Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between English Language Learners’ Mathematics Problem Solving Strategies And The Mathematics Register, Sarah Reeves Frederickson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This case study followed three Hispanic and three Marshallese students’ participation in a seventh grade pre-algebra unit over the course of four weeks. Pre-assessment items indicated that the students had difficulty with aspects of the mathematics register. Their teacher employed an interpretation of the gradual release model of instruction in which direct strategies for translating word problems into equations with unknowns were modeled prior to students doing similar problems on their own. In these situations, students showed some success in solving similar problems. However, post-assessment results indicated that none of the six students were able to successfully solve open response …

Westward Empire: George Berkeley’S ‘Verses On The Prospect Of Planting Of Arts’ In American Art And Cultural History, Elizabeth Kiszonas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the extraordinary half-life of a single line of poetry: “Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way…”. Beginning with their composition in 1726 by the Irish- Anglican bishop George Berkeley, these words colonized an enormous swath of cultural landscape over nearly two centuries. Immortalized in newsprint, broadsides, statesmen’s speeches, reading primers, geographies, the first scholarly history of the United States, as well as in poetry, paintings, lithographs, and photographs, the words evolved from an old-world vision of prophetic empire into a nationalist slogan of manifest destiny. Following the poem as it threads through literary and visual culture, …

Liable To Change, Jody Travis Thompson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Liable to Change is a body of paintings in which I explore diverse approaches to the representation of visual space. Depictions of space and movement change throughout the pictures by combining various artistic conventions, such as trompe l’oeil realism and non-objective, geometric abstraction. Oil paint, resin, beeswax, and other materials create built-up surfaces which contain the history of their making. Interaction between various finishes and light on these surfaces changes based on the viewers' proximity to the painting. Images of monkey bars, lattice, golden ratio and flower of life patterns provide a structure through which line, form, and space are …

Give Up The Ghost, Hannah T. Mcbroom

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Give Up the Ghost is a series of six paintings created in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. The paintings are an introspective examination of transgender subjectivity in visual narrative.

In this paper, I separate the personal and research through first and third person, similarly to how I separate imagery and mark making in my paintings. The paper is broken up into a description of the project, the history and theory which informs the work, and why painting is used to describe bodies and spaces.

Give Up the Ghost refers to giving up social expectations as determined by gender. The paintings …

Good Dyke Art, Sam M. Mack

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The work in good dyke art visually expands upon conversations about institutional critique and its contradictions, specifically questioning who dictates the boundaries between institutions and bodies: how divisions are made between them and who enacts or receives force. One’s participation in this critique, however, indicates a participation in the problematics of the institution and by extension, a desire to critique may also be considered a desire to participate in that system.

Ceramic, glaze, and found objects manifest an allegorical formalism that utilizes coded languages of institutional spaces, traditions of queer-coding, and charged word-play. The ceramic vessel forms reference the Ancient …

An Echo From The Living Room, Makayla Nichole Songer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We are unable to interface with reality as it is. Everything that encompasses our understanding of reality and ourselves—from our physical perceptions to our memories—are subject to innate flaws that make a complete grasp of reality impossible. an echo from the living room is invested in the idea that reality itself is malleable, taking influence from altered states of reality such as dreams, nightmares, and memory. Drawing from the personal experiences of recurring nightmares and living in a haunted house, as well film, the uncanny, and the multiple, an echo from the living room strives to create space for these …

“Because I Care I Risk”: How Ceo Free Market Orientation Affects The Extent And Type Of Income Smoothing, Mirzokhidjon S. Abdurakhmonov

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The executive political ideology literature suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity because social and economic issues are conflated. This has created an inconsistency in empirical findings with the theoretical predictions of the political ideology construct. In this dissertation, I identify a distinct economic component, free market orientation, based on support for economic individualism, competition, and property rights to reconcile these inconsistencies. Specifically, I argue that these indicators of free market orientation will have a unique impact on the way executives run their organizations. I develop a novel scale that measures CEO economic values that I term free market orientation …

Testing Measurement Invariance In Multilevel Data With Unequal Cross-Level Factor Structures, Lihua Yang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The test of measurement invariance (MI) investigates whether observed items measure a construct in the same way across different groups or over times. Examining MI is a prerequisite for multiple group comparisons in psychological tests (Schmitt & Kuljanin, 2008). With the prevalence of multilevel data in educational research (e.g., students nested within schools), establishing MI across multiple groups or waves of nested data has brought increasing attention. Two popular techniques for the test of multilevel MI include the multiple-group multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MMCFA) and the design-based approaches. The MMCFA approach estimates sample covariance matrices at different levels separately. The …

Master’S-Level Counseling Students’ Experience Of Expressive Arts Techniques In A Cacrep Multicultural Counseling Course, Cameron Houin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Counseling governing bodies have defined what should be prioritized in multicultural counseling courses, including students’ multicultural knowledge and awareness; however, best practice regarding how to teach these multicultural concepts has largely been left up to the counselor educator. Counselor educators have begun implementing expressive arts techniques in the classroom, but very little literature exists related to using such techniques in a multicultural course in a manner that positively influence counseling students’ multicultural competency.

The purpose of this study was to explore master’s-level counseling students’ experience of expressive arts techniques utilized during their multicultural counseling course. Ten student participants took part …

A Case Study Of Faculty Experiences In A College Union, Robert Francis Stagni

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

College Unions remain an important presence on many campuses, and often have long legacies of service to students and the campus. Faculty members have largely been left out of the college union literature, despite their tenure on campuses. This study examined the experiences of faculty members with the college union at a case study institution. Interviews with faculty produced themes of participant’s connection to the union, faculty convenience, and student purpose. Many faculty participants shared common traits that may have influenced their involvement in, and experiences with, the union, such as an undergraduate degree from the same institution and their …

Positioning Of English Language Learners And Its Power On Classroom Learning Opportunities And Interactions, Hawraa Nafea Hameed Alzouwain

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this qualitative study, the researcher investigated four aspects of positioning used by teacher and ESL students in a mid-south state of the United States. This study was based on the Positioning Theory of Davies and Harré (1990). The study aimed to explore various types of positioning used by the participants and how they impacted social interactions among the students and between them and their teacher. The researcher used four questions to outline the scope of the research, focused on: 1) how ELLs’ different positioning in the ESL classroom promoted or limited their learning opportunities; 2) how the ELL teacher …

Reducing The Risk: Psychological And Technological Approaches For Improving Handwashing Practices In The Foodservice Industry, Jeffrey Allan Clark

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As Americans are spending greater portions of their dollar on food consumed outside the home, the foodservice industry plays more of an integral part of daily existence compared to previous generations. Given the numerous annual foodborne illness outbreaks that threaten human lives while undermining confidence in the food supply, food safety is a pertinent issue for industry stakeholders, government regulators, and consumers. Food worker handwashing reduces the risk of foodborne illness transmission, yet compliance with this simple behavior is a complex problem. This dissertation addresses, predominantly, the issue of sub-optimal handwashing practices through applying psychology and technology, including wearable computers …

Identifying Predictors Of Organizational Commitment Among Community College Faculty Members In Arkansas, Chris Aaron Lorch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community colleges serve an important function of allowing students to achieve an affordable education closer to home. However, these opportunities often challenge community college faculty members due to smaller budgets and resources, which leads to differentiation in curriculum delivery, underprepared students, increasing workloads, and increasing stakeholder expectations. As such, across the nation, faculty are showing lack of commitment, lowered engagement, and increasing turnover rate. This study sought to determine the predictors of organizational commitment in community college faculty, using Meyer and Allen’s framework of three components of this commitment. Both individual demographic characteristics of faculty, and institution characteristics of degree …

“A Woman’S Story”: Lady Macbeth And Performing Femininity In The Early 1600s – Late 1900s, Phyllis Lebert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper uses gender studies to understand the themes of gender performance further, and more specifically, femininity, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It also explores the many ways feminine gender performance has changed as society has changed. Thus, proving gender is performative rather than innate. It does this by examining first the text within the context of Elizabethan society. Moreover, by examining three pivotal performances of Lady Macbeth through history within the context of their social structures as well. The three performances are that of Sarah Siddons in the Late 18th Century, Ellen Terry in the 19th Century, and Judy Dench in …

Mental Health On Trial: An In-Depth Look At The Criminalization Of Mental Illness In The United States Criminal Justice System, Addison Elise Shemin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The criminal justice system was created to identify, incarcerate, and rehabilitate men and women that have broken the law. However, over two million people with mental illnesses are placed into jails every year. The lack of proper psychological evaluation and diagnosis coupled with misunderstood evidence and economic hardship has produced a system that treats these men and women as criminals rather than someone suffering from an illness. When an individual with mental health issues comes into contact with the criminal justice system they are often improperly evaluated by first responders, wrongfully convicted, and inappropriately sentenced. The lack of proper psychological …

Music, Language, And Rhythmic Timing, Rhimmon Simchy-Gross

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neural, perceptual, and cognitive oscillations synchronize with rhythmic events in both speech (Luo & Poeppel, 2007) and music (Snyder & Large, 2005). This synchronization decreases perceptual thresholds to temporally predictable events (Lawrance et al., 2014), improves task performance (Ellis & Jones, 2010), and enables speech intelligibility (Peelle & Davis, 2012). Despite implications of music-language transfer effects for improving language outcomes (Gordon et al., 2015), proposals that shared neural and cognitive resources underlie music and speech rhythm perception (e.g., Tierney & Kraus, 2014) are not yet substantiated. The present research aimed to explore this potential overlap by testing whether music-induced oscillations …

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Enhanced Mentoring For Delinquency Prevention, Allison Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Youth with certain risk factors (e.g., from a minority group, low-income status, previous contact with the juvenile justice system) are particularly at risk for juvenile delinquency and associated problems (e.g., school failure, mental health problems). In addition, these problems are quite costly to youth, their families, and society as a whole. Mentoring programs have shown modest, but consistent, effects in the prevention and reduction of juvenile delinquency and associated problems. Previous research has identified promising enhancements (i.e., advocacy/teaching roles for mentors, rigorous match processes, comprehensive mentor training, ongoing mentor support) that may increase the effectiveness of mentoring in producing positive …

Familiarization Through Ambient Images Alone, Nia Imani Gipson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The term “ambient images” has begun to show up in much of the current literature on facial recognition. Ambient images refer to naturally occurring views of a face that captures the idiosyncratic ways in which a target face may vary (Ritchie & Burton, 2017). Much of the literature on ambient images have concluded that exposing people to ambient images of a target face can lead to improved facial recognition for that target face. Some studies have even suggested that familiarity is the result of increased exposure to ambient images of a target face (Burton, Kramer, Ritchie, & Jenkins, 2016). The …

Socially Constructing Marijuana Policy And Target Populations In The News Media, Jonathan Taylor Langner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses on different aspects of the co-construction African Americans and marijuana in the news. First, the historical background of modern drug laws, including marijuana prohibition, and how this was dependent on racialized fears in the wake of the abolition of slavery. Next, the prevalence and variety of marijuana constructions in a national newspaper, with careful attention paid to associations with racial identifiers. Finally, how African American athletes and marijuana are co-constructed in an exemplary article.

Chapter 2 describes how racial fears relate to the social construction of disadvantaged population in the media. We first describe the current situation …

Advanced Statistics In Arkansas Sports Reporting, Andrew Lee Epperson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to analyze how Arkansas’ sports journalists are adapting to the recent surge in available advanced statistics that are being used by certain national news organizations. Using in-depth qualitative research that includes in-depth interviews with a number of individuals in the print, broadcast, and athletics side of sports coverage, we discover how journalists and coaches use these next-generation analytics, what they fundamentally mean for the evolution of each respective path, and why so few Arkansas reporters and writers use them at the time of this paper’s defense. We see how budgets and deadlines restrict the use of these …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Motor Planning With Core Vocabulary: A Behavior Analytic Account, Alison Judith Karnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) increases, it is important for practitioners to continue to improve evidence-based practices (EBP) for the treatment of ASD symptoms (i.e., impairments in social communication and repetitive behaviors and restricted interests; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). It is estimated that 30-50% of individuals with autism do not acquire functional speech (Wodka, Mathy, & Kalb, 2013). These individuals would make appropriate candidates for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC; Mirenda, 2003). One form of AAC is the speech-generating device (SGD). Over the last ten years, tablet-based technologies including iPad minisⓇ have been emphasized in the …

Examining The Phenomenon Of Elementary School Principal Succession Through The Perspectives And Experiences Of Novice Principals, Dayna Kay Lewis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

School districts across the United States are confronted with a shortage of highly qualified principal applicants, a situation compounded by a haphazard approach to leadership succession planning. While the vast majority of principals and superintendents endorse the promotion of assistant principals as the most effective way to develop successful school leaders, few structures exist to support that endeavor. Despite their essential role in the school’s operations and escalating demands for accountability for high standards and performance at the school level, assistant principals have been rendered virtually invisible in the scholarly literature. This study sought to fill the glaring gap in …

Comparing Elo, Glicko, Irt, And Bayesian Irt Statistical Models For Educational And Gaming Data, Breanna Morrison

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Statistical models used for estimating skill or ability levels often vary by field, however their underlying mathematical models can be very similar. Differences in the underlying models can be due to the need to accommodate data with different underlying formats and structure. As the models from varying fields increase in complexity, their ability to be applied to different types of data may have the ability to increase. Models that are applied to educational or psychological data have advanced to accommodate a wide range of data formats, including increased estimation accuracy with sparsely populated data matrices. Conversely, the field of online …

Associate And Baccalaureate Degree Nursing Students’ Knowledge Of And Attitudes Toward Medication Errors And Reporting Medication Errors: Implications For Curriculum Development, Tabatha Diann Teal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper evaluates senior nursing students’ knowledge and attitudes of medication errors and reporting errors. This study was conducted to evaluate a need for improvements to nursing education on these two concepts. This mixed method study was conducted using a modified version of the Medication Administration Error Reporting Survey by Wakefield, Uden-Holman, and Wakefield (2005) and focus group sessions at four nursing programs in the Southern United States. Medication errors continue to be a threat to patient safety and underreporting exists due to the stigma surrounding admitting a mistake. Evaluating nursing students’ knowledge and attitudes on these concepts is a …

Career Transitions Caused By Chronic Illness: A Career Construction Perspective, Julie Christine Hill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

People living with chronic illness face significant challenges when it comes to finding and maintaining employment. There is ample research available that discussed the challenges and barriers to employment for this population. However, there is a lack of research devoted to interventions dedicated to assisting people with chronic illness in career exploration and development. This study attempted to address one possible intervention to assist people with chronic illness identify and pursue possible careers. The purpose of this research study was to explore the impact of participating in the Career Construction Interview on the career exploration of individuals facing a forced …

The Finnish Line: Verbal Tactics Of Small States In Immature Anarchy, Christopher Main

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rules-based international system which has steadily emerged over the last century is in decline. Realists fail to realize that the fundamental anarchy of the international system can mature into a rules-based system which constrains geopolitics. Liberals fail to realize that it can regress in the opposite direction, towards the self-help system described by the realists. Small states stand to lose the most in this regression and are least equipped to fight it by material means. Finland is an ideal example of such a small state, and its foreign policy is articulated by President Sauli Niinistö. This paper will analyze …

Diversity And Health: Three Essays Exploring Social Context And Outcomes, Aaron Novotny

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the world becomes more diverse and more integrated, examining how racial, political, and food diversity influences individuals’ consumption, behaviors, and health becomes more paramount than ever before. The United States grows more racially diverse with large racial and ethnic shifts on the horizon regarding the proportion of the population. With the U.S. population expected to become more diverse, individuals’ political affiliation becoming more prevalent to personal identity, and food security becoming more problematic; we examine how racial, political, and food diversity influences individuals’ consumption and preferences with the intent to understand what changes in health and preferences may occur. …

Designing A Human-Centric Rigid Body Armor For Female Police Officers: The Implications Of Fit On Performance And Gender Inclusivity, Sarah West

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The lack of availability of female plates for police officers is an issue that has not been analyzed. Female anthropometry is uniformly different from male anthropometry. Currently available hard plates are flat. These plates may decrease coverage while increasing feelings of poor fit, discomfort, and poor mobility for both male and female officers. The plates designed for males offer the possibility of female officers experiencing feelings of gender exclusion. This research project explored the current perceptions of male and female police officers in Arkansas across the dimensions of fit, comfort, and mobility in the context of hard plate body armor. …

Effect Of Consistent Singing On Maintenance Of Speech Intelligibility Following Lsvt®: A Retrospective Longitudinal Case Study, Rachel Ricca Beck

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Parkinson’s Disease is a common neurodegenerative disease affecting one’s ability to hone and refine volitional movement. Many with Parkinson’s report significant effects on voice and communication. Speech-language pathologists have long targeted the achievement of increased vocal volume through intensive voice therapy, with the most common program being Lee Silverman Voice Treatment® (LSVT®) (Ramig et al., 1994). While LSVT® is the most prominent type of voice therapy for individuals with Parkinson’s, other researchers have begun investigating therapeutic singing because of the similar functions it employs (e.g., increased breath support, utilization of entire vocal range).

The current project is a retrospective, longitudinal …

Project Luminous: An E-Textiles Workshop Study To Increase Science Technology Engineering Mathematics/Science Technology Engineering Art Mathematics Interest In Middle School Girls, India Semone Callahan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this research study, young middle schoolers engaged in a stimulating workshop that seamlessly merged fashion with technology and electrical engineering. Students learned how to use simple hand sewing skills to create wearable-tech items using conductive thread, sewable LED lights, and sewable battery packs. The objective of the study was to increase young women’s interest in Science Technology Engineering Mathematics/Science Technology Engineering Art Mathematics (STEM/STEAM).

Forty-eight middle school girls spent a day learning about the basics of e-textiles and building working products using their new knowledge. The day is split into three lessons. In lesson one students build a simple …