Digital Commons Network^™

Identifying Barriers To Mental Health Services For Limited And Non-English Speaking Clients In A Rural Homogenous Environment: An Approach To Reduce Barriers With Technology, Alma Torres

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the current protocols set in place by local agencies when working with limited English proficiency clients (LEP). Due to the homogenous environment in the state of North Dakota and Northwestern Minnesota and the increase of immigrants, migrants and refugees to the area, the use of interpreters has become a necessity. A questionnaire was used as means of collecting data regarding the number of agencies that service limited English proficiency clients, employ interpreters, how interpreters are trained and the use of technology for interpretation purposes. Interpreter is defined for this purpose as an …

Outcomes Of Community-Based Infant/ Toddler Teacher Preparation: Tiered Supports For Pre-Service Early Childhood Education Teachers In Early Head Start, Adam S. Kennedy, Anna Lees

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study examined results associated with a field-based undergraduate early childhood teacher education program designed as a response to calls for enhanced field experiences and community-situated teacher education that narrows the preparation-to-practice gap. Specifically, classroom observations were used to assess undergraduates’ progress in developmentally appropriate adult-child interaction during a portion of a semester-long professional preparation sequence focused on infants and toddlers offered in an urban Early Head Start program serving low-income children. During the sequence, a model relying on guided apprenticeship with classroom teachers and continuous direct supervision from university faculty was employed. In addition, a tiered model including universal, …

Analysis Of Cycle 2 Science Textbooks Representation Of Scientific Literacy And Readability Level, Aisha Abdulla Salem Al Qaydi Al Qaydi

Theses

For over half a century, textbooks have played a decisive role in teaching and learning activities. In today’s classrooms, textbooks serve as primary teaching instruments and greatly influence how knowledge is delivered and communicated. With the development of the society, a majority of teachers use textbooks to guide their instruction. On the other hand, readability of textbooks is an important construct for both educators and textbook authors. Finding the right fit between the students’ reading ability and the text difficulty is an important and challenging task for teachers. This study is about how scientific content is presented and represented in …

Principals' Instructional Leadership Practices And Their Relationship To Teachers' Instructional Practices In Sharjah Schools, Hayat Mohamed Al Hosani

Theses

Instructional leadership has become one of the most widely researched topics. This type of leadership has been connected to teacher growth and development, teacher job satisfaction, student achievement, and improving school climate in general. This study focuses on instructional leadership in schools of Sharjah Education Zone. Specifically, the study aims to describe the principal instructional leadership practices, to identify the most and least important teachers' instructional practices, and to investigate whether there is a relationship between the principals' instructional practices and teachers' teaching practices. This study is quantitative in nature and therefore a questionnaire was used to collect data from …

Exploring English Instructors' Perceptions And Actual Practices Regarding The Strategies Used In Teaching And Assessing Writing In Three Tertiary Education Institutions In The Sultanate Of Oman, Noura Abdullah Hamed Al-Azani

Theses

The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and practices of ESL/EFL instructors in teaching and assessing writing in three tertiary educational institutions in the Sultanate of Oman (Al Buraimi University College, University of Buraimi, and Sohar University). The researcher used the quantitative and qualitative methods in the study. The data was gathered through a questionnaire (n=147), 15 interviews (n=15), and 18 classroom observations (n=10). The findings of this study revealed that the majority of ESL/EFL instructors believe in and practice aspects of the process- and product-oriented approaches for teaching academic writing in Oman. Many ESL/EFL instructors believe …

Parents Attitude Towards Inclusion Of Students With Disabilities Into The General Education Classrooms, Maitha Khalifa Ali Al Neyadi

Theses

This study aims at examining parents’ attitude toward including students with disabilities into the general education classrooms. The objectives of this study are threefold as follows: a) investigating parents' attitudes towards including children with disabilities in the general education classrooms, b) examining whether there is a difference in attitude between parents of children with and without disabilities, and c) examining the influence of the child's severity level on parents’ attitudes toward inclusion. Participants were 100 parents ( 50 parents of children with disabilities from a rehabiltation centers, and 50 parents of children without disabilities). The research employed a quantitative analysis …

Multimodal Content Delivery For Geo-Services, Keith Gardiner

Doctoral

This thesis describes a body of work carried out over several research projects in the area of multimodal interaction for location-based services. Research in this area has progressed from using simulated mobile environments to demonstrate the visual modality, to the ubiquitous delivery of rich media using multimodal interfaces (geo- services). To effectively deliver these services, research focused on innovative solutions to real-world problems in a number of disciplines including geo-location, mobile spatial interaction, location-based services, rich media interfaces and auditory user interfaces. My original contributions to knowledge are made in the areas of multimodal interaction underpinned by advances in geo-location …

Culturally Responsive School Leadership: Exploring The Characteristics For Urban School Leaders, Cynthia Alexander Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify characteristics and establish them as key characteristics that influence leadership behavior for culturally responsive leadership. This identification clarified and attempted to offer a distinction between culturally responsive school leaders and teachers which considered synonymous. This study’s aim was to offer a clear distinction between the roles of culturally responsive teachers versus school leaders. Participants shared their academic experiences through a three round Delphi Method to identify qualities that establish the key characteristics that influence leadership behavior for culturally responsive leadership in the roles of urban school leaders. The participant leaders chosen …

University Honors Program Newsletter, Honors College, Georgia Southern University

Honors College: News & Publications (2008-2020)

• Congratulations Spring Graduates!
• Alternative Break: Red River Gorge
• Honors Inquiry in Ireland 2015

High School Culture, Graduation Rates, And Dropout Rates, Philip L. Pearson

Dissertations

High school graduation rates and dropout rates have been a source of concern for many years. A number of strategies have been studied that could improve graduation rates and reduce dropout rates. School culture has been touted as an area that affects student achievement. As the culture of schools improves, student achievement has been shown to improve. The research focus of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between high school culture in public high schools in Mississippi and the graduation and dropout rates. School culture was measured by the School Culture Survey (SCS). As scores on …

The Perceptions Of Mississippi Secondary School Counselors And School Administrators Regarding The Role Of School Counselors In Dropout Prevention, Sherrell Chollottie Gilmore

Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to investigate the perceptions of high school administrators and professional high school counselors regarding the primary role of professional school counselors in dropout prevention and the most appropriate way to assess professional school counselors’ effectiveness in dropout prevention. The modified Counselor Role Survey instrument was used to survey high school administrators and professional high school counselors. The study used a descriptive causal-comparative quantitative design.

Hypotheses were tested using independent t-tests. The results of the study indicated there was no statistically significant difference between the perceptions of Mississippi high school administrators and professional high …

Cognitive Function And The Administration Of A Writing Strategy Compendium Incorporating Autobiographical Recall And Art, Jonnie Sue Cleveland

Dissertations

The ability to write is vital in many academic areas (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). Roughly 70 percent of U. S. students in a representative sampling during 2010 (grades 8 and 12) scored only at the Basic (fractional grasp of prerequisite information and abilities) level and below (U.S. Department of Education, 2011).

Fifty-four percent of students in the eighth grade and 52 percent of students in the twelfth grade in the United States scored at the Basic level. Another 20 percent of students in the eight grade and 21percent of students in the twelfth grade scored below the Basic level. …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

Characterizing Silent Users In Social Media Communities, Wei Gong, Ee-Peng Lim, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Silent users often constitute a significant proportion of an online user-generated content system. In the context of social media such as Twitter, users can opt to be silent all or most of the time. They are often called the invisible participants or lurkers. As lurkers contribute little to the online content, existing analysis often overlooks their presence and voices. However, we argue that understanding lurkers is important in many applications such as recommender systems, targeted advertising, and social sensing. This research therefore seeks to characterize lurkers in social media and propose methods to profile them. We examine 18 weeks of …

Wandering, Idleness, And The Nineteenth-Century Tales Novel, 1836-1895, Molly C. O'Donnell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In "The Late-Victorian Romance Revival" (2008) Anna Vaninskaya questions if "one [can] even speak of the mixing or hybridization of genres in a particular work if the genres themselves had not yet been conclusively defined" (60). This question serves as a warning to genre studies scholars seeking to tease out new observations from history. This dissertation, however, seeks to do just that. Employing multiple theoretical approaches, my study of what I dub the tales novel finds links between diverse Victorian works. Bearing a resemblance to a collection of stories, with seemingly disparate narratives, the tales novels also demonstrate plot interdependence. …

Teaching Language Through The Words And Works Of Its Peoples, Aliza Marie Atkin Kroek

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

This portfolio is the culmination of two years of study in the Master of Second Language Teaching and represents not only the development of the author’s teaching philosophy but also her professional development as a teacher over that course of time. The teaching philosophy is built on the three pillars of 1) use of the target language, 2) copious use of authentic materials, and 3) teaching the use of the mechanics, or rules of the language. Although understanding of the rules facilitates second language learning, they cannot be learned without using language and language will not really be understood without …

Facilitating Development Of Foreign Language, Literacy, And Culture, Chad Saunders

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

In this portfolio, the author describes integral components of his teaching philosophy which include how the instructor can become a supportive facilitator, how he can promote use of the target language for communication, and how motivation can reinforce language instruction and learning. Specific topics of interest were investigated further in support of the teaching philosophy. The artifacts discuss Utah’s dual language immersion program: its development, future, and expected outcomes; the acquisition of multiliteracy skills for educational achievement; as well as the use of technology in promoting target language use and intercultural communicative competence. Finally, the author includes an annotated bibliography …

Flipping The Latin Classroom, Alicia Leitch

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

In a rapidly changing and increasingly technology-dependent world, instructors in higher education are often confronted with challenges and opportunities unfamiliar to their predecessors of only twenty years ago. Students and instructors have instant access to more and better information than ever before. Ebooks, Youtube, video conferencing, and online research databases allow modern students to learn many subjects with little more than their smart phone. While the internet provides nearly unlimited learning potential, most students flooding into universities are more familiar with checking their phones than checking out library books, creating an inherent divide between how most subjects have been traditionally …

Reimagining The Rhetorical Canons For Professional Communication Pedagogy, Jocelin A. Gibson

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

One of the most significant challenges for professional communication educators is identifying and providing the skills students need to succeed in their careers. The rapidly evolving professional landscape complicates this identification; the skills a college student needs when she enters the program could be dramatically different from what she needs when she graduates. A crucial change in the past decade is the shift from a largely solo composing environment to one featuring distributed work, in which professional communicators “find themselves becoming "dividuals" – one part writer, one part project manager, one part programmer, one part student”; this has them involved …

Xenopus! Spiraling Scientific Journal Articles With High School Science English Language Learners, Gillian Bayne, Cristie Peralta

Publications and Research

This poster describes a journal article that is geared specifically towards assisting science teachers as they create lessons that are specifically focused toward ELLs. The article involves reading and analyzing scientific primary sources with ELLs, a challenge not only specific to ELLs but commonly experienced by all students. This article will be submitted to The Science Teacher journal.

A Multi-Level Analysis Of Collaborations In Computer Science, Pramod Divakarmurthy

Theses and Dissertations

Working in collaboration is common in today’s highly connected scientific community. By collaborating, researchers can solve challenging multi-disciplinary problems, increase knowledge dissemination as well as productivity. These and other advantages motivate the study of the collaboration patterns of researchers. Such patterns can be observed directly in networks of manuscript co-authorship. In such a network, nodes represent authors and the links between them indicate that they have co-authored a paper. Several researchers constructed and studied large-scale networks representing collaborations in Mathematics, Biology, Physics, and Neuroscience. Most studies have performed bibliometric analysis of scientific publications, evaluated and ranked scholars on their research …

Future Memory: Ray Bradbury And The Aesthetics Of Nostalgia, Billy J. Cryer

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Upon the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, Ray Bradbury quickly emerged as the nation’s leading science fiction writer. Bradbury’s novel figured among the most prominent tales of Mars—eclipsing even the highly popular Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who first popularized the Mars adventure novel with the appearance of A Princess of Mars in 1912.

While many critics praised The Martian Chronicles for its inventiveness, its acute treatment of social injustices, and its lyrical prose, other critics were quick with complaints. Prime among these was a plangent criticism of Bradbury’s attitude toward science and technology: critics alleged that …

Eavesdropping On The Past: An Oral History Exploration Of English And Spanish In Contact In Texas' Rio Grande Valley, 1904-1945, Aaron B. Cummings

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis investigates the interaction of English and Spanish L1 communities in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas from 1904 to 1945 (an era of mass English L1 migration from the Northern United States and Canada to this historically Spanish-speaking region) via analysis of oral interviews that record both language communities’ memories of the era’s social structures. Collectively, the interviews tell the story of the region’s sociocultural and sociolinguistic environment with a view to exploring how members of each community reacted to the presence of the other language during the first years of significant English/Spanish language contact in previously …

Who Is This About? An Exploratory Study Of Erotic Self-Focus, Evan Fertel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

While the literature highlights the significance of relationship factors in the subjective sexual arousal/desire of women, other research indicates that individual factors may be just as, if not more, important to women's sexual desire and arousal. Research on the influence of intrapersonal factors in sexuality, sexual fantasy, erotica consumption and paraphilic tendencies in a subset of MtoF transsexuals suggests that self-directed attention may play a key role in women's sexual arousal/desire. Some theorists have gone so far as to suggest that women are, to some extent, their own erotic objects. The present study explored the extent to which sexual arousal/desire …

Intraprofessional Nursing Communication And Collaboration: Apn-Rn-Patient Bedside Rounding, Rita M. Herm-Barabasz

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Executive Summary

Leading advisory agencies have long advocated that health care must be safe and effective (Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2001). In order for health care to be safe and effective, good communication and collaboration are essential. Research has found that in health care, poor communication and teamwork failures are the major contributors to adverse events (Cornell, Townsend-Gervis, Vardaman, & Yates, 2014; The Joint Commission, 2011; O’Leary, 2012). Such communication-related adverse events can cause avoidable injury, loss of life, and financial devastation. In light of advanced practice nurses’ (APN) increasing contribution in care management, and in order to ensure delivery …

Survival Of The Fittest: The Role Of Linguistic Modification In Nursing Education, Brenda Strauch Moore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project’s long term goal was to improve English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) nursing student retention. Improving the quality of multiple choice exams is a first crucial step. ESL students find multiple-choice exams to be one of the most challenging aspects of nursing school. One reason for this is the presence of linguistic errors in exam questions. Linguistic errors include: irrelevant question content, poor sentence structure, and culturally biased words or phrases. Non-ESL students are less affected because exams are written in their native language. Linguistic modification, as part of best practices in item writing, removes these types of errors. The U.S. Department …

Gestures As Mimetic Forms Of Identity In Post-Secondary Italian As A Foreign Language Classrooms: A Sociocultural Perspective, Ilaria Nardotto Peltier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study investigates the use of mimetic gestures of identity by foreign language teachers of Italian and their students in college classes as a form of meaning-making. All four of the teachers were found to use a variety of Italian gestures as a regular aspect of their teaching and presentation of self. Students and teachers also were found to mirror each other’s gestures. None of the teachers had been video-recorded before the study and all were surprised to see the degree to which they appeared to be Italian, although at the same time all believed this to be an important …

The Political Economy Of Going Global: Understanding The Determinants Of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment In The Middle East And Africa, Majid Shirali

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study seeks to explain the motivating factors behind Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) patterns to the Middle East and Africa through a quantitative framework that utilizes a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set that covers 57 countries from 2003-2010. Prior research on the issue has hypothesized that China attempts to use external FDI to developing areas to promote national interests and help sustain economic growth. However, there has been an almost exclusive focus on economic determinants while generally ignoring political variables. The approach in this project attempts to fill this scholarly void by employing a broad array of independent variables …

The Role Of The Integration-Responsiveness Framework In An International Branch Campus: A Case Study, Tammy Joy Silver

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Similar to multinational corporations, international branch campuses have the challenge of maintaining legitimacy in different cultural and regulatory environments across national borders. It is common for organizations to modify business practices when expanding operations abroad to respond to local demands and preferences based upon cultural expectations and regulatory requirements.

National culture is comprised of the underlying values, beliefs, and attitudes of a society that drives behavior and expectations (Hofstede, 1980). Differences in national culture determine the amount of local adaptation necessary to conduct business in a foreign country (Kostova & Roth, 2002). International branch campuses must also maintain quality assurance …

The Predictors Of Cultural Competence In The Baccalaureate Degree Nursing Curriculum: Implications For Nursing Education, Angela Elizabeth Silvestri-Elmore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Health care providers are members of a helping profession and need to provide quality care to all members of society. As a result of current and projected demographic changes within the United States (U.S.), health care professionals are faced with the challenges of providing culturally competent care and fulfilling the role as the “helping profession.” From 2000 to 2010, the Asian population increased by 43.3%, the Hispanic population grew by 43%, the Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander population increased by 35.4%, the American Indian or Alaskan Native population increased by 18.4%, and the African American population increased by 12.3%. …