Digital Commons Network^™

A Comparative Review Of The Works Of Feldman, Sternberg, Gardner And Eisner And The Resulting Practical Application For The Secondary Art Classroom, Heather Denmark

HIM 1990-2015

Some fields come and go, but there will always be a need for older generations to teach the younger generations. For this reason, teachers will always be needed. The material that they choose to teach can sometimes determine the outcome of a nation. Take a look into German and Roman histories; they are littered with teachers convincing students that their way is right. I think that it is imperative that we research the full potential of what we are teaching our students. For that reason, my thesis will consist of analyzing and synthesizing the research of Feldman, Sternberg, Gardner and …

Homage To The Biliteral Society, Dave Morice

Word Ways

"Two cheers for the Biliteral Society!" I said after reading about its Dictionary of Two-Letter Words in the August 1984 issue of Word Ways. At last an official organization has recognized the importance of words that have a beginning and an end, but no middle to confuse things. In honor of the society's duplicity, I wrote a poem inspired by the diatomic nature of first-and-last-letter-only words.

Is It Cohesion Or Diversion? Domestic Instability And The Use Of Force In International Crises, Cigdem Sirin

Departmental Papers (PS)

This study asserts that cohesionary—rather than diversionary—motives primarily influence the propensity of political leaders to use external force in international crises in times of domestic turmoil. Specifically, I contend that mass violence leads political leaders to engage in cohesionary tactics to achieve and maintain social order in their country for political survival. Employing random effects probit analyses with International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data for one-hundred and thirty-nine countries from 1918 to 2005, I find that increased mass violence is more likely than other forms of domestic problems (be it an economic downturn or government instability) to instigate the external use …

School Readiness: Parent Perceptions, Behaviors, And Child Ability Related To Ethnicity And Socioeconomic Status, Courtney N. Baldwin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This project used data from the School Readiness Survey (SR) of the 2007 National Household Education Surveys Program collected by the National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Science. A subsample of 1,712 to 2,622 subjects who participated in the survey was used for this project. The purpose of the study was to examine parent perceptions, behaviors, and reported child ability related to school readiness and the effect ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) had on each comparison. Variables from the existing data were matched to one of the five domains of School Readiness: Health and Physical Development, Social and …

Development Of A Math Interest Inventory To Identify Gifted Students From Underrepresented And Diverse Populations, Gabrielle M. Snow

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The current investigation supports the objectives of Project GEMS (Roberts, 2008), a grant funded program whose objectives include the development and validation of a protocol to identify students from underrepresented and diverse populations as gifted in the content areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Identification of students from low-income and diverse populations as gifted has been a struggle with current assessment techniques (Baldwin, 2005). Project GEMS aims to address this problem through development of interest measures specific to the STEM areas for use within an identification protocol. The current project developed a measure to assess interest in mathematics. The …

Bitter-Sweet Home: The Pastoral Ideal In African-American Literature, From Douglass To Wright, Robyn Merideth Preston-Mcgee

Dissertations

Discussions of the pastoral mode in American literary history frequently omit the complicated relationship between African Americans and the natural world, particularly as it relates to the South. The pastoral, as a sensibility, has long been an important part of the southern identity, for the mythos of the South long depended upon its association with a new “Garden of the World” image, a paradise dependent upon slave labor and a racial hierarchy to sustain it. For African Americans, the rural South has been both a home and a place of violence and oppression, particularly during the period of slavery through …

Running In Absentia, Jeffrey David Tucker

Dissertations

Running in Absentia is a collection of short fiction, short-short fiction (also known as flash fiction), and poetry, with a critical introduction.

Scandinavian Dream: A Region’S Common Philosophical Principles Resulting In Equality, Prosperity, And Social Justice, Remy Christopher Ansiello

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Common philosophical principles formed by the three Scandinavian nations of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden developed through a shared past. Over the centuries this region’s historical, social, economic, and religious ties paved the way for a belief-system based on egalitarian ideals. By the beginning of the 20th century these egalitarian ideals formed the unique social welfare system Scandinavia has in place, benefiting citizens from the day they are born throughout their entire lives. This welfare system centers on the principle that both men and women are fully equal; furthermore society has a moral and legal obligation to remove all barriers preventing …

Utah State University Commencement, 2011 – Main Campus, Utah State University

Commencement Programs

124^th Annual Commencement of Utah State University.

A Liberating Intent: The American Civics Curriculum In Illinois High Schools And The Development Of A Critically Constructive Citizenry, Gustavo David Albear

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Civics education and constructive criticality are not usually found within the same curriculum. In America the two concepts tend to be considered as antithetical in content and practice. Students and teachers do not approach education about the citizen‘s responsibilities with great necessity or urgency, and when they do approach the subject it is from the perspective of inherent rights that should not be questioned, since they are by birth granted, albeit only to some. The idea of criticality is also not considered to be part of the developmental need of a citizen, since the overall sentiment associated with it is …

The Banner - V. 146, No. 5 - (May 2011), Christian Reformed Church In North America

The Banner

6 - Editorial: True Dialogue by Bob De Moor / 7 - Catch Your Breath: Return to Wonder by Simon Cunningham / 8 - IMHO: U.S. Budget Cuts Could Harm Poor by Gary Mulder / 8 - Letters to the Editor / 10 - News: CRC executive director resigns / 18 - Jihad: What Does the Qur'an Really Say? by Tom Oosterhuis / 22 - Scholarship, Strings, and Stars by Matt Kucinski / 26 - Dear Reader: We Need to Talk by Jerry Dykstra / 30 - Just for Kids: Stormy Weather by Sandy Swartzentruber / 32 - Our Fundamental …

The Post Deployment Lived Experience Of U.S. Military Troops After Combat-Related Blast Exposure, Shirely A. Jett Phd

Dissertations

Blast-induced neurotrauma (BINT) is a newly emerging re-occurrence of an old combat-related injury in U.S. military troops returning from deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq. BINT is leading to a silent epidemic of symptomatic troops who face barriers to accessing healthcare and suffer debilitating symptoms in silence. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to discover the meaning of the lived experience of U.S. troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq after combat-related blast exposure. Eleven service members and veterans ranging in age from 21 to over 30 years old participated in semi-structured face to face interviews. These service members and …

Parental Support Of Latinos In Higher Education, Maria Lorena Meza Phd

Dissertations

Many universities grapple with Latino student retention issues. Latinos are the largest and fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States, yet they also are the group that has the least amount of formal education. The literature suggests that parental support helps Latinos succeed academically in elementary, middle, and high schools. However, there has been little research on how or even whether Latino parental support influences academic success at the postsecondary level. Consequently, there is a lack of knowledge about (a) Latino parental behavior and attitudes during the years their children attend college and (b) the relationship between parents' behavior and …

Exploring The Growth Of Text-Reading Fluency In Upper-Elementary English Language Learners During Instruction Based On Repeated Reading, Katharine Staub Harrison Edd

Dissertations

For the large population of school-age English language learners in California and the United States, the challenge of learning a second language while learning academic content is formidable. Learning to read English skillfully is key to their success. Reading instruction focused on development of oral text-reading fluency has shown strong potential for accelerating the general reading achievement of native-English-speaking children, but there is a lack of concomitant research on English language learners. This dissertation describes a formative experiment with the goal to improve, in 9 weeks, the general reading achievement of 17 English language learners in Grades 3, 4, 5, …

A Comparative Content Analysis Of Five Spelling Programs In The 1st, 3rd, And 5th Grade, Katherine N. Davis Edd

Dissertations

This study investigated the content of five widely used spelling programs at three grade levels. Five spelling programs, Houghton Mifflin, Scholastic Spelling, Sitton Spelling, Words Their Way, and Treasures were analyzed. The following questions guided the study: To what extent do current spelling series reflect research-based practices and what underlying theoretical framework is stated or implied in each series? What types of spelling strategies, activities, and techniques are represented in student workbooks and teacher edition books? Two sub questions included: Do they reflect current research and/or the theoretical frameworks stated or implied in each series and do spelling programs provide …

Cila News: Change Is Coming / "Shooting The Big 5" In Africa, Georgianne Bordner, Ferne Weimer

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Randall Thompson's Requiem: A Text Setting Analysis And Recommendations For Performance, Zachary J. Vreeman

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

Randall Thompson is a well-known composer of some of the most familiar and accessible American choral music of the twentieth century. His conservative harmonic language and idiomatic writing for voices has made many of his works popular with both amateur and academic choirs. They are particularly admired for their sensitive setting of English text.

In 1958, Thompson wrote a large work titled Requiem, inspired by a young terminally-ill choral conductor, and commissioned by the University of California. Though positively reviewed, it received only a handful of performances, and is little known today outside of a few extracted movements. The …

Contact Zones, Tara Propper

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

In my work, I explore forms of incantation and free-verse poetry in order to locate and interrogate the rhetorical, the metaphysical, and the corporeal border between linguistic behavior and sociocultural experience. Conceptually, my work is informed by Kristie S. Fleckenstein's research, particularly her theory of Bodysigns and Biorhetoric. Using this framework, I juxtapose the arrangement of physical/material forms and lexical/semiotic codes as each are translated through the human body and its changing environs. I'm interested in examining how human relationships evolve through time and experience, and how spatial identities, reflected through these temporal/experiential environs, inform and re-form our relationships with …

Culture As The Foundation Of Communicative Italian Instruction: Pedagogical Strategies Aimed At Proficiency In Italian, Angelo Giulio Musto

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Abstract of the Dissertation Culture as the Foundation of Communicative Italian Instruction: Pedagogical Strategies Aimed at Proficiency in Italian by Angelo Giulio Musto Doctor of Arts in Foreign Language Instruction Italian Stony Brook University 2011 The purpose of this dissertation is to offer strategies for the integration of culture in the secondary Italian curriculum, while maintaining the assertion that all competent language instruction is rooted in sound cultural objectives. As illustrated in the subsequent review of pedagogical literature, there are two essential components to the philosophy behind this study: the efficacy of employing cultural concepts in the classroom in order …

Tierra Sagrada: Stories, Jose Rene Martinez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis consists of fourteen stories and a critical introduction. Each story is set in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and features Mexican American characters. The critical introduction discusses the history of the Rio Grande Valley and traces my development as a writer. It also shows the influences Mexican American writers such as Américo Paredes have had on my work.

Writing Out The Storm : Trauma And The Work Of Composition., Scott L. Rogers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The discourses of "trauma" and "post-trauma" have become pervasive in representations of life as it is lived in contemporary globalized culture. As new media technologies make the world more accessible, we become accustomed to overwhelming social, political, and personal circumstances, and we come to see "trauma" everywhere, all the time. My dissertation project responds to the presence of "trauma" in the writing classroom, as it appears purposefully in pedagogies designed to respond to it, and as it appears naturally through the interests and experiences of students and teachers who come into contact with national, natural, or personal disaster. Specifically, I …

Medieval Churches On The Spanish Frontier : How Elite Emulation In Architecture Contributed To The Transformation Of A Territorial Expansion Into Reconquista., Kelly L. Watt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the architectural evidence in the ongoing debate surrounding the demographical and political value of the shifting Iberian frontier of the tenth through twelfth centuries. In particular, it seeks to problematize the current generalization of rural stone churches in the central Duero River basin as “repopulation” churches. Using postcolonial theory and comparative analysis, this project argues that the construction of stone churches on sacred sites at the frontier was a useful strategy employed by those seeking to establish authority over existing indigenous and heterogeneous populations. Convincing arguments were needed to not only justify the usurpation of power but …

The Moonlight Schools : Adult Literacy Education In The Age Of Americanization., Samantha Hope Necamp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzing the rhetorical interplay between the Moonlight Schools-an adult literacy education program initiated in 1911-and two other literacy programs: the Americanization movement and U.S. college composition. Through my analysis, I demonstrate that the Moonlight Schools played a vital role in (re)defining literacy in the public sphere. In particular, exchanges between Moonlight Schools advocates and Americanizers helped to solidify public attitudes regarding the professionalization of literacy teaching-attitudes that remain entrenched in public discourse and that have had negative consequences for the disciplinary status of Rhetoric and Composition. I argue that incorporating the Moonlight Schools into our disciplinary imaginary can …

Historiography, Disciplinarity, And The Future(S) Of Composition., Lisa R. Arnold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes and critiques the historiography of more than 150 texts documenting the history of writing instruction in the United States. In examining the rhetoric of disciplinary historiography, I demonstrate how the historicization of composition has worked, rhetorically and politically, to highlight and complicate some of the central concerns of the field while also raising questions about and prompting proposals for the future of the discipline. To carry out this analysis, I engage in a process I call metahistorical critique, with which I trace three disciplinary narratives: the role of first-year composition, the discipline's legacy of current-traditional rhetoric and …

Priest, Prophet, Pilgrim : Types And Distortions Of Spiritual Vocation In The Fiction Of Wendell Berry And Cormac Mccarthy., Todd Edmondson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides a reading of characters in the novels and short stories of two important contemporary American writers through the lens of spiritual theology. While spirituality has often been understood as necessitating a flight from the particular, the concrete, or the everyday, theologians such as Rowan Williams and Nicholas Lash have presented a more robust version of spirituality that understands the call to spirituality not as an invitation to flee from this world, but rather a vocation to a way of life that seeks reconciliation within this world, encountering and embracing God's presence within the contexts of such realities …

Validation Of An Instructional Observation Instrument For Teaching English As A Foreign Language In Spain., Maria Gómez-García

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The design and validation of a classroom observation instrument to provide formative feedback for teachers of EFL in Spain is the overarching purpose of this study. This study proposes that a valid and reliable classroom observation instrument, based on effective practice in teaching EFL, can be developed and used in Spain to enable teachers to move from where they are in their actual teaching performance to an improved level of performance. This instrument is intended to be used as part of the teachers' professional development and for formative purposes. Few instruments have been developed to assess effective practices in EFLIESL …

They Are In Silence : Refugee Women's Narratives., Erin Elizabeth Herbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work explores the personal narratives of a group refugee women recently resettled in Louisville, Kentucky, participating in the Family Center program at Kentucky Refugee Ministries. This research shows that both local and national refugee resettlement policies are complicit in the marginalization of refugee women. These policies falsely construct refugee women as a universalized "other," silencing the diverse experiences and needs of women resettled in the United States. In turn scholarship and an aid discourse that positions refugee women's employment as "supplementary" to male income is based on assumed social constructions of gender inconsistent with many refugee women's experiences both …

The Regulatory Function Of Social Referencing In Preschoolers With Down Syndrome Or Williams Syndrome., Angela E. John

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present project examined the regulatory function of social referencing in two neurodevelopmental disorders that have been well defined genetically and are characterized by differing patterns of socio-cognitive development: Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS). In addition, since the social referencing process requires children to coordinate three fundamental abilities (initiation of joint attention, gaze following, emotional responsivity), the present project also included three follow-up studies which examined these abilities separately. Participants were 21 children with DS (M age = 4.97 years; SD = .74) and 21 children with WS (M age = 4.92 years; SD = .76) closely matched …

The Dialectic Of Trauma In Charlotte Salomon's Life? Or Theatre?, Brooke Leeton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the presence of the dialectic of trauma in Charlotte Salomon’s magnum opus, Life? or Theatre?, a series of more than seven hundred paintings created during her time in exile in France between 1941 and 1942. In this series, modeled on an illustrated operatic libretto, Salomon combined painted images, narrative commentary, dialogue, and musical notation to create a thinly disguised cast of characters – representing herself, family members, and friends – who reenact traumatic events that occurred prior to and throughout Salomon’s life. This visual manifestation of trauma raises questions about the formation and function of traumatic memory, …

A Myth Retold: How Till We Have Faces Confirms That A Myth Is Not A Fairytale, Rachel Elizabeth Burkholder

Masters Theses

In the last fifty years or so, the study of myth and meaning has changed into the study of fairytales, and into world of non-meaning. But because myths are classified with fairytales, their depth and somber meaning are clouded with the various happy endings of fairytales. Myths, then, are stripped and analyzed the same way as fairytales, for critics do not perceive a distinction; therefore, when discussing modern fairytale criticism the conclusions are invariably applied to myths as well. Fairytales and myth suffer greatly from the modern views; both are lost in a world of criticism set on satisfying its …