Pedagogy In Context: How Private School Teachers Make Meaning Of Equity-Focused Teaching Practices, Savannah Shana Scarborough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This pedagogical ethnography examines how teachers in a private school context understand and enact Culturally Relevant Education (CRE). While CRE emphasizes cultural competence and critical consciousness, less is known about how it is interpreted within private school settings, where institutional culture and community expectations shape pedagogy. This study explores how teachers engage culturally relevant commitments and how institutional context influences those practices.

A qualitative ethnographic design was used to examine classroom practice in a South Carolina private school. Data was collected through observations, semi-structured interviews, and teacher reflections from four Upper School teachers selected through purposive sampling. Analysis combined deductive …

Phenomenological Philosophy Of Psychedelics: Psychedelic Experience In The Modes Of Saturation And Flesh, Michael V. Kramer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work seeks to develop the nascent sub-field of the phenomenological philosophy of psychedelics. Beginning with a general overview of key aspects pertinent to psychedelic studies, the focus then turns to a general disciplinary discussion of current approaches within the philosophy of psychedelics, as well as psychedelic philosophy—a distinction which is technically deployed. Special consideration is given to the specific approach known as the “natural philosophy of psychedelics,” which is taken as the philosophical foil to the preferred approach of phenomenological philosophy. A survey of the extant literature regarding the implementation of phenomenology within psychedelic discourse is then provided …

A Revised Quantifier Variance And Its Implications On Vagueness, Isaac Alexander Huling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that the Special Composition Question has no substantive answer, not because compositional talk is empty but because the physical structure it tracks does not have the form that would privilege a unique answer. The argument accepts Sider’s methodological premise that the world must provide structure beyond description if ontological vocabulary is to mean anything, and deploys that apparatus against his specific application of it to composition. Constraint processes among a system’s parts – the forces and interactions that hold rigid bodies together, maintain organisms, bind solar systems – satisfy every condition Lewis required of reference magnets. They …

Semantically Grounded Evaluation For Open-Vocabulary Human-Object Interaction Detection, Maja Noack

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Open-vocabulary human–object interaction (HOI) detection is a step towards building scal¬able systems that generalize to unseen interactions in real-world scenarios and support grounded multimodal systems that reason about human–object relationships. However, stan¬dard evaluation metrics, such as mean Average Precision (mAP), treat HOI classes as dis¬crete categorical labels and fail to credit semantically valid but lexically different predictions (e.g., “lean on couch” vs. “sit on couch”), limiting their applicability for evaluating open-vocabulary predictions that go beyond any predefined set of HOI labels. I introduce SHOE (Semantic HOI Open-Vocabulary Evaluation), a new evaluation framework that incorporates semantic similarity between predicted and ground-truth …

Educational Placemaking: The Radical Power Of Play, Hillary René Spencer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Too often, play is dismissed as a simple childhood pastime, but what if it were understood as a radical tool for transformation? This research examines how play-based learning (PBL) interventions can serve as a framework for systemic change. Grounded in Edward Soja’s theory of spatial justice, which holds that socially valued resources and opportunities are unevenly distributed across geographic spaces (Soja, 2010), the study investigates how public spaces can serve as culturally reflective sites of learning and, when co-created with children and their communities, help address historical structural inequities. This research establishes educational placemaking as a framework for understanding play-based, …

Critical Improvisation: Black Secondary Graduates’ Experiences Of Student Voice, Lauren Malara

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe Black secondary graduates’ experience of improvisational comedy through the framework of Student Voice. Amid silencing legislative bans in education, the study aimed to critically make meaning of participants’ shared experiences of Theater Games and provide insight into the critical applications of improvisation as a tool to develop student leaders. The study employed a hermeneutical phenomenological design, sampling six Black graduates that participated in improvisational courses as part of the secondary curriculum. Data collection included a demographic questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and participant journals. The findings of a thematic analysis indicate that improvisation developed …

Read Again, Succeed Again, Kaitlin Martz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of a repeated reading (RR) intervention on the oral reading fluency and comprehension of first grade students identified as “at-risk” in a high poverty school in the Mississippi Delta. Students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often have limited early literacy experiences, which contributes to persistent achievement gaps in reading (Romeo et al., 2022; NAEP, 2024). This study is grounded in LaBerge and Samuels’ (1974) theory of automaticity to employ an intervention focused on building reading fluency as a means to improve reading comprehension.

Six students participated in one-on-one sessions three times per week for …

Developing A Noticing Skill Of Learners Of Jfl Through Writing With Chatgpt, Anna Suzuki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Acquiring an additional language, especially whose linguistic systems differ from a learner’s first language, such as English and Japanese, is quite challenging. However, the improvement of technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) has some potential in supporting language learning.

This study investigated how ChatGPT can assist learners of Japanese whose first language is English in writing Japanese narrative of a 4-panel story and what learners notice comparing their Japanese writing with ChatGPT’s production. This study followed three steps: writing, an online survey, and a one-on-one interview. Four undergraduate students who were taking either a 200-, 300- or 400-level Japanese course …

Hereditary Transmission Of Drumming Among The Anlo-Ewe: The Case Of Agbodo/Amuzu Family Of Hatsukorfe, Denu, Volta Region, Ghana, Ernest Elikplim Kwabla Adonoo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the hereditary transmission of drumming among the Anlo-Ewe of southeastern Ghana, focusing on the Agbodo/Amuzu family of Hatsuk?ƒe in the Volta Region. Situated within ethnomusicological discourse on traditional Anlo-Ewe musical practices and the specialized roles of the researched family, who are drummers of the exclusive Ye?e religious tradition, this research argues that drumming in this context is not merely a musical activity but a complex system of communication, identity, ritual authority, and cultural continuity. The study fills and addresses a significant gap in existing scholarship on the Anlo-Ewe music, which has largely emphasized community dance-drumming and institutional …

The Application Of Natural Language Processing Towards Auditing Of Unstructured Data: A Design Science Approach, Dennis K. Amoatey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Financial auditors must manually review large volumes of unstructured text that may include contracts, internal policies, footnotes, and journal entry descriptions. This time-intensive process introduces risk of human error and inconsistency. Despite advances in automation, no systematic approach exists for applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) to this problem at scale. Using a design science approach, this study develops a framework that demonstrates how NLP techniques can be incorporated across key phases in the audit process, including planning, internal controls evaluation, evidence gathering, and reporting. Initial evaluation through expert feedback had a mix of responses. While some argued difficulty with data …

“The Distance And Time Difference Aren’T Helping”: Family Communication Practices Of African Graduate Students Adapting To A New Country, Hummuh Abubakar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined how international graduate students maintained long-distance communication with family members while adapting to life in the United States. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with seven international students, the research explored how participants sustained emotional closeness, manage disclosure, and select communication media across geographic distance. Guided by Communication Privacy Management Theory and Media Richness Theory, the study analyzed how students regulated private information and strategically used video calls, voice calls, and messaging platforms to meet relational and emotional needs. Findings revealed four primary themes: reliance on digital communication technologies; the emotional and psychological functions of family communication; structural …

Parent Engagement And Advocacy In Individualized Education Programs In Rural Appalachian School Districts, Mollie Rutledge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore parent engagement and parent advocacy in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) development and implementation in rural Appalachian school districts. Parent engagement and parent advocacy in Individualized Education Program (IEP) development and implementation are persistent challenges in special education. By intentionally grounding this research in rural Appalachia, the researcher responded to calls for education research that is attentive to the complexity and diversity of rural communities. Parents in rural areas face unique challenges related to poverty, isolation, and limited resources that can influence their engagement and advocacy in the IEP process. The …

Perceptions Of Effective Co-Teaching Partnerships In High School Inclusive Classrooms, Korri-Lee S. Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the characteristics and contextual factors that general education and special education teachers perceive as essential for effective co-teaching partnerships in high school inclusive classrooms. The study, which involved in-depth interviews with general and special education teachers in co-teaching partnerships, was conducted within a constructivist paradigm to shed light on interpersonal, communicative, and systemic variables that contribute to a positive, productive co-teaching experience. Purposeful sampling was employed to select general and special education teachers who were part of co-teaching partnerships. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data from semi-structured interviews, and an …

Bergsonian Blend: Subjective Temporality Within Modernist Aesthetics Of Mental Illness, Lydia Victoria Gervais

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Henri Bergson was a modernist French philosopher who wrote extensively on the topic of the lived experience of time, which he called durée, or duration. His contemporary, Sigmund Freud, was developing psychoanalytic theory in a growing field of psychological study, which serves as a prominent ancestor to modern psychiatry and current psychoanalytical literary studies. Fiction writers of the 1900s absorbed the zeitgeist of melded chronology and consciousness, interweaving themes of time and trauma in their works. Utilizing Henri Bergson’s durée as a philosophical framework, I examine the moralization of time-consciousness in connection with mental illness and investigate representations of …

Empowering Futures: An Examination Of Educator Perceptions In Supporting Students With Disabilities In Post-Secondary Transition, Carlinda J. Spehar-Shaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to examine educators' perceptions of their roles in students' post-secondary transition. Federal mandates require special education teachers to be key components in supporting students during this process. The literature examines the multifaceted components of the transition process, including Kohler’s Taxonomy 2.0 and Schlossberg’s Transition Framework.

Data were collected using a one-on-one, semi-structured interview protocol to examine educators' perceptions of their roles in students' post-secondary transition. This strategy allowed the researcher to understand the participants' backgrounds and experiences while analyzing perceptions of their role in the post-secondary transition. A pre-designed set of interview …

"Am I A Man Or A Muppet": A Rhetorical Analysis Of Generative Ai’S Representation Of Gender, Jessica Boaz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how generative artificial intelligence constructs and performs gender roles through a rhetorical analysis of the fully AI-generated podcast Fairytale Forensics. Drawing on theories of constitutive rhetoric, stereotyping, and McLuhan’s approach to the medium, this thesis investigates how AI-generated hosts interpret classic fairy tales while simultaneously reproducing and negotiating gender norms through the lens of prosopopoeia, metonymy and synecdoche. These performances rely on normative gender stereotypes that align with broader societal expectations, thereby potentially reinforcing existing cultural assumptions about masculinity and femininity. Ultimately, it demonstrates that AI-generated discourse does not merely reflect human biases but actively participates in …

Arthur The Knight-King: Protector Of Land, Preserver Of Culture, John Anthony Edwards Ii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study of Arthurian literature has evolved and changed drastically over the past few centuries. The methodologies and research on King Arthur have taken a variety of approaches and covered all manner of topics, such as the Celtic roots of Arthuriana or discussion of ideals like chivalry. However, the discussion of Arthur’s character has stagnated due to the prevalence of discussing the ideology of kingship or the historical validity of a man called Arthur. A view of Arthur’s character as examined by the canon as a whole has yet to be explored. This thesis presents a new mode of interpretation, …

The Impact Of Traditional Machismo On Mental Health Outcomes: Depression And Suicide Risk Among Latino Immigrant And Non-Immigrant Men, Yesenia A, Romero

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditional masculine norms have long been recognized as influential factors in men’s psychological well-being. Within Latino cultures, the construct of machismo represents a culturally specific form of masculinity characterized by ideals of masculinity and characterized by ideals of strength, dominance, and emotional restraint. While these norms may promote resilience and family responsibilities, rigid adherence to traditional machismo has also been associated with emotional suppression, reduced help-seeking behaviors, and increased psychological distress. The present study conducted a meta-analysis to examine the relationship between traditional machismo and mental health outcomes among Latino men, with particular attention to depressive symptoms as well as …

Voices Of A New Era: A Discursive Psychology Study Of Influencer-Follower Discourse On Tiktok, Andrea Guerrero Hernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study researched and investigated the discourse of five mega fashion influencers on TikTok, as well as the discourse of 15 followers engaging with fashion influencer content on the same platform. The theory used to guide this study was discursive psychology theory, which provided the groundwork for understanding how both influencers and followers position their identities, justify their actions and decisions, and construct their reality. The primary aim of this research is to deepen understanding of how influencer discourse shapes follower discourse, identifying recurring patterns, contradictions, and the ways in which tensions are negotiated. The findings reveal a range …

Cultivating Diversity: Investigating Hispanic College Students’ Attitudes Toward Teaching Amid The U.S. Teacher Shortage Crisis, Daniela Andrea Hernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The underrepresentation of Hispanic teachers in U.S. public education remains a significant concern as Hispanic students comprise a growing proportion of the K–12 population. Despite this demographic shift, the educator’s workforce has not reflected the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the students it serves. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore first- and second-year Hispanic college students’ perceptions of teaching as a profession and to examine how their educational and personal experiences influenced their career interests. The study was informed by social cognitive career theory and culturally relevant teaching theory to better understand how self-efficacy, outcome expectations, …

Investigating The Synergistic Effects Of Mental And Physical Exhaustion On Learning And Attention In Emergency First Responders: An Eye-Tracking Study, Kayla Page

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Exhaustion is known to impair cognitive functioning and performance, yet its effects on learning during video-based instruction among first responders and military service members remain underexplored. This study examined how mental, physical, and combined exhaustion independently influence learning outcomes and visual attention in a physically active sample drawn from military, public safety, and emergency service roles. Visual attention was measured utilizing eye tracking, focusing on fixation duration (FD) and fixation rate (FR). Participants completed instructional tasks under each exhaustion condition, allowing comparison of learning and gaze behavior across fatigue states. Results indicated that mental and physical exhaustion were associated …

Identifying The Barriers Bilingual Parents Face In The Special Education Process, Miranda Leah Hernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increasing parental involvement in the special education process means parents, teachers, and school administrators can unite to educate the children. The problem that the researcher identified was that emergent bilingual families struggle to become meaningful participants in their children’s individualized education plans. This was a qualitative case study that identified the barriers that bilingual parents face within the special education process and the recommendations from bilingual parents on how to help them become more meaningful members of their child’s individualized education plan. The population within the research included bilingual families with children in the greater Houston, Texas area who have …

Influence Of Restorative Justice Practices On Student Behavior, Shawn N. Clemons

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to explore how teachers in culturally diverse suburban U.S. elementary schools perceive the implementation of restorative justice practices as an influence on student behavior. The researcher collected data through questionnaires and semistructured interviews of 14 elementary teachers currently employed in a suburban elementary school who actively use restorative justice with students. Findings from the study indicated the restorative justice practices contribute positively to school culture by prioritizing relationship building, structured conflict resolution, and inclusive practices. The findings from this study can be used with teachers, administrators, district support, and school board …

Critical Roles And Critical Rolls: A Frame-Analytical Perspective Of Self-Making, Safe Spaces, And Worldbuilding In Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Cal Quayle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many gamers prefer to play tabletop roleplaying games, or TTRPGs, in order to a) join a community, and b) tell a story collaboratively with friends and acquaintances. This thesis discusses selfhood-making, safe spaces, and allegory in imaginary worlds from the perspective of Erving Goff man’s frame analysis. It relies on a theoretical framework of imagined communities, the magic circle, and subcreation. This research culminated in the understanding that people play TTRPGs for a variety of reasons - collaborative storytelling and exercising critical thinking skills, but respondents overwhelmingly reported that they enjoyed the ability to socialize with friends and strangers, and …

Texas Secondary Spanish Teachers’ Perceptions Of Factors Influencing Instructional Self- Efficacy, Satisfaction, And Effectiveness, Tana Verlane Palafox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ongoing shortages of certified world language teachers and declining enrollment in secondary language programs have intensified concerns about teacher burnout, professional isolation, and instructional quality. Research has indicated that collaboration, targeted professional development, and supportive leadership influence teachers’ instructional self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and instructional effectiveness. However, limited research has examined how secondary Spanish teachers in Texas experience these issues. This qualitative collective case study explored how Texas secondary school Spanish teachers perceive the impact of their professional experiences on instructional self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and instructional effectiveness. Grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Vygotsky’s social constructivism, the study examined how …

A Taxonomy-Driven Modular Defense Against Non-Canonical Language In Vision-Language-Action Models, Viraj Samson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have recently achieved strong performance across manipulation benchmarks, but these benchmarks rely on highly templated instructions on which the models are typically fine-tuned, leaving their behavior under realistic language-side perturbation unclear. It remains an open question whether the linguistic flexibility inherited from vision-language pretraining survives this fine-tuning, or whether the resulting policies become narrowly tuned to benchmark phrasing and brittle to the intent-preserving language variation that real users naturally produce. We address this gap with a systematic study of VLA robustness under non-canonical instructions, comprising three components: a structured taxonomy of intent-preserving variations spanning linguistic, orthographic, and …

Semantic Discovery Of Genomic Datasets With Ai, Lawrence Allibah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditional keyword-based search in genomic databases often fails to capture the latent semantic context of biological studies, leading to a ``Lexical Gap" in research discovery. This thesis presents a high-performance dual-engine discovery system built upon 10,000 studies. By utilizing 1,536-dimensional vector embeddings, with large language models (LLMs) we implement a search engine coupled with a novel Hybrid Boosting layer that integrates semantic intent with factual metadata. Furthermore, we apply a high-dimensional K-Means clustering algorithm for unsupervised topic discovery. Empirical benchmarking demonstrates that the Hybrid Boosting engine achieves a 38.1% gain in precision and a 41.2% increase in Mean Reciprocal Rank …

Task-Aligned Knowledge Transfer For Vision-Language Models Across Diverse Visual Challenges, Dongyoun Kim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pretrained vision–language models (VLMs) encode broad visual and semantic knowledge, but this knowledge does not always translate into reliable performance on specialized visual tasks. Multi-object region understanding requires fine-grained relational alignment, scientific document question answering requires structured reasoning over tables and charts, and robotic manipulation requires task-relevant perception to influence action generation. This dissertation studies these gaps as a problem of knowledge utilization: helping a pretrained model use available knowledge in a form aligned with the target task. Its central claim is that effective adaptation depends not only on model scale, data volume, or full-backbone fine-tuning, but also on three …

Bridging Language And Game Worlds: Semantic Representations And Text-Driven Terrain Generation For Procedural Content, Zhongyu Xie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) systems produce vast quantities of game levels, terrain, and environments, but lack semantic interfaces: no shared vocabulary exists between natural language, designer intent, and the structured representations generators operate on. This thesis addresses the language-content grounding gap in PCG through two complementary studies spanning semantic analysis and semantic synthesis. The first study introduces a group-supervised contrastive learning framework for semantic representation of symbolic PCG maps under many-to-one semantics, where visually distinct maps may share the same design intent. The framework combines parameter-guided semantic grouping, LLM-based caption augmentation, and a multi-positive contrastive objective that aligns language with …

Sustainable State: A Location-Based Analysis Of Recycling Habits On A University Campus, Valentyna Labrie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Universities are mini communities for the younger generation. Their role in advancing sustainable waste management practices is very valuable. That is why it is crucial to promote pro-environmental behavior, monitor consistent sorting accuracy, and maintain positive recycling indicators such as contamination and diversion rates. The research aim was to explore the impact of spatial context and visual communication strategies on recycling accuracy, contamination, and diversion rates at South Dakota State University (SDSU). The research analysed the impact of proximity to food service areas on waste composition. Another research interest was the impact of educational signage and stickers on recycling behavior …