Digital Commons Network^™

Story Retell Narratives In Five School-Aged Children With Language Impairment, Megan Bradshaw Deere

Theses and Dissertations

Many children identified with Language Impairment (LI) demonstrate difficulty comprehending and producing narratives. Their narratives are often structurally less complex and of overall poorer quality than those produced by their typically developing peers. These difficulties may negatively impact the academic and social success of children with LI. This thesis evaluates the performance of five school-aged children with LI on a story retell probe embedded within an intervention designed to address their social and emotional language abilities. During the 10-week intervention, participants completed a series of story retell probes using wordless picture books. The story stimuli were taken from the Edmonton …

Straight Outta K-1: An Authoethnographic Analysis Of A Black Male Teacher's Experience Employing Hip Hop In A Kindergarten-First Grade Classroom, Anthony Broughton

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzed the learning outcomes of a Black male kindergarten-first grade teacher’s usage of Hip Hop as an instructional approach using autoethnography as a method. The primary research question that guided this work was, “What can I learn from an examination of the experiences of Black male kindergarten/first grade teacher and students from a retroactive examination of the use of Hip Hop Pedagogy in a kindergarten/first grade classroom of African American children? Data sources for this study included of artifacts (electronic classroom portfolios, videos of classroom instruction, archived teaching evaluations, parents’ e-mails, student assessments, correspondence from administrators, lesson plans …

The Cultural Politics Of Affective Bureaucracy In Service Delivery To North Korean Refugees In South Korea, Seo Yeon Park

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the affective dimensions and intersecting politics of service operations for North Koreans, focusing on semi-government institutions, Hana Centers in two different regions of South Korea. It probes into how bureaucratic service institutions for North Koreans operate on the ground using affect-laden languages and practices in creating a specific type of clientele subjectivity. This study also points out how the state bureaucracies identifying themselves as “practical” and “neutral” agencies reveal contradictory and fragmented governing which is antithetical to how the state institutions are imagined. There are underlying politics working in the realm of a so-called neutral service agency, …

21st Century Choral Performance Practice: Presenting The Mash-Up With Practical Applications, Justin Xavier Carteret

Theses and Dissertations

Recent paradigm shifts in music production have generated a newly recognized texture formed by blending two or more pre-existent and pre-recorded songs together. Originating in pop culture, mash-ups often sample from genres and cultures otherwise not typically associated. This new form requires formal definition, codification, and application. Developments in digital coding and dissemination of the latter twentieth century expanded the diapason of music composition, revealing the mash-up as a naturally occurring product of harmonic evolution. A description of the computer software Audacity and its capabilities depicts an uncomplicated aural-based method for composition which generated the early mash-ups of the 2000’s. …

Discursive Intersections: Tracing The Becoming Of Pre-Service Teachers - An Action Research Study, Elizabeth Mccall Bemiss

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to construct knowledge about the intersections between a teacher educator’s discourses and pre-service teacher identity performances in a university classroom. The researcher used Mills’ (2011) action research design to examine the ways she intersected with the identity performances of 24 pre-service teachers in a literacy methods course. Data collection included audio recordings and transcriptions of class sessions, a teacher journal, written communication between teacher and students, and course assignments. Thematic analysis and methods of discourse analysis were used to identify patterns across pre-service teachers’ performances in the classroom. Findings revealed multiple, fluid, dynamically evolving, …

Investigating The Relationship Between Arabic-Speaking Iraqi Refugee Families And The Schools Their Children Attend, Saad K. Bushaala

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the relationships between Arabic speaking Iraqi refugees and teachers in the schools their children attended as perceived by parents and teachers. Specifically, this study explored the communication processes utilized by the Iraqi refugees, their children’s teachers, and their schools. Using a qualitative methods approach, this study also examined the multiple literacy forms and “funds of knowledge” that these families exhibited and utilized in support of their children’s learning. I also looked at the methods and practices that Arab refugee families living in the South used to preserve their heritage language and culture. I read and analyzed the …

Motivation Towards Success: A Qualitative Comparative Case Study Illustrating The Differences In Motivating Factors In Achievement Between Low Ses High Achieving And Low Achieving African American High School Females, Ashanti C. Friels

Theses and Dissertations

For years educators have made attempts to explain the effects of poverty on student achievement. Many have set out to explore methods for better helping students with limited resources succeed academically, thus bridging the achievement gap between these students and their financially stable counterparts. The ultimate combination of poverty and race/ethnicity define major sources of disadvantage in educational outcomes (Maruyama, 2003). Viewing this from a racial standpoint places African American students at the receiving end of low achievement as a result of low socioeconomic status.

The missing thread that could potentially pull this together exists among the population of impoverished …

Learning To Become Culturally Responsive Critical Inquirers: A Never Ending Journey, Susana Priscila Alvarado Cordova

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the nuances of becoming a culturally responsive critical inquirer. A postcritical ethnographic case study offered the frame to describe my attempts to produce and implement culturally responsive curriculum with two teachers in a bilingual second grade classroom. Data included participant observations over a six–month period, field notes from classroom observations, interviews to different stake holders, and documents and artifacts analysis. I used narrative to provide an ethnographic description of the site, and to describe the research participants and our interactions. I did so in order to describe the ways in which personal histories, school, and district structures, …

Defining And Displaying Gallo: Language And Ideology In Upper Brittany, France, Sandra Keller

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines discourse practices in and about Gallo, a marginalized Romance language of Upper Brittany, France. Specifically, it explores how various Gallo social actors (advocates, performers, teachers and students) defined, labeled and displayed Gallo, as they constructed it as a language capable of participating in modernity, producing local authority, and forging links with loved people and places.

Gallo was popularly imagined as part of a rural past and dismissed as a “deformation” of French, unlike the Breton language, which stood as a salient emblem of Brittany’s cultural distinctiveness. This dissertation elucidates the ideological and everyday consequences of using this …

Base Rates Of Cognitive And Academic Weaknesses, Allison L. Stafford

Theses and Dissertations

The identification of learning disabilities is critical for receiving intervention services; however, special education eligibility criteria often varies across districts, resulting in large variations in identification rates. (Hallahan, Keller, & Ball, 1986; Scruggs & Mastropieri, 2002; Reschly & Hosp, 2004; Maki, Floyd & Roberson, 2015). A new method for identifying learning disabilities, patterns of strengths and weaknesses (PSW), has risen in popularity as a method for assessing and informing interventions for students with learning disabilities. Despite the growing popularity of PSW approaches, little is known about the prevalence of cognitive and academic weaknesses in the population (Miciak, Fletcher, Stuebing, Vaughn, …

Metafiction In Mourning: The Intersections Of Gender Performance And Postdictatorial Memory In Novels By Luisa Valenzuela, Clarice Lispector, And Diamela Eltit, Jennifer L. Slobodian

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to build on two major theoretical fields, feminism and postdictatorial memory, in the context of Latin American women’s writing. The development of Latin American feminism has run concurrently with the broader feminist movements of the 20th century, but has been shaped by the particularities and diversity of the region. Specific concerns relating to postcoloniality, religion, and nation have caused theorists like Debra A. Castillo to discuss Latin American feminism on its own, focusing on the inherent privileging of praxis over theory and the necessary pastiche of local and international theories. The development of Latin …

Visual Word Recognition By Arab Esl Learners: Phonological Versus Orthographic Consonantal Influence On Vowels, Raed A. Alguthami

Theses and Dissertations

The current study is on second language acquisition (SLA), and the focus is on the process of visual word recognition in English by Arab learners of English as a second language (ESL). Arab ESL learners have poor performance in their visual word recognition in English, which has been explicated in terms of their poor spelling knowledge of English words. The goal of the current study was to show that Arab ESL learners' visual word recognition in English is also influenced by properties of English influencing American English (AE) native speakers’ visual word recognition.

In chapter 3, it is hypothesized that, …

Social Music Interaction Between Three-Year-Old Children And A Music Teacher, Erika Michelle Hubbell

Theses and Dissertations

With the intent of improving music acquisition understanding, the purpose of the study was to examine shared music interactions and shared music understandings in early childhood music classes. The guiding research questions were (a) How do three-year-old children and I, a music teacher, engage in shared music interactions and shared music understandings using a music curriculum based on Gordon’s (2013) music learning theory? (b) What teacher-initiated music activities result in observations of shared music interactions and shared music understandings? (c) What child-initiated music activities result in observations of shared music interactions and shared music understandings.

Participants included myself as a …

Who Are They ? A Case Study Of Community Health Worker (Chw) Programs In Primary Health Care, Constance Renee Williams Shepard

Theses and Dissertations

Community health workers (CHW) programs are an important emerging strategy to address the rising cost of health care, the shortage of healthcare staff, and the lack of accessible, affordable and quality health care (Sanders & Lehmann, 2007; WHO, 2010; CDC, 2012). The American Public Health Association (APHA) defines community health worker (CHWs) as frontline public health workers, trusted members of their communities and individuals that have a unique understanding of the people and communities they serve. CHWs develop trusting relationships that enable them to serve as an intermediary between healthcare, social services providers, and community members. By doing so, they …

Yiddish And Relation To The German Dialects, Bryan Witmore

Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to balance the complex, multi-component nature of Yiddish with its more homogenous speech community – Ashekenazic Jews –Yiddishists have proposed definitions for the Yiddish language that cannot be considered linguistic in nature. Instead, Yiddish is often seen as a cultural phenomenon. Closely related to the issue of what Yiddish is, is how Yiddish came about. This paper addresses these two issues by comparing Yiddish to German dialects in an attempt to demonstrate Yiddish’s linguistic proximity with German and also to approach a hypothesis for the origins of Yiddish.

Exploring Undergraduate Students' Information Seeking Motivation: A Self-Determination Perspective, Ana Dubnjakovic

Theses and Dissertations

Human motivation is a widely debated construct in psychology and many disciplines in social science as well as education and health sciences have adopted various psychological theories in an effort to understand motivational forces behind many human activities from dieting (e.g., Schelling, Munsch and Margraf, 2011), psychotherapy (e.g., Martens, 2010) and academic achievement (e.g., Artino, Holmboe and Durning, 2012) to political participation (e.g., Hersh, 2012). Case (2012) devotes an entire chapter in his seminal text on information behavior to an overview of what he calls a “motivational puzzle” tying it to information need as the predominantly discussed dimension of motivation …

The Civil, Silent, And Savage In Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, Alexander J. Steele

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I argue that the political situation between Britons and Saxons within Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant further articulates Ishiguro’s ongoing critique of Western humanism’s logic of labelling the Other. I also argue for a definition of the figure of the buried giant broadly speaking as the Other par excellence, as an entity of pure alterity, and as a Lèvinasian “infinite other.” As The Buried Giant demonstrates, Ishiguro continues to write against the politics of humanism that have flourished in Western art, science, and political philosophy since the Enlightenment. Though Ishiguro sets The Buried Giant loosely in the …

Divine Ideas For Metaphysical Realism, Michelle Lynn Panchuk

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years more and more theist philosophers have turned their attention to an apparent tension between the existence of abstract universals and the God of classical monotheisms. In this project I argue that this tension can be relieved by adopting a Neo-Augustinian account of universals. When the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is given sufficient place within one’s theory, divine concepts can do all of the work for which abstract universals are usually posited. Over the course of 5 chapters, I argue that the problem of universals, at base, requires a theory of properties as its solution; that my …

"All The Trappings Of Racism Are Here, And I Live In Them": Resistance, Counterspace, And Identity Socialization As Afro-Caribbean Women Raise Second Generation Immigrant Sons And Grandsons In A Racialized U.S. Southeastern State, Michelle D. Grace-Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This nine-month narrative inquiry explored the experiences of four Jamaican immigrant women (two mothers and two grandmothers) living in a southeastern U.S. state to gain insights about how they ethnic-racially socialize their second generation immigrant sons or grandsons in this racialized context. Research questions guiding the study were: (a) How do the women perceive racism in the U.S.? How do they choose to self-identify? What connection, if at all, exists between their perceptions of racism and how they choose to raise their children or grandchildren? (b) What ethnic-racial messages do they transmit to them and what purposes do they serve? …

Phonological And Orthographic Repetition Effects Across Words In Adult Skilled Sentence Reading: An Eye Movement Analysis, Ti Yan

Theses and Dissertations

Visual word recognition is central to skilled silent reading. This project investigated the situation in which two words within a sentence share phonological information. Previous eye movement reading studies have made attempts to understand how prior exposure to a word could influence the speed of recognizing another phonologically and/or orthographically similar word. Results have been accounted for by different visual word recognition models which agree on the competition among similar words in the lexicon. However, a closer inspection revealed several concerns. First, there is little direct evidence demonstrating the across-word effect in normal reading. Second, the existing work in English …

Preprocessing Techniques To Support Event Detection Data Fusion On Social Media Data, Brandon T. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on collection and preprocessing of streaming social media feeds for metadata as well as the visual and textual information. Today, news media has been the main source of immediate news events, large and small. However, the information conveyed on these news sources is delayed due to the lack of proximity and general knowledge of the event. Such news have started relying on social media sources for initial knowledge of these events. Previous works focused on captured textual data from social media as a data source to detect events. This preprocessing framework postures to facilitate the data fusion …

Making Room For Play: Preschool Center Choices, Hailey S. Morelos

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to examine the learning center choices of preschool students who received special education services and preschool students who did not receive special education services in order to identify the preference of teacher-led vs. student-led learning centers. Both children who receive special education services and children who do not receive services displayed a wide range of choosing student led and teacher led centers. It is hypothesized that there will be a difference between the student led center vs. teacher led center between children who receive special education services and children who do not. The study …

Professional Development: Teacher As Learner For Differentiated Instruction, Marilyn L. Castellano

Theses and Dissertations

This action research study sought to investigate a sample of urban Catholic school teachers' perceptions of how an exploration of differentiated instruction through embedded professional development changed their traditional one-size-fits-all pedagogical practices to a model that addressed students diverse academic needs. Research studies provide evidence that a one-size-fits-all recipe of instruction continually fails to build students’ capacity to learn. Interviews are the primary source to elicit teachers' perceptions of changed pedagogical practices. In conjunction with classroom observations, a focus group formed to better understand the rationale for the principles of differentiated instruction, make sense of the practice, and determine if …

The Creative Child At Home, Ellen Loraine Herget

Theses and Dissertations

This was a study of how two children showed creativity in their own home environment. This study demonstrated four aspects of creativity, including problem solving, imagination, artistic expression, and play. Both children were very creative when making artwork in their own home. The more the children were engaged in the artwork, the more involved they were in the act of creativity. The girl demonstrated more problem solving skills, whereas the boy, due to his younger age, showed more imagination and play. While the children were working on their art projects, they showed imagination and problem solving through the association of …

Program And Classroom Factors Affecting Attendance Patterns For Hispanic Participants In Adult Esl Education, Steven J. Carter

Theses and Dissertations

This report explores factors contributing to absenteeism and attrition in government-funded adult ESL programs. Because adult learners enrolled in inexpensive programs typically juggle numerous priorities and responsibilities beyond their schooling, their motivation must be maintained in order for them to continue to attend their language classes. As consumers, they "directly or indirectly assess the cost-benefit ratio of their program participation every time they attend or do not attend classes/tutoring sessions" (Tracy-Mumford & Baker, 1994, p. 8). Tendencies toward absenteeism can ultimately lead to attrition, which poses serious challenges for programs as it inhibits their success rates, their funding, and ultimately …

Effects Of Culture Awareness Lessons On Attitudes Of University Students Of French, Mahonri Manjarrez

Theses and Dissertations

In response to the dearth of research on culture awareness instruction prior to foreign language instruction, the objective of this study was to explore the effects of culture awareness lessons on learner attitudes and beliefs in second-semester university students of French. As a treatment, the experimental group received lessons on culture awareness prior to traditional French classroom instruction; the control group did not. Culture awareness lessons addressed terms such as perspective, culture, interpretation, and stereotypes. Lessons also included worksheets consisting of open-ended questions designed to capture students' responses to the aforementioned topics of discussion. Data collection methods consisted of pre- …

Bidirectional Interference Between Simulated Driving And Speaking, Kelsey Lynn Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine interference between concurrently performed speaking and driving tasks. Participants included 60 adults, 30 males and 30 females, with no history of communication disorders. They were divided into three different age groups of 20 participants each: younger (20s), middle-aged (40s), and older (60s). The participants were given a list of topics to consider and were instructed to select eight topics that they could talk about; they completed five practice trials of the driving simulator prior to the experimental recording to eliminate practice effects. Each participant completed the speaking task and driving task both …

Rethinking Vocabulary Size Tests: Frequency Versus Item Difficulty, Brett James Hashimoto

Theses and Dissertations

For decades, vocabulary size tests have been built upon the idea that if a test-taker knows enough words at a given level of frequency based on a list from corpus, they will also know other words of that approximate frequency as well as all words that are more frequent. However, many vocabulary size tests are based on corpora that are as out-of-date as 70 years old and that may be ill-suited for these tests. Based on these potentially problematic areas, the following research questions were asked. First, to what degree would a vocabulary size test based on a large, contemporary …

Mean Length Of Utterance And Developmental Sentence Scoring In The Analysis Of Children's Language Samples, Laurie Lynne Chamberlain

Theses and Dissertations

Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) is a standardized language sample analysis procedure that uses complete sentences to evaluate and score a child’s use of standard American-English grammatical rules. Automated DSS software can potentially increase efficiency and decrease the time needed for DSS analysis. This study examines the accuracy of one automated DSS software program, DSSA Version 2.0, compared to manual DSS scoring on previously collected language samples from 30 children between the ages of 2;5 and 7;11 (years;months). The overall accuracy of DSSA 2.0 was 86%. Additionally, the present study sought to determine the relationship between DSS, DSSA Version 2.0, the …

The Archon(S) Of Wildfell Hall: Memory And The Frame Narrative In Anne Brontë’S The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Alyson June Fullmer

Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Gilbert Markham invites his reader to join him as he attempts to recall the past. Because Gilbert uses the journal of another to supplement his own memories, the novel's frame narrative structure becomes saturated with complex memory-based issues and problems. Thus, the complicated frame narrative provides fertile ground for exploring the novel through memory. In studying the frame narrative, scholars have typically devoted their criticism to Gilbert and how he shapes the frame. Few scholars afford the other primary narrator of the novel, Helen, any power in shaping …