Digital Commons Network^™

Cultural Matching And Identity Safety In K-12 Schools: An Indigenous Research Paradigm, Ashton T. Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Native American and Alaska Native (NA/AN) persons are resilient and have learned to overcome the intergenerational effects of colonization and find new ways to be Native American and Alaska Native in this contemporary life. Learning and well-being are integral values for Native American and Alaska Native people, but finding an appropriate way to approach education and learning can be difficult for Native American and Alaska Native people, especially when historically, the colonial-based systems have been created for them to fail. Because cultural matching and identity safety (CM/IS) for Native American and Alaska Native people in other environments (e.g., psychotherapy, child-welfare …

Ending The Doom Cycle: Redefining Historic Preservation And Reclaiming Total Heritage Through Community And Social Justice Advocacy, Nikki Marie Manning

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the wake of a global pandemic and escalating societal challenges, yet another attempt to examine familiar debates about what we preserve and why and the typical arguments for and against historic preservation, seem inconsequential and disconnected from addressing more urgent societal needs such as systemic racism, inequality, police brutality, LGBTQ+ rights, economic and healthy disparities, and environmental justice. The field of historic preservation has the potential, and even obligation, to emphasize and create meaningful impact on larger issues. It should be highlighting and celebrating the diverse stories of people and places that define our community, and the history embodied …

Effectiveness Of An Evolution-Based Serious Game On Motivation And Achievement Of Secondary-Level Science Students, Bradford John Fruechte

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Getting students to engage with schoolwork is not always an easy task. Lessons that have elements of games (gamified lessons) and serious games (those created for education) have the potential to increase motivation, which may also improve learning outcomes. But research has found mixed results on the achievement effects of educational games, and not enough research has shown the effectiveness of educational games on evolution-related topics specifically (Bjoerner & Hansen, 2010). This study aimed to implement a game that revolves around the mechanisms of evolution and evaluated that game’s effects on secondary-level students’ motivation and learning. Four middle school life …

A Study On The Relationship Between College Teachers’ Perception Of Professional Learning Communities And Self-Efficacy, Hongli Jia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this quantitative survey study was to investigate the relationship between college teachers’ perceptions of the professional learning community and teacher self-efficacy. Drawing on quantitative data from a sample of 367 college teachers in Inner Mongolia in China during the 2023-2024 school year, the research investigated the impact of PLC participation on self-efficacy across different career stages and majors.

The findings revealed a medium positive correlation between college teachers’ perception in PLCs and teacher self-efficacy. The regression model indicated that collective learning and application and shared personal practice significantly influenced the overall teacher self-efficacy, but shared and supportive …

Culture & Contamination On The Fort Hall Indian Reservation, Sidney Upsis Fellows

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The land-based culture of our Shoshone-Bannock Tribes reflects our ability to live a healthy and good life by connecting to the land physically and spiritually in ways of respect, accountability, and other traditions that uphold land-human relations. In consideration of the settler colonialism that has spread across Turtle Island (a.k.a., North America) over the past 500 years, appropriation and contamination of land puts land-based cultures at stake. For the Shoshone-Bannock, two Superfund sites, a result and ongoing issue of settler colonialism, present an issue of environmental justice for the Tribes. This thesis seeks to provide a holistic understanding of our …

An Examination Of The Relation Between Memory Self-Efficacy And Working Memory Within The Cognitive Reserve Framework, Genna Marie Mashinchi Ma

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dementia has been found to negatively affect multiple aspects of cognitive functioning. Despite an increasing prevalence of cognitive decline, many aging adults do not experience reduced cognitive functioning. The reason as to why some experience cognitive decline and others do not is still unclear. One leading theory thought to explain this phenomenon is the cognitive reserve theory (CR), which proposes that certain lifestyle factors (e.g., educational attainment, occupational attainment, and leisure activity participation) prolong one’s cognitive functioning and reduce the risk of cognitive decline. Memory self-efficacy (MSE), defined as one’s beliefs in their memory ability, was found to be positively …

How Perceptions Of Safety And Anxiety Affect Campus Carry, Kara M. Snider

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Investigating Intellectual Diversity: A Critical Examination Of Academic Publishing Practices And Their Effects On Wildlife Conservation, Madeline M. Damon

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Academic publishing processes and standards play a fundamental role in communicating, reviewing, and expanding scientific knowledge in wildlife conservation. However, various publishing biases privilege some research perspectives and worldviews while limiting others. These biases directly impact intellectual diversity, or differences in ontology, axiology, and epistemology. This study aims to quantify intellectual diversity in the field of wildlife conservation and identify how publishing biases affect knowledge available to researchers and decision-makers worldwide.

The study employed a sample of 50,000 articles published between 2018 and 2022, collected from the Web of Science database. To analyze the vast amount of article records, natural …

“Should Wellbeing Be The Same As Perfection?” A Case Study On Student Wellbeing In Higher Mathematics Education, Marcelo Alonso Almora Rios

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Previous research has given the impression that reticent is our hunt for optimal teaching practices, educational goals, and nature of mathematical workings. In this regard, we have (seemingly) ended up with the following inquiries:

• What could the math classroom be for? and
• What has the math classroom been for?

These two questions touch on the scary horns of two other charged philosophical dandruffs. Namely:“What are the aims of teaching mathematics?” and “What should be our objectives in learning it?”

The term ‘positive education’ refers to an educational system engendering both the skills of positive wellbeing and traditional, academic achievement (Seligman …

Teacher Turnover And Retention The Choice To Leave: Lived Experiences Of Teachers In Rural Montana, Brittany Elizabeth Julie Katzer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

School districts across the United States are grappling to fill, and to keep, their classrooms operating with qualified teachers, especially in rural communities. To ensure a quality education for the millions of students in the nation in the coming years, educational leaders and government officials need to evaluate what can be done to increase the number of teachers staying in their positions. Schools must be better equipped to understand what contributes to high turnover rates and the inability to retain their teachers. It is necessary to create conditions that will keep fully trained and qualified teachers in the field. The …

Impacts Of Eating Disorder Recovery On Communication Of Identity Through Food, Rosemary Willett Jeter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using the Communication Theory of Identity as a framework, the purpose of this thesis was to investigate how the experience of eating disorder recovery (EDR) impacts one’s communication of identity through and about food, and perceptions of others’ communication about and through food. Purposive sampling yielded 20 adult participants who self-identified as having been in EDR for at least one year. Results from a phronetic iterative data analysis of semi-structured interviews yielded several themes. When considering how EDR influences personal communication through food, main themes include: (a) the inability to share meals creates a gap between the enacted and relational …

Facing The Climate Crisis: The Plaintiffs Of Held V. Montana Find Agency And Voice, Richard H. Forbes

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

16 young people, in a lawsuit titled Held v. Montana, are suing the state of Montana on the grounds that its state energy policy contributes to climate change, harming them physically and psychologically and violating their constitutional rights to a clean and healthful environment. This project explores the plaintiffs’ perspectives on the lawsuit, describes how their involvement is changing their relationships to their own climate-related mental health and explains how their psychological concerns reflect larger societal issues related to climate change.

An Examination Of The Food System, Foodscape, Dietary Patterns, And Accolated Health Outcomes Of Salish People Within The Confederated Salish And Kootenai Nation, Joshua William Brown

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Often an individualistic, consumerist strategy is promoted as the solution to decrease the growing prevalence of diet-related diseases. Unfortunately, this logic is ahistorical and apolitical while privileging pathological individualism, capitalistic consumerism, and prevalent diets within the United States. This reasoning fails to recognize diet construction across time by ideologies, policies, and practices. Such an outlook misses the reality that many people cannot escape the grip of the modern, pervasive, ultra-processed food system.

Several Native American populations find themselves plagued with high rates of diet-related diseases. Standard mantra shoulders these communities with their plight, often framing the discourse as personal responsibility …

The Context Of Peer Aggression On Teachers’ Perceptions, Attributions, Affect, And Intentions To Intervene, Jaynee Lin Bohart

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Teachers play a critical role in addressing peer aggression between students at school, but they are not always the most effective. However, without more research about how and when teachers choose to intervene during aggressive altercations, it will be difficult to address the factors hampering their effectiveness. The current study (n = 152) employed a mixed-method design and hypothetical vignettes of different types of peer aggression to determine if teachers perceived seriousness, self-efficacy with aggressors, attributions of responsibility, sympathy, and anger differed according to the types of aggression and students depicted in the vignettes. The same variables were included in …

Perceived Parental Acceptance And Rejection, Self-Compassion, And Psychological Distress In Lgb-Identified Individuals, Morgan Christine Bowlen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study aimed to examine the relationship between general family support, sexual orientation-specific parental rejection, and self-compassion, as well as psychological distress and proximal minority stress for LGB-identified individuals. Three hundred twenty-four participants who identified as LGB were recruited online for the study and completed measures of general family support, sexual orientation-specific parental rejection, self-compassion, psychological distress, and proximal minority stress. The results showed that general family support was negatively associated with psychological distress, and that general family support was positively related to the self-kindness and common humanity facets of self-compassion, and negatively related to the self-judgment, isolation, and overidentification …

Navigating Toxic Identities Within League Of Legends, Jeremy Thomas Miner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Toxicity is an inevitable part of online gaming for many individuals that participate in the activity. How individuals navigate this behavior affects not only the community but the players themselves. In essence, online world environments affect the identity of the individual within them. The magic circle separates the gaming world and the real world into two separate and distinct places, however crystalized selves posits that the identity of an individual in one sphere is part of the individual in another. Understanding the connection between these two ideas gives rise to the question of whether or not toxic behaviors in a …

Thipsinna Dakhod Wichohan Wakhan – ‘Turnip Dakhota Way Of Life Is Sacred’: A Dakhota Model For K-12 Pedagogy And Curriculum, Ramey Leigh Escarcega-Growing Thunder

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The term “cultural place-based” is used to ground this research—a specific spiritual place linked to cultural and language-based education within the homelands of the Dakȟóta, Nakoda, and Lakota peoples who inhabit territories in Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Canada: The Native people regard these as their homelands. In the Dakȟóta language, itȟáŋčhaŋ translates to “a leader, boss, person in charge, position of authority, office, management, and political power,” (Lakota Language Consortium, Llc., 2013). The author utilizes the word itȟáŋčhaŋ as the cultural–educational leadership view in creating a cultural place-based model. This research identifies the impact indicators of implementing a …

Warmth Of The Sun, Drake M. Gerber

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Warmth of the Sun, is a reflection on personal experiences I’ve had in the landscape while living in the Northwest. This curated experience is an attempt to capture my sincerity towards a place and hold onto that feeling. I intend to share faded memories of personal experiences through enigmatic sculptures to make the viewer look a bit closer at these objects and see the landscape in a new way. This paper explores thoughts on the idea of place, material, process, contemporary influences, and the experiences that inspired this body of work.

To The Land Of Opportunity: Leadership Journeys Of Persian Immigrant Women In The United States, Shaima Khinjani

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

How have barriers shaped the experience of Persian women holding leadership positions in the United States? Using a qualitative approach, this research studied the lived experience of immigrant women from Persian-speaking countries and the challenges of their leadership journey in the United States. The data from the lived experiences of twelve women in leadership positions with one-to-one Zoom meetings were collected using interactive interviews. Raw transcriptions of their experiences were analyzed using the descriptive phenomenological approach outlined by Giorgi (2009). This approach allowed for the data to be reduced into a single narrative description shared by all participants indicating the …

#Therapy: Social Media Video Interventions And Help Seeking Intentions Among College Students, Jennifer Leigh Lippold

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite evidence of rising mental health concerns among college students, treatment utilization among this population remains low (ACHA, 2020). While there are many barriers that impact help seeking among students, some of the most commonly cited include stigma, treatment fearfulness, and low mental health literacy (e.g., Czyz et al., 2013; Ebert et al., 2019b; Eisenberg et al., 2007, Vogel et al., 2013). In order to promote help seeking among students, many colleges have made efforts to address these barriers through outreach interventions, such as educational presentations, on-campus advertisements, and campus fairs (Betton et al., 2015; Gruttadaro, & Crudo, 2012; Pescosolido …

Witness This Thing So Tender, Erin Marie White

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

At once fantastical and down-to-earth, the poems of Witness This Thing So Tender are concerned with the convergence of the speaker’s many selves and influences. Gritty and mysterious happenings shape the speaker’s physical, emotional, and psychological circumstances in the world. Whether the triggering topic is ecological, parental, or sepulchral, the work of the poems is to examine and integrate the changeable natures of memory and reality.

Each poem in the second movement of the collection, entitled “Lunar Cycle,” employs the idiom Once upon a time as its entry point. This small, well-worn turn of phrase operates as a springboard into …

Teachers’ Perceptions Of The Behavioral Symptoms Associated With Trauma, Hannah Hall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of Barriers To Traditional And Home-Based Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Participation: Potential Implications For The Maintenance Phase, Erin Rose Madison

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cardiac rehabilitation provides medically supervised therapeutic exercise and multifaceted risk factor modification as a form of secondary prevention for cardiovascular disease, a persistent leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and internationally. Despite robust evidence of compelling patient outcomes, decreased disease recurrence, and the indications from the ACC/AHA endorsing phase II cardiac rehabilitation (CR) as a crucial aspect of recovery from cardiac events and qualifying conditions, CR is widely underutilized. A variety of patient barriers can serve as mitigating factors to CR referral, enrollment, participation, and completion contributing to, in part, the underutilization of CR. Barriers to …

Does Behavioral Synchrony Extend To Robots? Children’S Sharing, Mentalizing, And Social Attributions To Synchronous Others, Sarah E. Sweezy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Behavioral synchrony, or the act of keeping rhythm with others, has many implications on children’s interactions with others, from prosocial behaviors to feelings of affiliation with synchronous people. However, little is known about how behavioral synchrony applies to non-human entities. From robots leading movement-based learning in classrooms or being engaged in cultural settings, a new series of questions arise for how children view synchronizing with non-human others. The current study aimed to investigate how broadly synchronization effects would extend in a child sample: Are behavioral synchrony effects limited to synchronizing with humans or do they extend to social agents (e.g., …

Umfc #12: A Comprehensive Forensic Analysis Case Report, Kaylee M. Hinds

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The University of Montana Forensic Case 12 (UMFC) is a human skeleton with an MNI of one that was recovered in August 1983 from an old schoolyard in Helena, Montana, by construction workers who were building a highway. The individual was given to the University of Montana Anthropology Department following the authority’s investigation. At the time, the University of Montana aided in the analysis of the skeletal remains and both departments had deemed the case as forensically insignificant and historic. The initial recoverers believed that the individual was a descendant of the Last Chance Gulch era and reflected Chinese ancestry, …

Beliefs About False Allegations Of Sexual Violence: Intergroup Contact Theory And Rape Myth Acceptance At A Rocky Mountain University, Alexandra Marie Buscaglia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

False allegations of sexual assault represent approximately 2% to 10% of all sexual assault allegations reported to law enforcement (Lisak et al., 2010). Despite this low prevalence rate, people tend to overestimate the occurrence of false allegations, and give false allegations excessive weight in arguments about rape myths and policy-making decisions. This excessive weight is given despite a lack of research evidence that false reports of sexual violence occur more frequently than those of any other crime (Ask, 2010; McMillan, 2018; Stabile et al., 2019). This overestimation is likely influenced by the overrepresentation and sensationalization of false allegations in the …

The Resilience Of American Indian And Alaska Native Older Adults In The Context Of Major Health Disparities In Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Asthma, And Arthritis: A Narrative Review, Ennis Frank Vaile

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Multiple major health disparities have been documented in Indian Country, including cardiovascular disease (Howard et al., 1999), diabetes (Acton et al., 2003), asthma (Mannino et al., 2002), and arthritis (Barbour et al., 2017). Prior research has shown that the prevalence rates of these conditions in American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) are among the highest in the United States. Given these health disparities, aging older adults in Indian Country may be especially vulnerable to the development of concurrent negative mental health outcomes, particularly depression (Garrett et al., 2015). Nonetheless, AI/AN older adults continue to age successfully and exhibit substantial …

"Our Loons": Participant Attachments And Motivations Within A Community-Based Monitoring Program, Taylor Tewksbury

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Organizations can benefit from understanding person-place relationships and volunteer motivations as they recruit and sustain involvement in their community-based monitoring (CBM) programs. Place attachment, or the bond between people and their meaningful environments, is one lens through which to explore these relationships. Past studies have associated place attachment with environmentally responsible behaviors (ERB), such as CBM involvement. However, few studies have explored the relationship between place attachment and CBM in the context of volunteers’ attachment to the species of study.

The purpose of this research study was to explore the place-based relationships and motivations among volunteers of the Loon Preservation …

Comedy, Camaraderie, And Conflict: Using Humor To Defuse Disputes Among Friends, Sheena A. Bringa

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study sought to examine the role humor plays in defusing conflict between friends from an evolutionary perspective. Although a vast amount of research exists on humor, friendship, and conflict, no single study connects all three of these concepts together. This study attempted to fill this gap by examining how different humor styles used between friends in times of conflict relate to friendship satisfaction and life satisfaction. Specifically, the hypotheses predicted that friends who use affiliative humor to deescalate conflict are more inclined to report higher relational satisfaction and improved individual well-being than friends who use maladaptive humor to deescalate …

Sharing The Medicine Of Resilience: Honoring The Work Of Dr. Gyda Swaney, Matthew Martin Croxton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

American Indians are a unique population that have been historically understudied in psychology. However, research in this field with this population has been growing and researchers are beginning to explore facets of American Indian mental health. There is a movement for American Indian psychologists themselves to conduct this research and to begin to develop culturally adapted and Indigenous research frameworks. There have been many Native psychologists who have helped push this work forward. One such Native psychologist was Dr. Gyda Swaney (Salish) who was a professor at the in the Psychology Department at the University of Montana and directed and …