Digital Commons Network^™

Lost In Translation: Challenges And Solutions To Language Barriers In Healthcare In Mississippi, Galina Ostrovsky

Honors Theses

Language barriers can impede access to healthcare and compromise quality of care for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients. Although a rights-based framework would suggest and federal mandates require healthcare facilities to provide language access services, multiple factors result in the persistence of language barriers in healthcare. As the literature review shows, these factors include limitations in policy, enforcement, standardization, resources, and ability to recruit and retain professional interpreters. This thesis uses a multi-method case study entailing Mississippi in general and information from two specific sites, a rural Delta county and an urban central county, to assess the issue of language …

Scientific Islanders: Pacific Peoples, American Scientists, And The Desire To Understand The World, 1800-1860, Roberto Jesus Diaz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Between 1800 and 1860, Pacific Islanders sought answers to questions about the mechanics and origins of the universe, just as Americans did. But the systems of thought created by Natives addressing these matters generally would not have been considered "scientific" by Americans. Pacific Islanders and Americans, nevertheless, created extensive scientific traditions to systematically perceive, understand, and explain the nature of existence. These systems were rooted in religion, social dynamics, and other cultural norms, and manifested themselves in writing, artwork, explorations, and technologies that benefited their societies. Thus, this Thesis argues that the practice of scientific methods was not simply a …

Psychologically Satisfying: Exploring Client Experiences With Dynamics Of Shared Decision-Making In Care From Prescribing Psychologists, Ashley Graboski-Bauer

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the field of prescribing psychology as it is practiced by providers and experienced by clients in New Mexico. Prescribing psychology is an emerging field of hybrid mental healthcare in which psychologists with special post-doctoral training can obtain prescriptive authority in certain jurisdictions. The study sought to take a client-centered approach to investigating the type and quality of care provided to clients by prescribing psychologists (RxPs). This study included a provider survey of knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding health literacy and shared decision-making, and a client survey of satisfaction and experiences with care …

Unveiling Veiled Voices: Understanding The Experiences Of Muslim Women Who Wear The Hijab In Public Spaces, Mohammed Sakip Iddrisu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In view of the invisibility of Arab(ic)-Islamic rhetorics and the dominance of scholarship on Christian rhetorical traditions in rhetorical studies alongside an increased visibility of public rhetorics about Islamic women in American politics, this research explores the experiences and performances of veiled Muslim women in public spaces. While much of rhetorical scholarship on public spheres focuses on public talk or the circulation of public texts, in this study, I, together with six veiled Muslim women in El Paso, Texas, explore how veiled Muslim women navigate the hijab's visibility as a marker of difference with strangers-simultaneously performing and provoking performative public …

Implications Of Dual Language Scoring Of The Preschool Language Scale-Fifth Edition Spanish For Bilingual Preschool-Aged Children, Callie Mae Mathis

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Purpose: Spanish versions of standardized tests used in language evaluations are not well studied. The purpose of this study is to further examine the appropriateness of the Preschool Language Scale, Fifth Edition Spanish (PLS-5S) in a U.S./Mexico border community by comparing the Dual language scores versus the Spanish only scores and comparing the normative sample of the PLS-5S to the population of El Paso, TX.

Method: Twenty-three bilingual preschool aged children in the El Paso area completed the Spanish Edition of the PLS-5S. The parents and teachers of the participants completed two language proficiency questionnaires (Bilingual Input Output Survey; BIOS …

Grammatical Error Types Using A Picture Description Task In English And Spanish With Young Children, Lisa Valles

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Purpose: The current study was part of a larger project examining diagnostic accuracy of various assessment tools for bilingual children living in a border community. The purpose of this project was to examine language sample measures in young children using a picture description task (Eisenberg & Guo, 2013) by answering the following questions:

1. What were the frequent types of errors exhibited by young children in English and Spanish?

2. Were there distinct types of grammatical errors across languages in bilingual children?

Methods: Participants were recruited from a large city on the US/Mexico border. There were 47 participants in the …

Reanimation (Afterlife Rebellion Book 1), Nicole A. White

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Reanimation (Afterlife Rebellion Book 1) is the first book in a young adult science fiction and fantasy duology about a group of ghosts and a teenage necromancer who must come to terms with a corrupted afterlife. The overarching goal was to craft an accessible fantasy, with its characters being unfamiliar with genre conventions so that readers who were as well could have an entry point into the category, and familiar readers could enjoy new interpretations of the canon. Traditional character archetypes and stereotypes that have been proven to impede representation in the genre and deter new readership are subverted or …

Computational Model Of Negotiation Skills In Virtual Artificial Agents, Daniela Pacella

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Negotiation skills represent crucial abilities for engaging in effective social interactions in formal and informal settings. Serious games, intelligent systems and virtual agents can provide solid tools upon which one-to-one training and assessment can be reliably made available. The aim of the present work is to fill the gap between the recent growing interest towards soft skills, and the lack of a robust and modern methodology for supporting their investigation. A computational model for the development of Enact, a 3D virtual intelligent platform for training and testing negotiation skills, will be presented. The serious game allows users to interact with …

Transparent Authentication Utilising Gait Recognition, Hind K Al-Obaidi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Securing smartphones has increasingly become inevitable due to their massive popularity and significant storage and access to sensitive information. The gatekeeper of securing the device is authenticating the user. Amongst the many solutions proposed, gait recognition has been suggested to provide a reliable yet non-intrusive authentication approach – enabling both security and usability. While several studies exploring mobile-based gait recognition have taken place, studies have been mainly preliminary, with various methodological restrictions that have limited the number of participants, samples, and type of features; in addition, prior studies have depended on limited datasets, actual controlled experimental environments, and many activities. …

A Situational Analysis Of The Current Level Of Lecturers’ Engagement With Internationalisation Of The Curriculum In Ireland’S First Technological University, Deirdre Ryan, Fiona Faulkner, Dominic Dillane, Robert Flood

Journal Articles

The educational value of internationalisation in higher education is of critical importance for both domestic and international students. While national and institutional policies globally are increasingly prioritising internationalisation, the resultant consequences for the teaching and learning context are not adequately being explored. Understanding engagement with Internationalisation of the Curriculum from the lecturers’ perspective allows for a greater insight into the inherent implementation gap between the theory and practice of the process. This knowledge may then help inform strategies to address the gap. The present study details the current level of engagement between lecturers and Internationalisation of the Curriculum in Ireland’s …

Why Is The Protective Order Project Still In Business; Or, If The Family Justice Clinic Has Been At It So Long, Why Hasn’T Anything Changed? Domestic Violence As A Continuing Societal Concern, Christine M. Scartz, Chelsea Reese

Scholarly Works

This Article explores the Georgia Law Family Violence and the continuing societal concern surrounding domestic violence.

Law's Semantic Self-Portrait: Discerning Doctrine With Co-Citation Networks And Keywords, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

An apex court’s body of cases has an internal texture, continually augmented by recent citations to earlier, topically related cases. How can we best describe that texture? The citation network shows a path. Specifically, what past Supreme Court cases do more recent Supreme Court cases tend to cite together, as if a topical pair? Using a web of those oft-cited pairs, what noun phrases appear in a given cluster of cases more often, relative to the rate at which those phrases appear in writings more generally? To answer these questions is to map, in detail, a body of decisional law. …

Narcocultura As Cultural Capital For Latinx Youth Identity Work: An Online Ethnography, Emiliano Villarreal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Why would young Latinxs want to be, talk, look, and act like narcos? This work analyzes the ways in which narcocultura has become an important source of cultural capital for many Latinxs. Narcocultura is the assemblage of music, video, television, and other forms of cultural production that feature figures of transnational narcotrafficking as central protagonists of their narratives. Based on a yearlong online ethnography, I examine the ways in which Latinx Facebook users appropriate and recontextualize narcocultura in their identity work through the lenses of LatCrit theory, critical discourse analysis, and personal lived experiences, which provided the departing point for …

The Global Dominance Of European Competition Law Over American Antitrust Law, Anu Bradford, Adam S. Chilton, Katerina Linos, Alex Weaver

Faculty Scholarship

The world’s biggest consumer markets – the European Union and the United States – have adopted different approaches to regulating competition. This has not only put the EU and US at odds in high-profile investigations of anticompetitive conduct, but also made them race to spread their regulatory models. Using a novel dataset of competition statutes, we investigate this race to influence the world’s regulatory landscape and find that the EU’s competition laws have been more widely emulated than the US’s competition laws. We then argue that both “push” and “pull” factors explain the appeal of the EU’s competition regime: the …

“It’S Making Me A Better Teacher.” Transforming Latinx Teacher Candidates Clinical Field Experiences In A Hispanic Serving Institution, Sandra I. Musanti, Alma D. Rodríguez, Patricia Alvarez Mchatton

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This manuscript explores the outcomes of a university-district partnership that provides Latinx teacher candidates with a yearlong clinical experience as the culmination of their teacher preparation. Qualitative data collected as part of a mixed methods study were analyzed to determine how Latinx teacher candidates and cooperating teachers understand learning to teach, and perceptions of the partnership. Results show an emphasis on mastering routines, learning to teach through observation, and reciprocal growth derived from their mentoring relationship. Salient is the tendency to homogenize Latinx students and a reductionist vision of diversity. The authors explore the positionality of culture and language in …

Teacher Candidate Immersion Into Bilingual/ Dual Language Classrooms In Largest Urban District In Texas, Bobbette M. Morgan, Criselda Garcia, John Jauregui

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

Prevailing teacher education reform initiatives call for preservice preparation to be "clinically rich" shifting the primary locus, and therefore location, of learning from within university walls to schools (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010; New York State Department of Education, 2011; U. S. Department of Education, 2009, 2011). In an effort of the largest school district in Texas to recruit our bilingual preservice teachers and for us to expose our students from the Rio Grande Valley to a highly populated urban setting, our students are invited to spend one week with host families and shadow an experienced teacher …

Determinants Of Self-Efficacy Among Individuals Who Are Hard-Of-Hearing, Sergio Cuevas, Roy K. Chen, Chia Vang, Shawn P. Saladin

School of Rehabilitation Services & Counseling Faculty Publications

Self-efficacy plays an important role in their lives of the estimated 48 million Americans who report having some degree of hearing impairment, helping them navigate through a myriad of communication challenges. The purpose of the present study was to assess the levels of self-efficacy in this disability group by examining an array of social, psychological, spiritual, disability, and demographic variables. A total of 114 persons who identified as hard-of-hearing took part in an online survey. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to answer the research question. The proposed regression model explained 24.7% of variance in self-efficacy among individuals who …

Angels And Sub-Divine Supernatural Beings: Their Characteristics, Function, And Relationship To God And Humanity In Deuteronomy-Kings, Joni Amanda Mcguire-Moushon

Dissertations

This research analyzes selected passages in Deuteronomy-Kings in order to determine the characteristics and roles of supernatural sub-divine beings within these books. Then this data is compared with the angelology of the Second Temple period in order to identify the similarities and the extent of the differences between them.

Deuteronomy contains references to supernatural sub-divine beings, such as “demons” and “holy one(s)”. While Deuteronomy affirms the existence of sub-divine beings, it forbids the Israelites to worship them. In the books of Joshua and Judges, there is awareness of supernatural beings and their roles as warriors, messengers, and tormentors. However, in …

Islam, Christianity, Traditional Religions And Power Politics In Northern Nigeria Since Pre-Islamic Period, Emmanuel M. Abar

Dissertations

Problem

Currently in Northern Nigeria, religious interaction among the three major religious traditions, Islam, Christianity, and African Traditional Religion, is marred by violent religious conflicts. Also, competing concepts of religious legitimacy, which appeal to the historical heritage of Nigeria, are often used to validate and justify the violation of religious freedom. Does the current state of religious interaction among the various religious groups reflect the true heritage of religious interaction in Northern Nigeria? Or is it possible that the history of the interaction between African Traditional Religions, Islam, and Christianity in the past might actually be a heritage that points …

“The Lions Of Tomorrow”: A News Value Analysis Of Child Images In Jihadi Magazines, Amy Louise Watkin, Seán Looney

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Academic Literacies Twenty Years On: A Community-Sourced Literature Review, J Hilsdon, C Malone, A Syska

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

In 1998, the paper ‘Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach’ by Mary Lea and Brian Street reinvigorated debate concerning ‘what it means to be academically literate’ (1998, p.158). It proposed a new way of examining how students learn at university and introduced the term ‘academic literacies’. Subsequently, a body of literature has emerged reflecting the significant theoretical and practical impact Lea and Street’s paper has had on a range of academic and professional fields. This literature review covers articles selected by colleagues in our professional communities of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE), BALEAP …

American Cultural Symbolism Of Rage And Resistance In Collective Trauma: Racially-Influenced Political Myths, Counter-Myths, Projective Identification, And The Evocation Of Transcendent Humanity, Nahanni Freeman

Faculty Publications - Psychology Department

Sociopolitical conflicts in America reveal the latent microcosms of communities, linguistic forms, bodies, and shared cultural narratives, which are driven by polarities and aggression. Considerable political alterity has arisen, promoting dehumanization, prejudice, sexism, and collective trauma as factions war over counter myths that create opposing American stories, including the debate over the role of science, the fusion of religion with politics and material gain, and the nature of truth. Individual psychic and projective events are also represented in sociopolitical events, creating aliens of external communities, promoting objectifying language, and enlisting alienation and dissonance within the self. These darker forces represent …

Foraging Performance, Prosociality, And Kin Presence Do Not Predict Lifetime Reproductive Success In Batek Hunter-Gatherers, Thomas S. Kraft, Vivek V. Venkataraman, Ivan Tacey, Nathaniel J. Dominy, Kirk M. Endicott

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Widening Gyre: A Poetics Of Ocean Plastics, Mandy Bloomfield

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

By focusing on contemporary experimental poetry that engages with ocean plastics, this essay explores the capacity of ecopoetics to make distinctive interventions in the environmental humanities, and in particular the blue humanities. It examines work by Stephen Collis, Adam Dickinson, and Evelyn Reilly to show how poetry’s forms of juxtaposition, linkage, linguistic porosity, indeterminacy, and nonnarrative temporalities suggest fertile modes of cultural engagement with the more-than-human oceans. This poetry cultivates amplified modes of attention to more-than-human scales of space, time, agency, and modes of relation, and it performs highly material ways of understanding historical, economic, and aesthetic forces affecting the …

Constitutional Reform In Japan, Nobuhisa Ishizuka

Faculty Scholarship

Over seventy years ago it would have seemed inconceivable in the aftermath of a calamitous war that a complete reorientation of Japan into a pacifist society, modeled on Western principles of individual rights and democracy, would succeed in upending a deeply entrenched political order with roots dating back centuries.

The post-war Japanese constitution lies at the heart of this transformation. Drafted, negotiated and promulgated a mere fourteen months after Japan's formal surrender, it has remained a model of stability amidst transformational changes in the domestic and international political landscape. In the seventy-plus years since its adoption, it has not been …

Law's Halo And The Moral Machine, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

How will we assess the morality of decisions made by artificial intelli­gence – and will our judgments be swayed by what the law says? Focusing on a moral dilemma in which a driverless car chooses to sacrifice its passenger to save more people, this study offers evidence that our moral intuitions can be influenced by the presence of the law.

The Interplay Of Racial Identity Attitude And Religious Orientation On The Social Integration Experiences Of Black African College Students And African American College Students Attending Predominantly White Institutions In The United States, Christina Miattamengie Johnson

Dissertations

Problem

Not much attention has been devoted to the academic experiences of Black African college students, the latter being typically categorized with those of African Americans (Kim, 2014). While research has effectively documented the social challenges that African American college students experience at (Predominantly White Institutions (PWI). much less research has been conducted on the social experiences of subcategories within the Black population, specifically, Black Africans. Though researchers have speculated on the potential differences between the social integration experiences of Black Africans and African American college students as these relate to religious orientation and racial identity attitude, no empirical studies …

The Experience Of Pregnant Women In Remission From Anorexia Nervosa, Meghan Butcher

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This qualitative study explored the subjective experience of pregnant women in remission from Anorexia Nervosa (AN). This subject matter is of importance due to the high relapse rates of AN, the ability for women to become pregnant while in remission from AN, the significant physical and emotional tolls of pregnancy, and the known dangers of AN behaviors during pregnancy. Prior to this study, minimal research had been conducted pertaining to the experience of women who became pregnant while in remission from AN. This study utilized Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to inform interpretation of narrative responses collected through semi-structured interviews. Participants …

Polyamorous Millenials In Therapy: Interpreting Experiences To Inform Care, Rebecca Calhoun-Shepard

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Polyamory (poly) refers to a way of loving involving multiple concurrent romantic relationships. It has been suggested that consensual non-monogamies are becoming increasingly visible, particularly in the millennial generation. This warrants exploration of cultural considerations and the unique needs of this population to inform care and minimize potential for harm. The present study used interpretative analysis to explore the phenomenon of polyamorous millennials in therapy as described across semi-structured interviews with therapists and poly clients. Three primary themes emerged from aggregate data, including Idiographic Experiences in Therapy, Therapy with Polyamorous Millennials, and information about Polyamory and Millennials beyond a therapy …

Striving For Credibility In The Face Of Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory Study Of Extreme Hardship Immigration Psychological Evaluations, Susan M. Burke

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Psychological evaluations are frequently used in extreme hardship immigration cases in the United States. These evaluations are complex; they are inherently ambiguous, and they require extensive training and specialized knowledge. General guidance for mental health professionals is available from professional organizations, the federal government, and articles in the legal and mental health literature. However, there is a lack of detailed guidance, best practices, training, and supervision so many evaluators learn on their own. Unfortunately, this has resulted in assessment processes and evaluation reports that vary widely in terms of professionalism and quality which negatively impacts the vulnerable families seeking these …