Digital Commons Network^™

The Influence Of Birth Order On Verbal Aggressiveness And Argumentativeness., Marissa F. Rodgers

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study examined the influence of birth order on verbal aggressiveness and argumentativeness. Participants were 207 (111 men, 94 women; M age = 19.80) students. Participants completed the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale (Infante & Wigley, 1986) and the Argumentativeness Scale (Infante & Rancer, 1982). Results indicated first-born children reported significantly more argumentativeness than did youngest children. Men reported significantly more verbal aggressiveness and argumentativeness than females. A significant difference did not exist between the verbal aggressiveness of first-born children, only-children, and laterborn children. Future research should compare siblings’ reports of verbal aggressiveness, argumentativeness, and other salient communication behaviors to assess differing …

A Longitudinal Content Analysis Of Violence, Sex, And Drugs In Rap Music., Melina Sissum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study is a longitudinal study of violence, sexual references, and drug use in popular rap music lyrics. The top ten rap songs were gathered from 1994 through 2002 and analyzed. Results indicated that though there is violence in popular rap music it is not predominate. It was also found that when violence is present it is most often without consequences or rationale. Further, it was found that popular rap music contained more sexual references than violence. Also, when sexual references were present it was gratuitously, without reference to relationships. It was also found that there is a high correlation …

An Investigation Of Advances In Digital Cartography Through The Mapping Of West Virginia University., Brenden Duffy

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The traditional map metaphor has evolved beyond two dimensions and is now accompanied by a family of new ‘map’ types. Maps now encompass two dimensional displays, multi-dimensional digital representations, and static or interactive maps in both hard and softcopy formats. This research project examines the role of cartography within the context of developing 2-dimensional (2D) static maps, interactive 2D Internet maps, and 2.5D interactive Internet maps of West Virginia University (WVU). The contributing literature includes reviews of traditional cartographic processes, GIS and cartography, Internet mapping, and virtual reality and the Internet. In the production of a traditional paper map of …

An Exploratory Examination Of The Relationship Between Motivational Factors And The Degree To Which The Higher Education Faculty Integrate Computer -Mediated Communication (Cmc) Tools Into Their Courses., Francis Ndwiga Murage

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The stated research problem of this study was to examine the relationship between motivational factors and the degree to which the higher education faculty integrate CMC tools into their courses. The study population and sample involved higher education faculty teaching in science departments at one public university and three public colleges in the state of West Virginia (N = 153). A Likert-type rating scale survey was used to collect data based on the research questions. Two parts of the survey were adopted from previous studies while the other two were self-constructed. Research questions and hypothesis were analyzed using both descriptive …

"The Journey Is The Destination": A Study Of The Professional Career Development Of Dr. Dorothy June Skeel, 1932-1997. An Exemplary Teacher Educator., Gale Renee Ayanru

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study investigated through qualitative design Dr. Dorothy Skeel’s professional career and scholarly development within the sociocultural context and life history that helped shape her ideas and actions to identify patterns in her life which reflected the social structure in which it was imbedded. The research questions guiding this study were: (1)How were significant aspects of Dr. Dorothy Skeel’s life history and professional knowledge represented in her practice? (2)What patterns and changes occurred in Dr Dorothy Skeel’s career development (3) What meanings and possible interpretations can be understood from the patterns and themes in Dr. Dorothy Skeel’s personal and professional …

Making Instructional Decisions: What Teacher Specialists Decide About And Do For Middle School Students With Reading Difficulty., Frances Laurel Boyd

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Concern about the efficacy of American education programs in reading is noted. Amid conflicting reports of what is wrong with American schools, steps must be taken which allow for growth among reading educators, especially those who work with older students who have not yet achieved grade appropriate reading skills. However, those who provide support programs need a body of information which allows them to address real needs that teachers have. The voice of teachers is under represented in program planning, yet could provide information crucial to the development of the most beneficial training and support programs. This study investigated the …

Fictions Of Nature: Ecology, Science, And Culture In Twentieth-Century British Literature., Neal Bukeavich

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examines twentieth-century British fiction concerned with humankind's interactions with the nonhuman world. I analyze a range of literary works, including H. G. Wells's The Food of the Gods (1903), D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1968), Graham Swift's Waterland (1983), and J. G. Ballard's Rushing to Paradise (1994). This body of literature remains largely unexamined for its treatments of ecological issues and belongs to a national history deeply implicated in local and global environmental change. Moreover, my consideration of this literary tradition marks a …

The Craft And Concepts Of Interpretation: A Look At How National Park Service Interpreters Reveal And Facilitate Opportunities For Connections., Wei-Li Jasmine Chen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The Interpretive Development Program (IDP) of the National Park Service (NPS) develops and maintains the national standards for interpretation by providing professional development opportunities and administrating a peer review certification process of interpretive products. This study explores the little-understood phenomena of how opportunities for intellectual and emotional connections between the resource and the visitor are created by NPS interpreters. Analyzing the program content from forty-nine interpretive talks and writing examples submitted to the IDP for review from July to November of 2001, the researcher has identified four interpretive strategies interpreters used in developing opportunities for intellectual and emotional connections with …

A Qualitative Study Of A Capacity -Building Professional Development Experience., Theodora R. Cox

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Capacity building in schools is of great interest to educators and policy makers who see an ongoing need for improvement in schools. This qualitative study investigates a professional development program provided in a school system to determine: (1) the dynamics of the experience that inspired participants to want to change practices to better facilitate student learning; (2) how selected educators exemplified that inspiration in their daily professional experience; and (3) how the training has impacted classrooms, schools, and the school system. The study took the shape of a funnel. Wiersma (1995) explains that the funnel approach begins with a general …

The Future Of Electronic Editing: Theory And Practice., Hilary M. Attfield

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation investigates the theory and practice of editing as it moves into the electronic era. As an example of the type of material which scholars may now be interested in working with, it centers on an edition of a lecture given by the West Virginia artist-journalist David Hunter Strother on John Brown nine years after the insurrection at Harper's Ferry. This material was chosen because it was locally available, unpublished, both locally and nationally important, and of the dimension which would have formerly placed it on the margin of paper publication. Chapter one shows how the theory of editing …

The Impact Of Student Discourse And Journal Writing On The Mathematics Achievement Of Fifth-Grade Students., Lesley A. Klishis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In its Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics called for a new vision of what is means to be mathematically literate (NCTM, 2000). A major goal of this reform movement has been to provide students with opportunities to develop "mathematical habits of the mind to not only know the signs, symbols, and terms of mathematics, but to read, write, and discuss mathematics. This study investigated the relationship between instructional strategies and student understanding in mathematics. Specifically, the study explored whether student discourse is a desirable prerequisite of journal writing, and whether the …

A Study Of Factors That Deter Jews From Affiliating With Organizations In The Jewish Community, Janice Sands-Weinstein

Master's Theses

Digitized thesis

Ombudsman As Translator: A Critical Hermeneutic Interpretation Of Alternative Dispute Resolution, Elaine M. Lutkitz

Master's Theses

Digitized thesis

[Introduction To] Native Voices: American Indian Identity And Resistance, Richard A. Grounds (Editor), George E. Tinker (Editor), David E. Wilkins (Editor)

Bookshelf

Native peoples of North America still face an uncertain future due to their unstable political, legal, and economic positions. Views of their predicament, however, continue to be dominated by non-Indian writers. In response, a dozen Native American writers here reclaim their rightful role as influential voices in the debates about Native communities at the dawn of a new millennium. These scholars examine crucial issues of politics, law, and religion in the context of ongoing Native American resistance to the dominant culture. They particularly show how the writings of Vine Deloria, Jr., have shaped and challenged American Indian scholarship in these …

Pictures Maps Shadows, Leslie Grant

Theses

Graduate students Leslie Grant (RIT) and Alex Terzich (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) collaborated on the production of a small book of photographs, a proposed atlas, and an architectural intervention focusing on salt mining in Livingston County, New York. Their work was based on interdisciplinary research, the interdependence of theory and practice, and an acknowledgment of the viewer as key to meaning production in art and architecture. Grant's work describes the overall scope of the thesis work, and concentrates on her work on the book of photography.

Understanding "Photograph A", Jun Ku Yoon

Theses

Not provided.

Are These Queer Times? Gay Male Representation On The American Stage In The 1920'S And 1990'S, James Russell Couch

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Utilizing a model based on Queer theory and comprising four relational paradigms, this thesis examines specific dramas of Mae West and Terrence McNally in an effort to understand the multiple relationships between the text, the society and the culture in the production of a gay male identity and its representation on the American stage in the 1920s and the 1990s. Each relational paradigm is the product of a different twentieth century scholar and can be viewed as an individual lens through which one aspect of a drama or culture can be magnified, illuminated or distorted. These paradigms are: culture and …

Technology As A Scapegoat, Wendi B. Denman

Theses

Not Included

Mcnair Research Journal

Georgia Southern University McNair Scholars Journal (Archived)

Full issue of the Georgia Southern University McNair Journal presented by the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program at Georgia Southern University.

• Fifty Years of Brown: An analysis of the impact of Brown on the educational system in Statesboro, Georgia Reece Anthony
• The Use of Natural Transformation in Actinobacillus pleuropnemoniae to Generate Confirmatory Mutants in a Stereotype 1 Strain Leandra D. Burwell
  
• Global outsourcing: A study of attitudes held by Georgia Southern Students Patricia Dugan
  
• A Comparison of Theweleit's Red Nurse/White Nurse Figures with the Jezebel/Mammy figures of African Slave Women in the Southern, Ante-Bellum Plantation System Aziza el-Shair
  
• The …

Emotional Harm In Housing Discrimination Cases: A New Look At A Lingering Problem, Victor M. Goode, Conrad Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

With the United States Supreme Court's condemnation of legal segregation in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and a vigorous civil rights movement that led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the nation entered the beginning of a new era in race relations. This, and future civil rights legislation, would be characterized by the development of a national agenda for ending discrimination and promoting equality. One area that was not included in this initial congressional effort, but later found its way into the legislative agenda, was the subject of housing discrimination. Despite the relatively few debates …

Learning From Conflict: Reflections On Teaching About Race And Gender, Susan Sturm, Lani Guinier

Faculty Scholarship

In 1992 had been teaching for four years at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I taught voting rights and criminal procedure, subjects related to what I had done as a litigator. Preparing for class meant reading many of the same cases I had read preparing for trial. Some were even cases I had tried. Teaching offered me a fresh chance to read those cases with new interest. I could see the subtle linkages between cases that I had not previously noticed. From the distance of the academy, I observed the evolution of the doctrine without feeling overcome by the …

Equality And The Forms Of Justice, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Justice and equality are simultaneously noble and messy aspirations for law. They inspire and demand collective striving toward principle, through the unflinching comparison of the "is" and the "ought." Yet, law operates in the world of the practical, tethered to the realities of dispute processing and implementation. The work of many great legal scholars and activists occupies this unstable space between principle and practice. Owen Fiss is one such scholar, attempting to straddle the world of the here-and-now and the imagined and then deliberately constructed future, the contours of which have been established during the founding moments of our constitutional …

Blaming Youth, Elizabeth S. Scott, Laurence Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

In March of 2001, a fourteen-year-old Florida boy named Lionel Tate was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing six-year-old Tiffany Eunick during a wrestling match that took place when Lionel was twelve years old. Lionel was convicted of first degree murder on the ground that the killing was the result of aggravated child abuse, a crime that contemplates injury of a child by an adult caretaker. His conviction and sentence have prompted much debate and discussion – about his case and, more generally, about the criminal punishment of young offenders. Although the verdict and Lionel's sentence received …

Theorizing Community Justice Through Community Courts, Jeffery Fagan, Victoria Malkin

Faculty Scholarship

Community justice practitioners argue that the justice system has long ignored its biggest clients-citizens and neighborhoods that suffer the everyday consequences of high crime levels. One response from legal elites has been a package of court innovations and new practices known as "community justice," part of a broader appeal to "community" and "partnership" common now in modern discourse on crime control. This concept incorporates several contemporary visions and expressions of justice within the popular and legal literatures: problem-solving courts (such as drug courts, mental health courts, domestic violence courts, gun courts, and, of course, juvenile courts); the inclusion of victims …

Agent Chameleons: Agent Minds And Bodies, Brian Duffy, Gregory O'Hare, Alan Martin, John Bradley, Bianca Schoen-Phelan

Conference papers

Agent design has to date concerned itself with the issues pertaining to a single body embedded in a single environment, whether virtual or real. This paper discusses the notion of an agent capable of migrating between information spaces (physical worlds, virtual reality, and digital information spaces). An architecture is presented that facilitates agent migration and mutation within such environments. This will in turn support agent

evolution the ultimate in agent adaptivity

Human-Intoface: The Face As Communication Technology, Troy Bennett

Theses

Not Included

Latinos In Waltham, Massachusetts, Daniel W. Vasquez

Gastón Institute Publications

Census 2000 data include changes in the way people were counted. The most significant change is to allow persons to select more than one race, creating a new multiracial category of “two or more races,” but meaning people may not be included in the race with which they most identify. There was, however, no way to choose more than one ethnicity; one must choose either Latino or not. Throughout this profile, numbers reflect Latinos of all races, or non-Latinos by race, with persons of two or more races counted separately. All categorizations are based solely on self-identification. All of this …

Latinos In Lowell, Massachusetts, Daniel W. Vasquez

Gastón Institute Publications

Census 2000 data include changes in the way people were counted. The most significant change is to allow persons to select more than one race, creating a new multiracial category of “two or more races,” but meaning people may not be included in the race with which they most identify. There was, however, no way to choose more than one ethnicity; one must choose either Latino or not. Throughout this profile, numbers reflect Latinos of all races, or non-Latinos by race, with persons of two or more races counted separately. All categorizations are based solely on self-identification. All of this …

Latinos In Lynn, Massachusetts, Daniel W. Vasquez

Gastón Institute Publications

Census 2000 data include changes in the way people were counted. The most significant change is to allow persons to select more than one race, creating a new multiracial category of “two or more races,” but meaning people may not be included in the race with which they most identify. There was, however, no way to choose more than one ethnicity; one must choose either Latino or not. Throughout this profile, numbers reflect Latinos of all races, or non-Latinos by race, with persons of two or more races counted separately. All categorizations are based solely on self-identification. All of this …

Life Values In Youth Sport: A Qualitative Analysis, Carla J. Schmitt

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations (1964–2006)

A qualitative analysis was used to examine the life values gained and enhanced through participation in youth soccer from the player, coach, and parent perspectives. Nine players, nine coaches, and nine parents were interviewed for this study. Participants were placed in groups according to classification and availability, and participants not available for the group times, were individually interviewed. The interview guides consisted of 11 questions, and two separate guides were used, one for players and one for coaches and parents. All interviews were hand, audio, and video recorded. Triangulation, involving the primary researcher and two additional researchers familiar with qualitative …