Digital Commons Network^™

Increasing Psychological Flexibility Regarding Interpersonal Conflict Between Religious Beliefs And Attitudes Towards Sexual Minorities: An Acceptance And Commitment Therapy (Act) Intervention, Cory John Myler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was designed to facilitate the development and assessment of a group therapeutic intervention for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning individuals. Previous research has established that this population is particularly vulnerable to psychological distress and that religiosity contributes to this vulnerability, but there have been no interventions established specifically for the population of sexual minorities who are experiencing religious conflict. The components of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy were used to inform the development of a group intervention, which was then carried out. An assessment battery of numerous quantitative measures was given to participants before and after the intervention to …

Maintaining Spanish In An English-Speaking World, Audrey Constance Juhasz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As the Latino portion of the United States population continues to grow each year, more and more children in the United States leave their Spanish-speaking homes and enter English immersion schools. Throughout their lives, these children are likely to shift language preferences from their home language, to the language of the community. However, maintaining development in their first language would be a benefit to them in multiple ways. Identifying factors within bilingual homes that influence English and Spanish language development in preschool-aged children will help researchers and practitioners encourage families to cultivate the optimal learning environment.

This study endeavored to …

A Controlled Study Of The Flipped Classroom With Numerical Methods For Engineers, Jacob L. Bishop

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Recent advances in technology and new ways of using it have led to new possibilities for education research. Increasing tuition costs and free, online course offerings are two influences that have led researchers to re-consider the wisdom of conventional teaching methods and to consider alternatives. The flipped classroom is a new teaching method, which uses video lectures and practice problems as homework, while group-based problem-solving activities are used in the classroom. It combines aspects of two learning theories once thought to be incompatible—constructivism and behaviorism. Active, problem-based learning activities are based on the theories of constructivism, and direct instructional (video) …

A Longitudinal Study Of English Narrative Discourse Development In Young Spanish-English Bilinguals, Abbie Olszewski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Producing oral narratives is the best predictor of later literacy functioning. The ability to use performance on oral narratives as a way to identify children who may be at- risk for academic and language problems is helpful for educators. For example, it is likely that children who are identified with language impairments or who are learning English as a second language may have difficulty creating narratives due to the inherent language complexity of creating narratives. Research has demonstrated that similar to English monolingual children, narrative ability has been shown to underlie literacy development for bilingual children. Although there are numerous …

Exploring Three Fifth-Grade Teachers' Understanding Of Historical Thinking: A Case Study, Deanne Rigby Murray

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Deanne R. Murray at Utah State University conducted a qualitative case study aimed at examining the understanding and practice of historical thinking of three fifth-grade teachers. These three teachers had each been a participant for 3 years in a federally funded Teach American History (TAH) grant project aimed at increasing teachers' historical knowledge and classroom practices. This TAH project in Utah was particularly focused on teachers learning to use cultural tools in socially mediated settings with the ultimate goal of improving their students' performance in history.

This study sought to understand the development of these three teachers' historical thinking through …

Transcending The Material Self: Reading Ghosts In Samuel Richardson's Novel Clarissa, Jeffrey G. Howard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

For thousands of years, many people have retained a belief in the existence of those supernatural entities known as ghosts, and the question of their existence has been vital to the political, religious, and personal ideologies of many interested parties. This thesis will not join that discussion because the question of the ghostly existence cannot be answered in a manner satisfactory to all sides. It merely acknowledges that such a debate continues and that the conflict between belief and empiricist logic can expect no real resolution any time soon. The issue at the heart of this project, however, actually involves …

Spanish-Speaking Parents' Negotiation Of Language And Culture With Their Children's Schools, Ronda L. Bickmore

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Latinos are now the largest public school minority population in the U.S. Because of a shift in the states, cities, and counties where Latinos are choosing to live, many schools that did not previously serve substantial numbers of Latinos are doing so now. Additionally, many of the Latinos in these new settlement areas are recent immigrants who speak little or no English. This qualitative study examined how immigrant Latino parents who speak little or no English supported their children in the English-speaking school system of the U.S. It specifically examined how 12 Spanish-speaking parents negotiated language and culture with their …

The Hidden Costs Of Terrorist Watch Lists, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

Courts have started to recognize standing to sue for those on the government’s No Fly List, which bars listed individuals from flying. This salutary step, however, leaves untouched the complex watch list infrastructure on which the No Fly List is built and whose flaws it inherits. Lower-profile watch lists have fewer determinate consequences on listed individuals than the No Fly List does. But, this article argues, they exact substantial costs.

This article first explains why the incentive structure of terrorist watch lists encourages government agencies to list more people than necessary and not to check their work. It then demonstrates …

Underrepresented Students' Perception Of Their Second-Year In College: A Phenomenological Study, Dena Kniess

All Dissertations

The majority of retention efforts have focused on the first-year of college, however just as many students leave college after their second-year (Berkner, He, & Forest, 2002; Lipka, 2006). Experiences of second-year students have been appearing in publications. These studies have identified the broad concerns of the second-year experience, but little is known about how the second-year experience is similar or different for underrepresented students.
This study sought to describe the experiences of underrepresented college students in their second-year of study at a predominantly White institution (PWI). The study was qualitative in nature, and used phenomenological research methods to form …

The Least Restrictive Environment Clause Of The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act And Institutional Ableism: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Laura O'Laughlin

All Dissertations

This study focused on terms anchored in special education and associated stigma of disability in schools. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ensured the right to education in US public school systems for students with disabilities. An associated term asserted that children with disabilities must be educated in the least restrictive environment (LRE). Yet, IDEA did not address the institutional or social stigma arising in the wake of labeling students as disabled. The stigma, a result of ableism, promotes a premise of normalcy and marginalizes students with disabilities. This study was a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the LRE clause. …

Functional Morphology And Performance Of Ecological Systems With Extreme Pressures: Waterfall Climbing And Predator-Prey Interaction In Amphidromous Gobioid Fishes, Takashi Maie

All Dissertations

Understanding the functional capacity and performance of organisms provides a strong foundation for recognizing the forces that are responsible for their form, and how they might adapt to variable or changing environmental conditions. Amphidromous stream goby fishes live in a habitat subject to two potentially extreme selective pressures: (1) predation on juvenile fish returning to freshwater from the ocean, and (2) the demand to climb waterfalls to reach adult breeding habitats. Recognizing these selection pressures, I present studies evaluating (1) the mechanisms underlying the functional capacity for adhesive performance, and (2) the risk that predation imposes on amphidromous gobies. Specifically, …

The Effects Of Story Grammar On The Oral Narrative Skills Of English Language Learners With Language Impairments, Rhonda D. Miller

All Dissertations

Studies with monolingual English speakers have demonstrated the significance of children’s narrative development for the acquisition of literacy skills. This research has shown that children’s ability to perform school narrative tasks may significantly predict children’s early literacy skills (Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2002), including English reading comprehension outcomes within and across languages in Spanish-speaking ELLs (Miller et al., 2006). This study investigated the effects of a story grammar intervention that used a Story Grammar Marker ® and repeated story retells on the oral narrative skills of third and fourth grade ELLs with SLI. A single case multiple probe across participants design was used …

An Inter-Theoretical Approach To Acting., Cara Elizabeth Mchugh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines my inter-theoretical acting process, in which I associate Konstantin Stanislavsky with aesthetic theatre, Augusto Boal with social theatre, and Bertolt Brecht with political theatre. The paper explores my acting process, by which through fusing elements of aesthetic, political, and social theatre, I achieve my goal as a theatre practitioner to change an audience from passive to active. By re-defining my relationship with the audience, I hope to use theatre as a forum to create change within my audiences. Through learning about these different theatre theories and practices in both my undergraduate and graduate study, I was able …

The Incorporation Of Deaf American Culture And History In Secondary Education Classrooms, James B. Smith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Bilingual-Bicultural Education (Bi-Bi) has a positive impact on language development and social-psychological development of Deaf children (Baker, 2011; Scott, 2010; Humphries & Humphries, 2010). This development is predicated on the child’s access to American Sign Language (ASL); however, the role of Deaf culture and history in Bi-Bi is not well-defined (Ladd, 2003). Children at Bi-Bi schools and programs often acquire cultural aspects through social interactions among their Deaf acquaintances rather than in the classroom. The socialization and cultural sensitivity of Deaf children does not constitute a formal instruction and mastery in all the elements of culture, as often believed in …

Early Dynamic Assessment Of Morphological Awareness And Early Literacy Achievement: A Feasibility Study, Katherine Pike

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to the determine the feasibility of studying whether a) a morphological awareness dynamic assessment task was sensitive to assessing emerging knowledge of morphological awareness and revealed a range of performance in typically developing children, and b) performance on a dynamic assessment of morphological awareness is related to other predictors of language and literacy success. Method: Participants for this study included 15 typically developing children attending preschool in the Intermountain West with a mean age of 5 years, 2 months. The Early Dynamic Assessment of Morphological Awareness (EDAMA) was developed and administered, and a …

Does Teaching Narrative Structure To Children With Language Impairments Improve Comprehension Of Expository Text?, Brynne Cook Evans

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Research has shown that knowledge of narrative text structure enhances students’ abilities to comprehend and produce narrative discourse. The current study was designed to determine if training in narrative text structure was associated with improved comprehension for expository passages that adhered to a narrative structure. Six children between the ages of 5:3 and 9:7 with language impairments participated. Children were matched by grade and randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. Participants in the intervention group received instruction 2 times a week for 45-minute sessions for a duration of 12 weeks from a graduate student in speech-language pathology with …

Instructional Strategies For Implementing Utah's Early Childhood Core Standards, Mark R. Noyce

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Children who are pre-lingually deaf or hard of hearing are often delayed in the acquisition and development of spoken language. Educators of the deaf and hard of hearing, of necessity, adapt and modify curriculum to ameliorate the delays inherent with hearing loss. Teachers utilize specialized strategies and techniques of presentation to adjust to the language and communication learning needs of children with hearing loss.
Curricula are written to identify the developmental sequence of concepts and skills expected of typically developing children. The Utah Early Childhood Core Standards (UECCS) was established to help prepare children to have the pre-requisite skills and …

Women As Victims In Tennessee Williams' First Three Major Plays, Ruth Foley

Masters Theses

Although Tennessee Williams does not openly champion the rights of women in his plays, he presents strong cases against their social alienation in a harsh and brutal world governed by men. Williams' emotional leanings, sensitivity, and intuition enable him to see life through women's eyes. In The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Summer and Smoke, Williams astutely sounds the battle cry for women to fight against male oppression. He shows how Amanda Wingfield, Laura Wingfield, Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski, and Alma Winemiller are held hostage to the rules governing patriarchal society and become unhappy marginalized victims. The self-contained …

Cleft Palate And Early Intervention: Beginning The Treatment Process, Hayley Kennard

Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Document Collection Visualization And Clustering Using An Atom Metaphor For Display And Interaction, Khanh V. Nghi

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Visual Data Mining have proven to be of high value in exploratory data analysis and data mining because it provides an intuitive feedback on data analysis and support decision-making activities. Several visualization techniques have been developed for cluster discovery such as Grand Tour, HD-Eye, Star Coordinates, etc. They are very useful tool which are visualized in 2D or 3D; however, they have not simple for users who are not trained. This thesis proposes a new approach to build a 3D clustering visualization system for document clustering by using k-mean algorithm. A cluster will be represented by a neutron (centroid) and …

Her Voice Lingers On And Her Memory Is Strategic: Effects Of Gender On Directed Forgetting, Hwajin Yang, Sujin Yang, Giho Park

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The literature on directed forgetting has employed exclusively visual words. Thus, the potentially interesting aspects of a spoken utterance, which include not only vocal cues (e.g., prosody) but also the speaker and the listener, have been neglected. This study demonstrates that prosody alone does not influence directed-forgetting effects, while the sex of the speaker and the listener significantly modulate directed-forgetting effects for spoken utterances. Specifically, forgetting costs were attenuated for female-spoken items compared to male-spoken items, and forgetting benefits were eliminated among female listeners but not among male listeners. These results suggest that information conveyed in a female …

Power Of Speech Styles: A Relational Framing Perspective, Michael Lewis King

Dissertations

This study advances understanding of powerful and powerless language effects by incorporating a relational framing perspective. Relational framing theory (RFT) suggests that when messages are interpreted using a dominance frame, issues regarding persuasion, influence, and control become salient. When exchanges are framed by affiliation, however, issues of liking, attraction, and regard become salient. Power of speech style researchers have instantiated dominance-framed interactions in their experiments primarily, thus leaving affiliation-framed interactions largely ignored. Addressing this gap, this study considered the effects of relational framing differences on participants’ evaluation of speech style variations. Consistent with previous literature and in partial support for …

The Effects Of Music On Foreign Language Retention In Elementary Schools, Hayley M. Collins

Honors Theses

There are a variety of different strategies educators have to choose from when deciding to teach a foreign language in their elementary school classroom. Although this is so, there are still educators who choose to rely on the traditional method of rote memorization. Interactive play allows the students to be hands-on when learning foreign language vocabulary rather than simply memorizing it. Music is also incorporated into interactive play to see its effects on retaining the knowledge students are learning. Both of these, music and interactive play, were used in this study to prove that the combination of the two is …

Lawyering For Groups: The Case Of American Indian Tribal Attorneys, Kristen A. Carpenter, Eli Wald

Fordham Law Review

   Lawyering for groups, broadly defined as the legal representation of a client who is not an individual, is a significant and booming phenomenon. Encompassing the representation of governments, corporations, institutions, peoples, classes, communities, and causes, lawyering for groups is what many, if not most, lawyers do. And yet, the dominant theory of law practice—the Standard Conception, with its principles of zealous advocacy, nonaccountability, and professional role-based morality—and the rules of professional conduct that codify it, continue to be premised on the basic antiquated assumption that the paradigmatic client-attorney relationship is between an individual client and an individual attorney. The result …

What Privacy Is For, Julie E. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Privacy has an image problem. Over and over again, regardless of the forum in which it is debated, it is cast as old-fashioned at best and downright harmful at worst — anti-progressive, overly costly, and inimical to the welfare of the body politic. Yet the perception of privacy as antiquated and socially retrograde is wrong. It is the result of a conceptual inversion that relates to the way in which the purpose of privacy has been conceived. Like the broader tradition of liberal political theory within which it is situated, legal scholarship has conceptualized privacy as a form of protection …

Putting Down Roots: A Tolkienian Conception Of Place, Kayla Snow

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the way in which J.R.R. Tolkien's develops and expresses his nuanced sense of place through his major literary works--namely, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's sense of place, as expressed through his fiction, encompasses both metaphysical and geographical relational structures that are operative at both the local and global levels. As Tolkien develops his sense of place in his fiction, he draws from the Distributist principles--largely informed by Catholic social policy of the late nineteenth century and popularized by G.K. Chesterton--to build the economy in Middle-earth. The resulting economy resists industrialization …

The Development Of The Architectural Styles Of New France, Jennifer Brazier

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I will explore the impact of multiple cultures, climate and available resources on the architecture of New France. I will begin with early settlements of Nova Scotia and Québec, and follow the Mississippi River down to New Orleans. These early French settlements in the new world struggled to retain their identities in the face of English and Spanish control. Although Canadian territories were affected by English possession, they were the most successful in retaining a French influence. Even today, French is the official language of Québec, and the Catholic religion remains an important part of everyday life …

An Examination Of Civic Engagement Behaviors Among Members Of Social And Cultural Fraternities And Sororities, Gary Gribble Wiser Jr.

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Word Calling In 3rd And 4th Graders: Exploring Student And Teacher Characteristics, Lindsay Starr Couzens

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Reading difficulties in elementary school-aged children may occur when two components of reading- word identification, comprehension, or both of these skills- are weak or underdeveloped (Gough, 1972; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2000; Savage, 2001). One type of reading difficulty that is frequently identified by teachers is known as "word calling." Previous research (Hamilton & Shinn, 2003; Hendricks, Reynolds & Sinatra, 2003, Meisinger, Bradley, Schwanenflugel, Kuhn, & Morris, 2009) found that teachers were not accurate in their identification of word callers (word callers). They tended to over-identify these students in their classrooms, confusing them with typical struggling readers. …

Teaching Spanish To Second-Language And Heritage-Language Learners, Kathryn R. Wall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The following portfolio is an assemblage of work submitted for the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University. Contained herein is the author’s personal teaching philosophy about teaching beginning level Spanish in college with second and heritage language learners in the classroom. Following the teaching philosophy are artifacts and reflections relating to specific topics of the teaching philosophy. These artifacts represent the author’s understanding of the role that language, culture, and literacy play in the Spanish second and heritage language classroom.