Digital Commons Network^™

Translation And Adaptation Of The Center For Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (Ces-D) Scale Into Tigrigna Language For Tigrigna Speaking Eritrean Immigrants In The United States, Mulubrhan Fisseha Mogos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Depression is one of the oldest known mental health conditions. It is acknowledged to be a global health problem that affects people from any culture or ethnic group. The prevalence of depression widely varied across countries and cultures. The cross-cultural relevance of the concept of depression, its screening or diagnosis, and cultural equivalence of items used to measure symptoms of depression has been area of research interest. Differences in prevalence rates in depression have been suggested as being due to research artifacts, such as use of instrument developed for one culture to another culture. With the current trend of globalization …

To See And Be Seen: Exploring Layers Of Instructional Leadership And Supervision In The Enactment Of A District-Wide Teacher Evaluation Reform, Jenifer E. Neale

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes instructional leadership and evaluation protocols from a large, diverse district in the Southeastern United States in order to investigate layers of accountability and tensions created when principals are asked to fill the dual roles of both instructional leader and supervisor in a newly implemented teacher evaluation system reform. For this dissertation I investigate the role of the principal as a colleague and mentor and compare this with the role of the principal as supervisor and evaluator in hierarchical systems. I include the role of the peer evaluator, a new position, in my analysis. Critical discourse analysis is …

Evaluating The Get Into Fitness Today (Gift) Program: Weight Loss And The Roles Of Education And Empowerment, Emily Koby Novicki

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of Get Into Fitness Today (GIFT), a health program for adults that promotes balanced nutrition, physical activity, and weight loss through weekly meetings that provide education and social support. In addition to investigating the effects of GIFT, this evaluation sought to better understand explanatory models used by participants and program staff, and the roles of education and empowerment in weight loss and health education. This mixed methods, case study evaluation consisted of quantitative analysis of existing program records for 664 participants, 40 hours of participant observation of class sessions with ten GIFT groups, and follow-up …

Swirling: An Examination Of Time-To-Degree, Reasons, And Outcomes Associated With Multi-Institutional Transfers, Alytrice Robinson Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Swirling is an emergent transfer pattern among college students. Swirlers are students who may have participated in a combination of reverse transfer, lateral transfer, or traditional transfer patterns. The available research on swirling has been predominately quantitative in nature. This study was designed to obtain qualitative data on multi-institutional transfers from a qualitative perspective.

A heuristic phenomenological approach grounded in the transformational learning theory method was used to obtain data. The data were obtained via an online blog-based interview. The interview revealed six themes in regards to why students swirl. This study also addressed time-to-degree and outcomes associated with students …

The Existential Compromise In The History Of The Philosophy Of Death, Adam Buben

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I begin by offering an account of two key strains in the history of philosophical dealings with death. Both strains initially seek to diminish fear of death by appealing to the idea that death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. According to the Platonic strain, death should not be feared since the soul will have a prolonged existence free from the bodily prison after death. With several dramatic modifications, this is the strain that is taken up by much of the mainstream Christian tradition. According to the Epicurean strain, death should not be feared since the …

Preservice Teachers' Perceptions Of Their Perspective Transformations: A Case Study, Victoria Caruana

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing a case study approach, this study explored the perspectives of preservice teachers as they relate to working with students with disabilities in inclusive classroom settings. Preservice teachers' perceptions about the extent, if any, their learning experiences during teacher preparation contributed to their perspectives was examined through a sequential exploratory design that employed both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings of this case study of six (6) elementary and secondary preservice teachers indicated that the experiences they had during their final student teaching (internship) were the most meaningful triggers of their perspective transformations. The findings further indicated that four (4) …

Selected Students’, Parents’, And Graduate Student Tutors’ Experiences And Perceptions In A Community Of Interest Summer Literacy Camp, Kim G. Thomas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this qualitative case study, I examined a local summer literacy camp in which

graduate student tutors tutored elementary and middle school students in reading and

writing. I focused the study on the primary stakeholders in the summer literacy camp:

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ts, and the course instructor/camp director because

their voices are limited in the current literature. In this Community of Interest Summer

Literacy Camp, the graduate student tutors moved from a position of fear and trepidation

to a position of empowerment in which they hoped to make changes in their classrooms,

schools, and communities. The tutees learned to appreciate the …

Small Plots, Big Hopes: Factors Associated With Participation In An Urban Garden Project In Lesotho, Charlotte Ann Noble

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Studies of food insecurity have frequently focused on rural dwellers as vulnerable

populations. However, during the ‘global food crisis’ of 2007-2008, riots in more than

50 countries visibly demonstrated the vulnerability of urban populations to food

insecurity due to rapidly rising food prices. This study examines factors associated with

participation in an urban garden project (UGP), utilizing surveys (n=61) and in-depth

household interviews (n=37) to examine food security and dietary diversity of households

in urban Lesotho.

Households that participated in the garden project were more food insecure and

had lower dietary diversity than those that did not participate. However, it …

Developing A Culturally Responsive Literacy Pedagogy: Preservice Teachers, Teaching Cases, And Postcard Narratives, Annmarie Alberton Gunn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The results of the U. S Census provide evidence that our population is becoming more varied and that diversity is most salient in our schools. This demographic shift will continue to have a significant impact on the curriculum, students, teachers, and other aspects of education as we have historically known it. One of the most challenging aspect is that while our students are becoming more diverse, our teacher population is not. Eighty to ninety percent of the teaching population is White, heterosexual, middle class females, with little experiences with people from diverse backgrounds. (Lowenstein, 2009; Sleeter, 2001).

The academic achievement …

Multi-Elemental Chemical Analysis Of Anthropogenic Soils As A Tool For Examining Spatial Use Patterns At Prehispanic Palmarejo, Northwest Honduras, Kara A. Rothenberg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Plazas and patios were important spaces for expressing power and social identity in prehispanic Mesoamerica. However, plazas can be analytically problematic, because they were often kept clean of material debris. Previous geoarchaeological studies of anthropogenic soils and sediments have shown that specific activities leave characteristic chemical signatures on prepared earthen surfaces. The research presented here uses soil chemical residue analysis and excavation data to examine use patterns in the North Plaza of Palmarejo, Honduras during the Late Classic period. The goal is to determine whether the plaza was used for residential or ceremonial purposes. The chemical results indicate that activities …

Adolf Hitler – America’S First Black President And Other Oval Office Demons: The Right-Wing Rhetorical Assault On Barack Obama’S Health Care Plan, Daniel Ruth

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis endeavors to examine the imagery and rhetoric surrounding the portrayal of President Barack Obama during the national debate over health care reform from the summer of 2009 into the spring of 2010. It is argued that the critics of the health care reform legislation used images to portray the president as Adolf Hitler, Che Guevara, The Joker, as well as other images such as the swastika and the Wehrmacht symbol as stand-in euphemisms for race to discredit Barack Obama.

A number of exemplar images have been selected from various websites and publications specifically addressing the portrayal of Barack …

Queering Cognition: Extended Minds And Sociotechnologically Hybridized Gender, Michele Merritt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last forty years, significant developments in neuroscience, psychology, and robotic technology have been cause for major trend changes in the philosophy of mind. One such shift has been the reallocation of focus from entirely brain-centered theories of mind to more embodied, embedded, and even extended answers to the questions,

what are cognitive processes and where do we find such phenomena? Given that hypotheses such as Clark and Chalmers‘ (1998) Extended Mind or Hutto‘s (2006) Radical Enactivism, systematically undermine the organism-bound, internal, and static pictures of minds and allow instead for the distribution of cognitive processes among brains, bodies, …

Understanding School Readiness Abilities Of Bilingual Latino Head Start Children And The Differences Among Latin American Regions, Liza Arango

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Limited research has been conducted focusing on the school readiness abilities among bilingual Latino children. Additionally, little is known about how children from different Latin American regions may differ in their readiness skills. This study examines the differences in school readiness abilities in both English and Spanish of a group of bilingual Latino Head Start children in five counties in Florida (n = 202). Specifically, the study investigates the differences in abilities among children from different Latin American Regions (i.e., North American, Caribbean, Central American, and South American). School readiness skills were assessed using subtests from the Woodcock Johnson III …

Preservice Teachers’ Developing Understandings About Culturally Responsive Teaching In A Field-Based Writing Methods Course, Susan V. Bennett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I investigated eight preservice teachers’ understandings about culturally responsive pedagogy as they participated in a writing methods course in which they tutored children from different ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds in an afterschool program at a local community center. I also investigated how these preservice teachers demonstrated culturally responsive teaching within the writing curriculum. I recognized the need for research relevant to my own personal beliefs and how to strive for more equitable schools. I want to contribute further to the understandings and insights related to culturally responsive pedagogy. According to the literature, it appears teachers remain unprepared to …

N400 Activations In Adults Who Stutter In A Picture-Word Priming Task Requiring Attention To Probe Word Phonology, Angela A. Pizon-Moore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Objective: A neuroscientific picture-word task was used to investigate semantic and phonological activation spreading in adults who stutter (AWS).

Method: Fourteen AWS and 14 adults who do not stutter (AWNS) participated. On each trial, a picture was named at a delay. Sometimes, an attended probe word was heard before naming. Some probes were Semantically-Related to the labels. Those same probes also appeared following pictures with Unrelated labels. N400 ERPs recorded to these two probe types were compared (Semantically-Related versus Unrelated). Other probes were Phonologically-Related to the labels. Those same probes also appeared following pictures with unrelated labels (P-Unrelated). N400 ERPs …

Literacy And Behavior In Early Childhood: Exploring The Factors That Impact Achievement, Melissa Farino Todd

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Academic achievement has been the focal point in education for decades. In 2001, an Act of Congress was proposed to improve individual outcomes in education through evidenced based research using measurable goals, higher standards, and accountability. This federal legislation, known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, mandates that all teachers be highly qualified by 2006 and that all students become proficient by the 2013/14 school year, specifically in the area of literacy. Consequently, kindergarten readiness has become an area of concern, thus placing preschool teachers under pressure to prepare children for school. The purpose of this study …

Teaching Social Skills To Children With Asperger’S And High Functioning Autism: An Evaluation Of Video Self-Modeling And Behavior Skills Training, Krystal M. Mcfee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of video self-modeling and behavior skills training to teach social skills to children with Asperger’s and high functioning autism. The targeted social skills were social initiations and social responses. The video self-modeling alone condition was implemented first using a video feedforward approach. A behavior skills training (BST) procedure was implemented following the video self-modeling alone condition for each participant. BST consisted of instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. The frequency of each target behavior was scored from videotapes using 10-second frequency within interval recording. After the video self-modeling was introduced, a …

Effects Of Reading Comprehension And Fluency Abilities On The N400 Event-Related Potential, Annie Hirt Nelson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to add to the knowledge of reading development by investigating reading processes from a neurocognitive and educational perspective. This study seeks to provide some insight about reading development for the neuroscience field. The goals of this study are to attain a clearer picture of reading development by using both behavioral assessments and event-related potentials (ERPs), and to begin to bridge the gap between both fields of study. Children between the ages of 7 and 13 were placed in one of two groups depending on their reading comprehension levels for the first analyses, and reading …

Detecting Group Turns Of Speaker Groups In Meeting Room Conversations Using Audio-Video Change Scale-Space, Ravikiran Krishnan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Automatic analysis of conversations is important for extracting high-level descriptions of meetings. In this work, as an alternative to linguistic approaches, we develop a novel, purely bottom-up representation, constructed from both audio and video signals that help us characterize and build a rich description of the content at multiple temporal scales. Nonverbal communication plays an important role in describing information about the communication and the nature of the conversation. We consider simple audio and video features to extract these changes in conversation. In order to detect these changes, we consider the evolution of the detected change, using the Bayesian Information …

Perspective Taking And Relative Clause Comprehension: A Cross-Modal Picture Priming Study, Nicola C. Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fourteen young adults participated in a cross-modal picture priming study. Perspective shift processing, in four types of relative clause sentences and in control sentences, was assessed using reaction times. Predictions were: 1) the easier the perspective shifts, the faster the reaction times and 2) subject relative clauses would reveal a priming effect versus attenuated or no priming in object relative clauses due to difficulty following perspective. A priming effect was observed for 1- switch relative clause sentences and for control sentences, while no priming effect was observed for 0 switch, 1+ switch, or 2 switch sentences. Results suggest that variations …

The Lived School Experiences Of A Select Group Of Female Adolescents Labeled Emotionally/Behaviorally Disordered, Anna Robic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Being a female and having a disability has been referred to as 'double jeopardy' (Wehmeyer & Schwartz, 2001). However research in the area of disabilities has either focused on the specific disability as a whole (i.e. research on learning disabilities or behavior disorders) or on mostly males (i.e. interventions in a classroom made up predominantly of boys). Researchers have pointed out that the school experiences for typical males and females are different as is the development of the two genders (Proctor & Choi, 1994). However in disability studies, the gender issue is seldom addressed (Deschler, 2005; Oswald, Best, Coutinho & …

Gadamer And Nāgārjuna In Play: Providing A New Anti-Objectivist Foundation For Gadamer’S Interpretive Pluralism With Nāgārjuna’S Help, Nicholas Byle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hans-Georg Gadamer rejects objectivism, the position that an interpreter may come to a single correct truth concerning any particular object, in favor of interpretive pluralism. What is not clear is how Gadamer grounds this position. This ambiguity leaves Gadamer open to multiple objectivist counters, ones which he would not wish to allow. The following argument, using a comparative and analytic approach, takes two concepts, pratītyasamutpāda (interdependence) and śūnyatā (emptiness), as they are deployed by Nāgārjuna to provide Gadamer with this much needed anti-objectivist foundation. Specifically, the new foundation is anti-realist in which interpreters and objects of interpretation are metaphysically empty, …

Hydric Life: A Nietzschean Reading Of Postcolonial Communication, Elena F. Ruiz-Aho

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the question of marginalization in cross-cultural communication from the perspectives of hermeneutic philosophy and postcolonial theory. Specifically, it focuses on European colonialism‘s effect on language and communicative practices in Latin America. I argue colonialism creates a deeply sedimented but unacknowledged background of inherited cultural prejudices against which social and political problems of oppression, violence and marginalization, especially towards women, emerge—but whose roots in colonial and imperial frameworks have lost transparency. This makes it especially difficult for postcolonial subjects to meaningfully express their own experiences of psychic dislocation and fragmentation because the discursive background used to communicate these …

A Canine Audience: The Effect Of Animal-Assisted Therapy On Reading Progress Among Students Identified With Learning Disabilities, Julie Omodio Griess

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the use of animal-assisted therapy with students identified with a learning disability and limited reading success. Initially, reading progress was defined as the participants' comprehension rate obtained from an oral Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) passage. The nature of the Informal Reading Inventory requires the introduction of more difficult reading passages as the student's comprehension rate increases, potentially masking the overall effect of the intervention. Due to this factor and erratic student performance, which is a common characteristic of students with learning disabilities, obtaining consistent comprehension rates was difficult. Therefore, progress was defined only as total amount of …

From Real To Reel: Performances Of Influential Literacies In The Creative Collaborative Processes And Products Of Digital Video Composition, Deborah Kozdras

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I used a lens of performance theory to examine the creative collaborative processes of middle school students who composed digital videos. More specifically, I investigated the multiliteracies involved in a filmmaking camp and how students performed those literacies in ways that influenced the composition processes and the resulting texts. In order to study collaborative composition processes, I used ethnographic methods. In order to analyze data, I employed a mixed methodology of constant comparative analysis and dramaturgical analysis of interactions in three main informant groups in order to understand how students used multiple literacies to influence the composition …

"Speaking" Subalterns: A Comparative Study Of African American And Dalit/Indian Literatures, Mantra Roy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Speaking Subalterns” examines the literatures of two marginalized groups,African Americans in the United States and Dalits in India. The project demonstrates how two disparate societies, USA and India, are constituted by comparable hegemonic socioeconomic-cultural and political structures of oppression that define and delimit the identities of the subalterns in the respective societies. The superstructures of race in USA and caste in India inform, deform, and complicate the identities of the marginalized along lines of gender, class, and family structure. Effectively, a type of domestic colonialism, exercised by the respective national elitists, silence and exploit the subaltern women and emasculate the …

"A Border Is A Veil Not Many People Can Wear": Testimonial Fiction And Transnational Healing In Edwidge Danticat's The Farming Of Bones And Nelly Rosario's Song Of The Water Saints, Megan Adams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on recent attempts to reconcile the divergent nations of Hispaniola, I will examine the ways in which fiction by U.S. immigrant writers Danticat and Rosario looks back to the traumatic history of race relations on Hispaniola and the 1937 massacre as a means of approaching reconciliation and healing amongst the inhabitants of Hispaniola. As invested outsiders to their homelands, Danticat and Rosario may work, as Chancy suggests, in the capacity of actors for Hispaniola. Both Danticat and Rosario graciously admit that their writing is largely contingent on the relative freedom from censure that their American citizenship affords them. In …

The Relationship Between Technology Support And Extent Of Technology Integration Into College-Level Foreign Language Curricula, James T. Green

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although computer use has become widespread throughout foreign language (FL) education, availability of computers alone is not sufficient for increasing their use. Integration requires rich and varied technology support, which includes instructional as well as technical support. To date, in the field of adult FL learning no quantitative examination of the relationship between the different aspects of technology support and computer integration into the curricula has been attempted.

This study explores the direction and strength of the relationships among the different types of technology support and the integration of computers into the curricula of college and university FL programs. The …

Closet Space: Investigating Gay Identity Through Advertising In Gay Media, Jonathan A. Hanna

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research was to examine advertising in gay media publications, namely, The Advocate, in order to assess how advertising corresponds with gay identity formation. This study differed from previous inquiries in that the application of hegemony theory formed the basis of the project and was used as a tool to explicate the preponderance of certain images in gay media advertising and what they signify for gay men. Likewise, a phenomenological method of analysis was applied to the advertisements in order to render them more accessible as aesthetic and literary mediums. Classifying the advertisements according to their notional …

“An Indescribable Sound” In William Faulkner’S The Sound And The Fury, Lynn Ramsey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Sound and the Fury is a noisy book. Through the audible, the barely audible, and the silence, William Faulkner supports his narrative design with sound beyond dialog to inform and inflect the destabilizing narrative voices. This essay explores Faulkner's use of the sound and noise of the novel as another narrative voice. Faulkner's rich use of sound as a recurring motif, almost a persona or narrator itself, functions not merely to animate the action, the characters, and the title; it also speaks in the "hush" and the freighted "stiffly sibilant" whispers of those who dare not speak, or are …