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2013

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A Longitudinal Analysis Of The U.S. News Law School Academic Reputation Scores Between 1998 And 2013, Robert L. Jones Jan 2013

A Longitudinal Analysis Of The U.S. News Law School Academic Reputation Scores Between 1998 And 2013, Robert L. Jones

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

This article is a revised update to a previously released study of the U.S. News academic reputation scores (“peer assessment scores”). The revised study incorporates the results from the 2013 U.S. News rankings and encompasses the period between 1998 and 2013. The study reveals that there has been a significant downward trend in the academic reputation scores of law schools since 1998. While the academic reputation scores tended to be relatively stable throughout the sixteen year period, over 60% of the law schools in the 172 school data set finished the sixteen year period with academic reputation scores that were …

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Ain't I Cool: Investigating The Lived Experience Of Cool For Black Male Collegians, Kyle Nathaniel Boone Jan 2013

Ain't I Cool: Investigating The Lived Experience Of Cool For Black Male Collegians, Kyle Nathaniel Boone

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the lived experiences of cool for Black male college students. Cool, defined as a means to navigate cross-cultural structures, serves as Black men’s acknowledgement of, and response to, the rules of their self-identified cultural group when confronted by dominant racial, gendered, and/or class hegemonies. Results of this study note that cool is a major part of the fabric in the identity development of Black males and is contextualized through environmental factors. For this study, four theoretical frameworks were used to understand Black male cool: Phinney’s (1989) Ethnic Development Model, 2) Performance Theory …

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Critical Race Empiricism: A New Means To Measure Civil Procedure, Victor D. Quintanilla Jan 2013

Critical Race Empiricism: A New Means To Measure Civil Procedure, Victor D. Quintanilla

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article reflects the second phase in a research line examining the effects of highly subjective pleading rules, specifically, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), and was an invited contribution to a symposium, which explored the intersection of empirical legal methods and critical race theory. In this phase, I updated the empirical legal analysis in a prior article, Beyond Common Sense: A Social Psychological Study of Iqbal’s Effect on Claims of Race Discrimination, 17 Michigan Journal of Race and Law 1 (2011), in three ways. First, I lengthened the time horizon from 18 months to 24 months, increasing the …

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Characterization Of Epibenthic And Demersal Megafauan At Mississippi Canyon 252 Following The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Marla Maxine Valentine Jan 2013

Characterization Of Epibenthic And Demersal Megafauan At Mississippi Canyon 252 Following The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Marla Maxine Valentine

LSU Master's Theses

Increased demand for new sources of oil and gas has resulted in an expansion of drilling into deeper waters. With this exploratory drilling come increased risks, which were realized on April 20, 2010 when the blow out preventer on the Macondo Well failed, resulting in the release of a large quantity of oil and gas into the Northern Gulf of Mexico from a bathypelagic source. This unprecedented environmental disaster was coined the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill by the popular news media. In the months that followed the spill, the lack of knowledge about the pre-spill condition of deep-sea communities in …

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Multi-Informant Investigation Of College Student Drinking Behaviors And Social Anxiety : The Role Of Perceived Descriptive And Injunctive Norms, Anthony H. Ecker Jan 2013

Multi-Informant Investigation Of College Student Drinking Behaviors And Social Anxiety : The Role Of Perceived Descriptive And Injunctive Norms, Anthony H. Ecker

LSU Master's Theses

Problematic alcohol use in college is a major public health concern. Identification of variables related to development of alcohol-related problems is an important research goal. Social anxiety and perceived social norms are two such variables. Social anxiety is associated with concurrent experience of alcohol-related problems and development of future problems with alcohol. Perceived norms, especially norms related to perceived approval of risky alcohol use (i.e., injunctive norms), are related to greater drinking problems among college students with higher social anxiety. College students typically overestimate the amount that other students in general use alcohol, and the discrepancy between perceived and actual …

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Against Neorehabilitation, Jessica M. Eaglin Jan 2013

Against Neorehabilitation, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the face of severe budget constraints, bipartisan calls for reform, dropping crime rates, and judicial intervention, states are seriously considering and implementing criminal justice reform to manage prison populations for the first time in three decades. Scholars agree that states need a guiding theory to transform emergency and short-term reforms into a long-term shift in policy and practice away from mass incarceration. Numerous scholars advocate for a return to an improved theory of rehabilitation to guide the states in implementing such reform. This return-through neorehabilitation, or the rehabilitation of rehabilitation-centers on the use of evidence-based programming and predictive tools …

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Empirical Fallacies Of Evidence Law: A Critical Look At The Admission Of Prior Sex Crimes, Aviva A. Orenstein, Tamara Rice Lave Jan 2013

Empirical Fallacies Of Evidence Law: A Critical Look At The Admission Of Prior Sex Crimes, Aviva A. Orenstein, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In a significant break with traditional evidence rules and policies, Federal Rules of Evidence 413-414 allow jurors to use the accused's prior sexual misconduct as evidence of character and propensity to commit the sex crime charged. As reflected in their legislative history, these propensity rules rest on the assumption that sexual predators represent a small number of highly deviant and recidivistic offenders. This view of who commits sex crimes justified the passage of the sex-crime propensity rules and continues to influence their continuing adoption among the states and the way courts assess such evidence under Rule 403. In depending on …

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Engineering Of Hydroponic Systems To Enhance Biomass Of Sea Oats (Uniola Paniculata), Stefanie Renee Gilliam Jan 2013

Engineering Of Hydroponic Systems To Enhance Biomass Of Sea Oats (Uniola Paniculata), Stefanie Renee Gilliam

LSU Master's Theses

Restoration projects use native plants such as sea oats (Uniola paniculata) to help stabilize the coast. Sea oats are a native grass that can collect blowing sand to build dunes. Sea oats used in the restoration projects can be produced using sexual or asexual techniques. An ideal seedling would be genetically distinct, have increased seed production and germination, and have superior vegetative biomass. Finding ways to produce, propagate, and grow coastal plants such as sea oats effectively is critical to efforts to reduce erosion. In this study, production of sea oats via greenhouse based hydroponic systems was studied. This was …

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A Dynamic Feedback-Control Toll Pricing Methodology : A Case Study On Interstate 95 Manged Lanes, Danhong Cheng Jan 2013

A Dynamic Feedback-Control Toll Pricing Methodology : A Case Study On Interstate 95 Manged Lanes, Danhong Cheng

LSU Master's Theses

Recently, congestion pricing emerged as a cost-effective and efficient strategy to mitigate the congestion problem on freeways. This study develops a feedback-control based dynamic toll approach to formulate and solve for optimal tolls. The study compares the performance of the proposed methodology to that of the current strategy deployed on Interstate 95 express lanes. Two objectives are studied: one is to maximize the toll revenue while maintaining a minimum level of service on the managed lanes and the other is to maximize both revenue and throughput on the managed lanes while keeping a minimum level of service. The impact of …

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Leadership In Environmental And Energy Design : A True Sustainable Development Model?, Christopher Jay Loser Jan 2013

Leadership In Environmental And Energy Design : A True Sustainable Development Model?, Christopher Jay Loser

LSU Master's Theses

Suburban sprawl and sustainable development has received increasing worldwide attention over the past few decades. In 1998, sustainable development principles were codified in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification system. The most recent LEED certification system to be released, LEED for New Development (LEED-ND), includes sustainable development goals with the addition of smart growth principles intended to curb sprawl. This study examines and evaluates LEED-ND in order to determine if it meets the requirements of sustainable development to provide for the needs of future generations, as defined by the United Nation’s World Commission on Environment and Development. …

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Exploring The Underpinnings That Attribute To Low Performance On Standardized Tests By First Year University Freshmen At A Historically Black College And University, Jeffery Joseph Darby, Jr. Jan 2013

Exploring The Underpinnings That Attribute To Low Performance On Standardized Tests By First Year University Freshmen At A Historically Black College And University, Jeffery Joseph Darby, Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to examine and determine what factors contribute to the prevention of first semester freshmen students not succeeding on high stakes tests based on their opinions, and what variables are important to their performance at the university. The Personal Educational Academic Survey (PEAS), a 65 item Likert-type scale was designed to measure the students’ opinions regarding their academic knowledge acquired during their first semester in college in Academic Achievement and other courses at Langston University. The final response count was 216 representing a 35.47% response rate. The target population in this research study was …

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Empirical And Simulation Essays On Analyzing A Country's Export Performance : The Case Of Ghana, Aude L. Pujula Jan 2013

Empirical And Simulation Essays On Analyzing A Country's Export Performance : The Case Of Ghana, Aude L. Pujula

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A large array of literature has revealed the complexity of export performance analysis. Using the case of Ghana, this dissertation, divided into three essays, seeks to provide the methodological guidance, empirical and simulation evidence necessary to analyze a country’s export performance. The choice of Ghana was motivated by the country’s growth experience, strong export and agricultural sectors and implemented reforms and programs since 1983. In the first essay, we created a new trade-weighted Cedi index or real effective exchange rate (REER) that takes into account Ghana’s most relevant patterns of trade and captures the evolution of Ghana’s export price competitiveness …

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Signal Transduction And Rickettsial Infection Of Tick Cells, Natthida Petchampai Jan 2013

Signal Transduction And Rickettsial Infection Of Tick Cells, Natthida Petchampai

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Spotted fever group (SFG) Rickettsia are obligate intracellular bacteria that are carried by ticks. One such tick, Dermacentor variabilis is a vector for the etiologic agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, R. rickettsii. These ticks also carry a non-pathogenic R. montanensis, the agent used in this study. Interestingly, field data collected from infected D. variabilis throughout the United States revealed that the majority of Rickettsia in ticks are non-pathogenic species such as R. montanensis. Although ticks serve as both vector and reservoir hosts for SFG Rickettsia, many questions regarding tick-Rickettsia interaction remain unresolved. Therefore, the overall goal of this research …

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Power And Purpose : U.S. Foreign Aid And Development, Jeremy L. Wells Jan 2013

Power And Purpose : U.S. Foreign Aid And Development, Jeremy L. Wells

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Foreign aid represents about 1 percent of the United States federal budget, but it also represents a significant portion of many recipient countries’ gross domestic products. Although there has been substantial interest in foreign aid among international political economy researchers over the last decade or so, there are still few if any answers to the most basic questions: who gets foreign aid, how much, and is it effective? Through a combination of cross-national analyses and a quantitative case study of Afghanistan during the Taliban insurgency of 2003–2009, this dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of the utility of foreign aid …

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Assessment Of Detection And Characterization Of Simulated Lung Nodules With Low-Dose Ct, Kendrick J. Williams Jan 2013

Assessment Of Detection And Characterization Of Simulated Lung Nodules With Low-Dose Ct, Kendrick J. Williams

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: The quality of a computed tomography (CT) image and the dose delivered depend upon the acquisition parameters used to acquire the CT scan. Current, voltage and pitch are acquisition parameters that affect the image quality. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of current, voltage and pitch on physicians’ ability to characterize small, solid nodules with low-dose computed tomography. Methods: A database of lung scans with various acquisition parameters was compiled. A torso phantom and acrylic beads were used to simulate the lungs and nodules within the lungs. Several sizes of acrylic sphere were used to …

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Novel Computational Tools And Utilization Of The Gut Microbiota For Phylogeographic Inference, Sarah Michelle Hird Jan 2013

Novel Computational Tools And Utilization Of The Gut Microbiota For Phylogeographic Inference, Sarah Michelle Hird

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Genetic data are frequently responsible for biological insight and recent advances in sequencing technology (high-throughput sequencing; HTS) have created massive DNA-sequence based datasets. While these technologies are invaluable, there are many analytical and application issues that need to be addressed. With these data we can ask and answer novel biological questions that were previously inaccessible. One major challenge in applying HTS to biological questions is data management: the file formats and sizes are foreign to many primary researchers. In the second and third chapters of this dissertation, I introduce two pieces of software that allow researchers to utilize HTS with …

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Preparation And Characterization Of Cellulose Nanoparticles And Their Application In Biopolymeric Nanocomposites, Jingquan Han Jan 2013

Preparation And Characterization Of Cellulose Nanoparticles And Their Application In Biopolymeric Nanocomposites, Jingquan Han

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Regenerated cellulose nanoparticles (RCNs) including both elongated fiber and spherical structures were prepared from microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and cotton using 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride followed by high-pressure homogenization. The RCN has a two-step pyrolysis, different from raw MCC and cotton that had a one-step process. The crystalline structure of RCNs was cellulose II in contrast to the cellulose I form of the starting materials. Also, the RCNs have decreased crystallinity and crystallite size. The elongated RCNs produced from cotton and MCC had average lengths of 123 ± 34 and 112 ± 42 nm, and mean widths of 12 ± 5 and 12 …

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Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones Jan 2013

Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Minding the Gap: A Rhetorical History of the Achievement Gap arose as an inquiry into the rhetorical congestion around the phrase achievement gap in public discourse. Having been used in support of multiple, often competing, education agendas, the phrase seems versatile almost to the point of emptiness, and yet it seemingly retains its persuasive power. Examining the history of the phrase, I reveal that the notion of the achievement gap is rooted in the logic of segregation and the rhetoric of disability, and serves to construct students in ways that paradoxically undermine efforts to expand access to educational opportunity. Although …

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Chemical Composition And Structure Study Of Surfaces And Ultrathin Films Of Complex Compounds, Yi Li Jan 2013

Chemical Composition And Structure Study Of Surfaces And Ultrathin Films Of Complex Compounds, Yi Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Complex Materials, such as transition-metal oxides (TMOs) with exotic properties provide immense opportunities in condensed matter and materials science. The signature and challenge of these materials is the multitude of competing ground states that can be tuned or manipulated by doping, structural modification, strain induction, or the application of external stimulus. In the past few years, it is becoming increasingly clear that surfaces/interfaces, thin films, and heterostructures of TMOs, display a rich diversity of fascinating properties that are related to, but not identical to, the bulk phenomena. The fundamental issues for the understanding of these emergent phenomena include the structure …

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Documenting Postural Changes And Repetition Among Violin Players And Their Influence In The Development Of Musculoskeletal Disorders, Cristina Handal Jan 2013

Documenting Postural Changes And Repetition Among Violin Players And Their Influence In The Development Of Musculoskeletal Disorders, Cristina Handal

LSU Master's Theses

The objective of this study was to document the changes in posture and the number of wrist and forearm repetitions among violin/viola players during an experiment session to attempt to understand the development of musculoskeletal disorders. Also, the perception of discomfort and pain felt by the violin/viola players in the past and the number that had been diagnosed with a disorder was documented. Finally, possible correlations were calculated between pain/discomfort with variables like the number of years playing the violin, hours of practice/day, frequency of pain, gender, and dominant hand and among different pain/discomfort variables (pain/discomfort before the experiment, after …

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Recovery Of Understory Bird Movement In Post-Pasture Amazonia, Luke L. Powell Jan 2013

Recovery Of Understory Bird Movement In Post-Pasture Amazonia, Luke L. Powell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

I sought to understand how forest fragmentation and secondary growth affect avian movement at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP) near Manaus, Brazil. When deforested areas are abandoned, secondary forests regenerate, allowing rainforest animals to gradually recovery their ability to use formerly inhospitable habitat. My colleagues and I captured 2773 understory birds of ten foraging guilds along the edges of primary forest fragments and variable secondary forest. Age of secondary forest along edges was the most important variable driving capture rates on primary/secondary edges. Mean recovery to pre-isolation capture rates was 26 years after abandonment, but terrestrial insectivores …

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Characterization Of The Effect Of Alcohol On Recombinant Proteins Derived From Mammalian Adenylyl Cyclase, Emily Qualls Creekmore Jan 2013

Characterization Of The Effect Of Alcohol On Recombinant Proteins Derived From Mammalian Adenylyl Cyclase, Emily Qualls Creekmore

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Research suggests that the cyclic AMP (cAMP) signaling pathway is implicated in the development of alcoholism. Previous work in our laboratory has demonstrated that alcohol enhances the activity of adenylyl cyclase (AC) in an isoform specific manner; human type 7 AC (AC7) is most enhanced by ethanol as measured by cAMP accumulation assay in whole cells. We hypothesize that alcohol enhances AC activity by directly interacting with the protein and that alcohol effects on AC can be studied using recombinant AC expressed in bacteria. Our objectives include: 1) design and optimization of the conditions for protein expression and protein purity …

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Metacognitive Awareness : Impact Of A Metacognitive Intervention In A Pre-Nursing Course, Bronwyn Perry Doyle Jan 2013

Metacognitive Awareness : Impact Of A Metacognitive Intervention In A Pre-Nursing Course, Bronwyn Perry Doyle

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

To function effectively as nurses in the evolving, complex healthcare system, nursing students must learn to be skilled thinkers, know how to learn, and know how to use what they know in novel situations. Research in the field of metacognition may offer a useful framework to improve learning and to enhance critical thinking and clinical decision-making in nursing students. The purpose of this study is to describe how pre-nursing students’ self-reported metacognitive awareness correlates with age and academic variables and to explore the effects of a metacognitive intervention on students’ metacognitive awareness. Using a quasi-experimental research design, the study consisted …

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Environmental Kuznets Curve In Water Pollution: A Semiparametric Approach, Mahesh Pandit Jan 2013

Environmental Kuznets Curve In Water Pollution: A Semiparametric Approach, Mahesh Pandit

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The relationship between pollution and per capita income generally appears as an inverted U-shaped curve. This inverted U-shaped curve is known as the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). The shape of the curve, however, is very sensitive to the data, location and pollutant considered in the analysis. Since the early 1990s, there has been an exponential growth in the number of empirical studies in this field, but many refute the inverted U-shaped nature of the curve for pollutants across different time periods and geographical regions. This has generated an increased interest in developing a more flexible functional form for model specification …

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The Roles Of Deinococcus Radiodurans Dps-1 And Dps-2 In Nucleoid Organization And In Survival During Oxidative Stress, Khoa Huynh Nguyen Jan 2013

The Roles Of Deinococcus Radiodurans Dps-1 And Dps-2 In Nucleoid Organization And In Survival During Oxidative Stress, Khoa Huynh Nguyen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

DNA protection during starvation (Dps) proteins are important for bacterial oxidative stress responses. This study aims to understand the roles and characteristics of the two Dps homologs in Deinococcus radiodurans: Dps-1 and Dps-2. Dps-2 contains a predicted signal peptide and in vivo localization of Dps-2 reveals that its location is non-cytoplasmic. β-galactosidase assays show that the Dps-2 promoter is upregulated in the presence of H2O2 and the results from the DNA protection assay show that Dps-2 is able to protect DNA efficiently against reactive oxygen species (ROS). Dps-2 has a C-terminal extension that is needed for assembly into a dodecamer …

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An Examination Of Middle School Band Students' Ability To Match Pitch Following Short-Term Vocal Technique Training, Abby Bush Lyons Jan 2013

An Examination Of Middle School Band Students' Ability To Match Pitch Following Short-Term Vocal Technique Training, Abby Bush Lyons

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine middle school band students’ ability to sing and play their instruments in tune following short-term vocal technique instruction. In a posttest-only design, individual participants listened to three-note stepwise sequences produced digitally and performed them in three ways—sung on the syllable /Zu/, sung on /Zi/, and played on the instrument. Performances were recorded and analyzed for cent deviation from equal-tempered tuning (reference A=440). Results showed a significant 3-way interaction among pitch direction, performance condition, and pitch, with the most inaccurate playing happening after the first time participants sang the pitch sequence. Singing accuracy, …

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The Art Of Making Law Library Videos, L. Cindy Dabney Jan 2013

The Art Of Making Law Library Videos, L. Cindy Dabney

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article explores the process of creating marketing and instructional videos for law libraries.

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Automated Semantic Content Extraction From Images, Mahdi Arab Khazaeli Jan 2013

Automated Semantic Content Extraction From Images, Mahdi Arab Khazaeli

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, an automatic semantic segmentation and object recognition methodology is implemented which bridges the semantic gap between low level features of image content and high level conceptual meaning. Semantically understanding an image is essential in modeling autonomous robots, targeting customers in marketing or reverse engineering of building information modeling in the construction industry. To achieve an understanding of a room from a single image we proposed a new object recognition framework which has four major components: segmentation, scene detection, conceptual cueing and object recognition. The new segmentation methodology developed in this research extends Felzenswalb's cost function to include …

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Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Response To Intervention In Ela And Math For Sixth, Seventh, And Eighth Grade Students, Shehla Khan Jan 2013

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Response To Intervention In Ela And Math For Sixth, Seventh, And Eighth Grade Students, Shehla Khan

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract This study examined the combined effectiveness of Tier I and Tier II instruction in the context of a Response to Intervention framework with sixth, seventh and eighth grade students both in ELA and Math. The Tier I interventions emphasized topics from the Grade Level Expectations that the students were having difficulties grasping during regular classroom instruction. Tier II instruction mainly emphasized preparing students for the standardized iLEAP and LEAP tests. These students were then compared with a group of similar students who did not receive tiered instructions (control group). Students who participated in Tier I or Tier II instructions …

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The Effects Of The Peer Instruction Technique Think-Pair-Share On Students' Performance In Chemistry, Kathleen Sipos Trent Jan 2013

The Effects Of The Peer Instruction Technique Think-Pair-Share On Students' Performance In Chemistry, Kathleen Sipos Trent

LSU Master's Theses

Think-Pair-Share is an active learning strategy which involves pairs of students discussing answers to questions or problems. The purpose of this study was to determine if the peer instruction technique Think-Pair-Share improved students’ performance in high-school chemistry. The teacher used one class of students as a control group. This group did not use Think-Pair-Share for the chapter investigated, “Chemical Reactions”. The teacher used two other classes of students, who did use Think-Pair-Share for this chapter, as the experimental group. There was no difference in the learning gains between the control and experimental groups. Think-Pair-Share and normal classroom instruction methods were …

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