Digital Commons Network^™

Is There A Relationship Between Academic Achievement And School Climate At The Elementary, Middle, Or High School Grade Level?, Thomas Stacy Doyal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

Researchers have determined that many factors, including school climate, may be contributing to the lack of academic achievement of many of our students. In an effort to better understand this issue, this study tested for possible relationships between the school climate of multiple schools in Palm Beach County, Florida, and their students' academic achievement. Separate analyses were done at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. For the purpose of this study, academic achievement (criterion variable) was measure by the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, Math and Reading sections. School climate (predictor variable) was measured by the school district's yearly climate …

Latinas Experiencing Transnational Motherhood, Rosa Maria Sternberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

Economic changes have made the immigration of women to the United States part of major political and social issues. Women from Latin America frequently immigrate alone and without legal documentation, leaving their children in the care of relatives or friends, thus becoming transnational mothers in the process. Hispanic/Latino groups comprise the largest minority in the U.S., and Latina women account for 48.9% of the total Latino population. This demographic trend is expected to continue, and Hispanic/Latino groups are projected to experience the largest population increase in the coming decades (Marshall, Urrutia-Rojas, Soto-Mas & Coggin, 2005). The separation from their family …

Let's Get Into Character, Marc R. Fedderman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

This study will focus on Quentin Tarantino's three most recent films: Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), and Death Proof (2007). These works are significant, in that they present a marked departure from the director's earlier films. Specifically, they offer portrayals of resourceful and powerful female protagonists, in stark contrast to the frequently neglected and marginalized women of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Buttressed by a mixture of psychoanalytic feminist and postmodern theories, I will perform a careful textual analysis of these latest films. In particular, I intend to uncover the ways in which …

Model-Based Classification Of Speech Audio, Chris. Thoman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

This work explores the process of model-based classification of speech audio signals using low-level feature vectors. The process of extracting low-level features from audio signals is described along with a discussion of established techniques for training and testing mixture model-based classifiers and using these models in conjunction with feature selection algorithms to select optimal feature subsets. The results of a number of classification experiments using a publicly available speech database, the Berlin Database of Emotional Speech, are presented. This includes experiments in optimizing feature extraction parameters and comparing different feature selection results from over 700 candidate feature vectors for the …

Persistence Of Eap Students In Associate Degree And College Credit Certificate Programs, Pradel R. Frank

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the persistence of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students at a large multi-campus community college/baccalaureate degree-granting institution in South Florida. The study aimed to determine whether there was a relationship among a specific set of independent variables, background and defining variables (age, enrollment status, prior college education, gender, race, ethnicity, and marital status), academic integration variables (academic goal and first semester GPA), social integration variables (faculty interaction, college facilities and grounds, sense of community, college services, and student life), and environmental variables (family responsibilities, employment status, outside encouragement, and financial aid) and …

Philosophy Of The Animal In 20th Century Literature, Jamie Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009

The following dissertation examines the philosophy of the animal as it appears in twentieth-century British and American literature. I argue that evolutionary theory, along with the Romantic emphasis on sympathy, creates an historical shift in our perception of humans and nonhumans. Beginning with Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby-Dick, the whale represents what I call a transitional animal figure in that the whale not only shows the traditionally symbolic literary animal but also the beginnings of the twentieth century shift toward the literal animal-as-subject. My proposed comparative analysis consists of a return to classic existential and phenomenological philosophers with animal studies …

"Colonial Cousins: Explaining India And Canada’S Unwritten Constitutional Principles", Vivek Krishnamurthy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Spam Jurisprudence, Air Law, And The Rank Anxiety Of Nothing Happening (A Report On The State Of The Art), Pierre Schlag

Publications

In 1969, I saw The Endless Summer. It was a surfer movie about two guys (Robert and Mike) who traveled the world in search of the perfect wave. High art -- it was not. Plus the plot was thin. And it's for sure, there weren't enough girls. But there was one line which, for my generation, will go down as one of the all-time great movie lines ever. And always it was a line delivered by some local to Robert and Mike, the surfer dudes, as they arrived on the scene of yet another dispiritingly becalmed ocean. And every …

Reanalysis Of Some Effects Of The Mutual Exclusivity Constraint And Their Operation In Bilingual Children, Marina Kalashnikova

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates the operation of the Mutual Exclusivity constraint in two groups of three-year-old children: monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish-English speakers. Previous research has yielded controversial findings regarding the differences in the intra-lingual level operation of the constraint in monolingual and bilingual children. This investigation sheds light on the conflicting outcomes of previous studies by proposing that non-linguistic cognitive and processing abilities may account for the effects attributed to the constraint and that there may be observable differences in monolingual and bilingual children in the development of some--but not all--of these abilities. Although, this study yielded no significant …

A Critical Analysis Of Immigration And Terrorism In The Usa Patriot Act Of 2001 Through Political Rhetoric., Cesar Hugo Rodriguez, Jr,

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study incorporates the rhetorical implications that presented themselves after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2009. A look at the history of rhetoric in this study gives insight into the present situation of what political rhetoric can accomplish when used as a tool of deception.

Hip Hop Rhetoric: Relandscaping The Rhetorical Tradition, Roberto Jose Tinajero Ii

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is a rhetorical analysis of hip hop music and culture. Chapter 1 focuses on adding hip hop rhetoric to the discussion and terrain of rhetoric and writing studies and to the rhetorical tradition. Chapter 2 uses the rhetorical notion of kairos to discuss the ethos of hip hop culture and discourse. Chapter 3 uses hip hop rhetoric to discuss the tensuous-solidarity between Latinos and African Americans. Chapter 4 focuses on Latino/Borderland Hip Hop and discusses the multi-consciousness of Latino identity. Chapter 5 focuses on Christiian religious imagery in gangsta rap music. There is also a short conclusion.

Survey Research On Communication And Language For English Language Learners And Native English Speakers Enrolled In A College Course On Statistical Literacy, Maria Guadalupe Valenzuela

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine in what ways language is a factor that affects the learning process of students in an introductory statistics class. This research used a questionnaire survey instrument called: CLASS, Communication, Language And Statistics Survey that was applied to a total of 137 college students from a large southwestern public university, 83 of these students were self-identified as native English speakers (NOELL) and 53 were self-identified as English learner speakers (ELL) and one was dropped. This research found that in statistical instruction, there are some particular differences in behavior and learning process in the …

Paraprofessionals Who Work With Elementary Grade Students With Significant Disabilities In Inclusive Settings, Regina Moreno

Dissertations and Theses

The use of paraprofessional services is an established and crucial aspect in the pursuit of a free and appropriate public education for students with disabilities. Paraprofessionals are often the primary providers of instruction for students with severe disabilities yet are the least trained instructional personnel in schools. Identified competencies and necessary training content for paraprofessionals who serve students with severe disabilities are nearly absent in the professional literature.

This study extended the current literature regarding paraprofessionals who serve students with disabilities in public schools by focusing specifically on those paraprofessionals who serve students with severe disabilities in inclusive general education …

Literacy Leadership In Secondary Schools: A Case Study Of Teaching And Learning In Two School Districts, Gregory Berry

Dissertations and Theses

Improvement in literacy learning in secondary schools requires a dual focus: a district and school organizational leadership approach, and a classroom- and instruction-focused approach. To help close the achievement gap and improve learning for all students, whole school reform efforts must be focused on literacy. Elements of whole school reform may include professional development programs such as professional learning communities, peer coaching, and literacy coaching. The sociocultural contexts that these approaches incorporate can help improve the learning of both teachers and students and can bring about significant secondary school reform and academic improvement.

This dissertation study is a qualitative, collective, …

A 'Ho New World: Raced And Gendered Insult As Ersatz Carnival And The Corruption Of Freedom Of Expression Norms, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

Carnivalization, a concept developed by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and later employed in broad social and cultural contexts, is the tearing down of social norms, the elimination of boundaries, and the inversion of established hierarchies. It is the world turned upside down. Ersatz carnival is a pernicious, inverted form of carnival, one wherein counter-discourses propounded by outsiders are appropriated by elites and frequently redeployed to silence and exclude those same outsiders. The use of the slur "'ho" by gangsta' rappers in the performance of songs that articulate a vision of urban culture is an example of carnivalization. Thus, when words …

Should Canada Have A Representative Supreme Court?, Lorne Sossin

All Papers

No abstract provided.

Extracting Takagi-Sugeno Fuzzy Rules With Interpretable Submodels Via Regularization Of Linguistic Modifiers, Shang-Ming Zhou, John Q. Gan

School of Nursing and Midwifery

No abstract provided.

Refugee Resettlement : A Community Resource Project, Sierra M. Kraft

Undergraduate Theses and Senior Projects

No abstract provided.

Female Resistance To Patriarchal Colonization In Meatless Days And The God Of Small Things, Syeda Kanwal Hyder

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Finding The ‘World’ In Biblical Studies: God-Talk, Culture, And Hermeneutics In The Study (And Teaching) Of Faith, Gerald A. Klingbeil

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Shear Class: A Visual Ethnography Of The British Hair Salon: Part Of Portfolio Kurl Up N Dye, I Rae

School of Art, Design and Architecture

In his book The Ongoing Moment, the English writer Geoff Dyer (2005) draws out some of the common themes that have concerned photographers over the last century. His focus is the documentary tradition, primarily American, and within it he notes the homage that younger photographers pay to the history of image making that has gone before them. Barbershops are one example. Tracing a lineage from Walker Evans through Robert Frank to Michael Ormerod, with a short detour by way of Diane Arbus, he notes the ways in which the barbershop has been a recurring motif, how different people have photographed …