And Devotion, Catherine Carr Fitzwilliams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This offering considers what I term the embedded narrative of Dorothy Day (1897-1980) as a Rhetoric of Defiance and Devotion and it is illustrated by selected metaphors associated with Martin Buber and M. M. Bakhtin. Concepts of conscience, community and the complexities associated with being authentically human are engaged within an interpretive journey of a life lived in response to the flashpoints of the last century.

Enlisting hermeneutics as a guide, Day's petite narrative is situated against a broader narrative of eight decades of economic, social, political, cultural and (for her) philosophical and spiritual changes. Her various and varying labels …

Human Development As Integral Development: The Social Teaching Of The Church In An African Context, Joseph Kariuki Kamau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It has been commonly held that the main cause of underdevelopment is the lack of capital. This dissertation is based on the observation that underdevelopment still persists in Kenya despite billions of dollars in foreign aid from Western Europe and North America. The main focus of this dissertation is an attempt to understand an effective remedial action to such an economic situation of underdevelopment. The dissertation seeks to find the remedy for underdevelopment by the methodological means of demonstrating how a holistic understanding of human development entails integral development in Kenya.

The thesis and the overview of this dissertation are …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Cbt Developers' Multiple Intelligences Dispositions And The Design Of Computer-Based Training, Nancy King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study assessed the relationship between CBT developers' multiple intelligences (MI) dispositions and their designs for computer-based training programs (CBTs). This study was based on the theoretical framework of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) and theories about instructional design (ID). Student developers in a class were surveyed using Shearer's Multiple Intelligences Development Assessment Scales (MIDAS), a screening instrument that is designed to determine the students' MIDAS profiles, or their intelligences. The students received instruction in using MI in their CBT design; and, after they had designed their CBTs, four professionals assessed their CBTs for inclusion of MI.

Both quantitative …

An "Island" Study Abroad Program And Its Impact On The Intercultural Sensitivity And Cross-Cultural Adaptability Of Its Participants: Perspectives From A Research Intensive University, Gita Maharaja

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Globalization touches every sphere of our modern lives, and it has become more critical than ever that today's generation gains an understanding of other cultures and develops the ability to adapt to ever-changing environments. One important way that higher education has attempted to prepare students for these challenges is to offer study abroad programs, in which students are given the opportunity for educational experiences in other countries.

Traditionally, study abroad programs have involved immersion in the host culture, with particular emphasis on using and learning the native language. However, other types of program designed to make the experience of living …

"An Insect View Of Its Plain": Nature And Insects In Thoreau, Dickinson, And Muir, Rosemary S. Mctier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The simultaneous emergence of ecocriticism and cultural entomology has created a critical need for a discussion of the appearance and function of insects as they appear in literature. While nineteenth-century nature writing is frequently examined by ecocritics, very few have chosen to explore how critical writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and John Muir incorporate insects into their work. This study explores three interrelated issues connected to encounters with and explorations of the microscopic and unacknowledged position of insects in nature: first, how insects factor into their growing knowledge about nature and ecology; second, how nature serves as …

Aesthetics In The Ecotheology Of Sallie Mcfague: A Critique And A Proposal For A Theological Aesthetics Of Nature, Mary-Paula Cancienne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the ecological theology of Sallie McFague, who, as part of her work, employs the use of aesthetics. This study recognizes her contribution and then seeks to build upon it.
In aim of this goal, a limited history of aesthetics in the Western tradition is surveyed and attention is given to three significant contemporary scholars in the field of aesthetics and nature/environment (Emily Brady, Allen Carlson, and Arnold Berleant). While this work intended to propose the rudiments of a Theological Aesthetics of Nature, we find that nature and culture are so intertwined that what is initially called …

Two Tongues For A Dream: A Hermeneutic Study, Marta Bachino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although bilingualism is a common feature of clinical work with patients, the specific aspects of working with the dreams of the bilingual patient have not been much discussed. This qualitative study explored the discrepancies that arise in the linguistic expressions of the psychological complexes when dreams are worked simultaneously in the dreamer's native and second language. The aim was to learn more about the significance of including the bilingual patient's native tongue when working with dreams in a dreamer's second language. Key concepts on the study of language, dreams, psychological complexes, linguistics and psychoanalysis situated the research using various theoretical …

Ekphrastic Medieval Visions: A New Discussion In Ekphrasis And Interarts Theory, Claire Barbetti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Ekphrastic Medieval Visions: A New Discussion in Ekphrasis and Interarts Theory" argues that the dream-vision and mystical-vision texts of the high and late Middle Ages are ekphrastic works. With their inclusion within the purview of criticism and theories of ekphrasis, new formal qualities of the ekphrastic mode come to the surface such as its dynamism and polytemporality, its reliance on the processes of memory, and diffuseness of narrative consciousness, rather than Murray Krieger's "still moment" model that presupposes a sovereign subjectivity, an attempt to have the sign signify itself, or the paragone model espoused by W. J. T. Mitchell and …

Expressing The Inexpressible: Bearing Witness In Jean-François Lyotard And Pseudo-Dionysius, Mélanie V. Walton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What is an expression that can express that which cannot be expressed? Logic and grammar will declare it to be an impossibility and its expression, a mistaken use of language. Yet, humanity's archive persistently attests to both the legitimacy of the inexpressible expression and the multiplicity of ways to give it voice. While heterogeneous in time, place, and philosophical situation, the contemporary French father of postmodernism, Jean-François Lyotard, and the late antique, presumably Syrian father of Neoplatonist Christian mysticism, Pseudo-Dionysius, both intimately consider the inexpressible expression. Both are provoked by the witness who is silenced by the binding limits of …

Multidimensional Visual Testing Of A Mississippian Mound/ By Glenn D. Strickland, Glenn D. Strickland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Account Of How Chinese Graduate Students In The United States View The Full Span Of Their Educational Experiences: A Grounded, Ming-Che Tsai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many teachers of international students in the United States are challenged to address cultural differences in a classroom. International students often experience psychological, physical and cultural stress when they study abroad, due mainly to unfamiliar environments and a diverse culture. The question this study asks is: Are there any strategies that can be used to benefit these students? This grounded theory study will examine a purposefully-selected group of subjects from China and Taiwan who are currently studying at a large metropolitan university in the Southeastern United States. After data collection and analysis procedure, I hoped there are some things valued …