Digital Commons Network^™

Coming To America For The Good Of A Deaf Child: The Case Of Joy, Angi Stone-Macdonald

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publication Series

Families of children with disabilities must make difficult choices about providing health and educational services that their children need and finding an environment where they can be socially accepted. In this study, parents from Kenya whose daughter is deaf weigh their desire to provide the best life for her against their desire to use their professional expertise to help people in Kenya. This article examines the role of cultural beliefs about disability in this family's experience. It highlights issues that deserve further research to learn more about how to meet immigrants' needs in special education, especially immigrant families from African …

Institutionalized Violence In The History Of Mind/Body Dualism And The Contemporary Reality Of Slavery And Torture: Reflections On Elaine Scarry And The Body In Pain, Wendy Lynne Lee

International Dialogue

Wendy Lynne Lee argues that the dualistic impulse Bibi Bakare-Yusef identifies in Elaine Scarry’s analysis of the experience of pain has its roots at least as far back as Aristotle’s hylomorphism, and that a clear view of contemporary structural inequality requires a grasp of how “mind” and “body” continue to inform even anti-dualist social theory. Lee argues that insofar as this impulse informs Scarry’s The Body in Pain, it distorts Scarry’s analysis of the experience of pain in ways that elide important aspects of that experience. Understanding the nature of this distortion, however, sheds light on some forms of violence …

Using Bourdieu To Answer Spivak: On The Study Of Historical Subaltern Religious Practices, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her 1988 publication “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” famously challenges the ability of scholars—educated and operating within the dominating power structures of oftentimes European colonizing transnational political and religious movements—to ever grasp subaltern religion. This skepticism logically extends to the work of historians investigating the obscured religious traditions of past cultures that have been overlooked, overwhelmed, and suppressed. In this paper, I lay out a restrained strategy inspired in part by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and based upon my own historical work for circumventing some forms of historical blindness that conceal subaltern pasts. In conclusion, a …

Revolution And War In Contemporary Ukraine: The Challenge Of Change, Emma Mateo

International Dialogue

This November marks six years since Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests. Sometimes referred to as the “Revolution of Dignity,” the events of winter 2013–14 had far-reaching consequences not only for Ukraine’s government and Ukrainian national identity, but also for global geopolitics. After the corrupt Yanukovych government fell, Putin’s Russia annexed Crimea and became involved in separatist conflict in Ukraine’s eastern regions, under the premise of “protecting Russian speakers.” This edited volume investigates the events of 2013–14 and their impact on culture, politics, society and identities.

Political Realism In Apocalyptic Times, Gonzalo Bustamante Kuschel

International Dialogue

Alison McQueen’s book is a significant contribution to political theory and to the use of the history of political thought as a source of categories for thinking about current problems. Her central thesis revolves around three assumptions. First, the existence of “political realism” understood as a particular approach to evaluating politics—characterized by a defense of its own autonomy,1 political agonism,2 the rejection of both utopia and moralization in politics, and the preeminence of order and stability over any other criterion, including justice, in political decisions (10–12). This definition of “political realism” allows the author to group other writers who, though …

Contractual Communication, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

In Pseudo-Contract and Shared Meaning Analysis, Professors Robin Bradley Kar and Margaret Jane Radin develop an important theory of the nature of contract that draws on Paul Grice’s influential theory of meaning. That theory has significant implications for contract doctrine, in particular for questions about the enforceability of so-called “contracts of adhesion” in particular and for “boilerplate” in general. But at the most fundamental level, Kar and Radin’s work is about the nature of contractual communication. They answer the question, “How do contracts mean?,” by proposing a theoretical structure, which they name “Shared Meaning Analysis.” This Essay focuses on …

Investigating How Play Is Used To Develop Oral Language In A Pre- Primary School In Taita Taveta County, Edita Wanyika Mghendi

Master of Education

Children have been known to have a natural desire for play. Curriculum designers have borrowed this idea and they have recommended learning of children through play. Oral language development is paramount in the early childhood curriculum stage. Scholars advocate the use of play in the development of oral language for young children. This is because play stimulates children to use oral language. It is in this pursuit that I developed an interest to learn how play is used to develop oral language in a pre-primary school in Taita Taveta County. The study adopted a qualitative case study design. Data was …

The Effects Of Sheng On The Acquisition Of Speaking And Writing Skills Of English Language. A Case Study Of A Secondary School In Kenya, Cecilia Nangeni Bilishi

Master of Education

Sheng as a language of the youth is an indication of societal growth and group identity; on the other hand, for educators and scholars, they are of the opinion that its spread has negative effects on the students in Kenyan schools. Since Sheng is dominantly spoken by the youth, it influences the acquisition of other languages. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of the effects of Sheng on the acquisition of speaking and writing skills of English in Machakos County. Secondary School students were the target of the study, they are the speakers mostly affected by …

To Investigate Approaches Teachers Utilize In Supporting Kiswahili Composition Writing In Secondary Schools: A Case Study Of Taita Taveta County., Mary Mghoi Mwandashi

Master of Education

Writing is one of the four skills in language learning which helps students to develop a set of intellectual and motivational plans. In the second language, learning how to write requires additional ability and time. This means that teachers have to motivate students to develop good writing skills by providing instruction in the writing process. Literature shows that most native speakers find it difficult to learn writing skills and therefore for second language learners it can be harder. In Kenya Kiswahili is a second language to many and therefore students have to be scaffolded in composition writing using relevant approaches …

Using Discussion As A Teaching Technique To Improve Learners Oral Communication Skills In English Language Lessons: A Case Of A Rural Public School In Homa Bay County, Kenya, Linet Adhiambo Agele

Master of Education

This qualitative research study focused on the use of discussion as a teaching pedagogy to improve learners‟ oral communication in the elementary English language classrooms. The data was gathered from interviews with teachers and learners, lesson observations, various documents‟ analysis, oral tests and general observations and conversations. The findings indicated teachers‟ use of traditional methods of teaching, lack of immersion environment together with inadequate use of discussion, hindered the development of learners‟ oral communication skills in English. Other negative factors that emerged from the study were a lot of syllabus content and the use of written exercises in the English …

Scoring Morphology In Measures Of Spelling And Written Morphological Awareness: A Scoping Review, Victor A. Lugo, Kimberly A. Murphy, Emily Diehm

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Experiencing Voice-Activated Artificial Intelligence Assistants In The Home: A Phenomenological Approach, Valerie K. Jones

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Voice-controlled artificial intelligence (AI) assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant, serve as the gateway to the Internet of Things and connected home, executing the commands of its users, providing information, entertainment, utility, and convenience while enabling consumers to bypass the advertising they would typically see on a screen. This “screen-less” communication presents significant challenges for brands used to “pushing” messages to audiences in exchange for the content they seek. It also raises questions about data collection, usage, and privacy. Brands need to understand how and why audiences engage with AI assistants, as well as the risks with these …

Rearing The Collective: The Evolution Of Social Values And Practices In Soviet Schools, 1953–1968, Svetlana Rasmussen

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the functioning of the Soviet school system and how the generation of Soviet children born from 1945 to 1952 internalized Soviet ideology in the school setting. The study argues that the knowledge, skill sets, and social networks Soviet schools provided the postwar generation were forged in the school collectives in the complex negotiation of suretyship relationships. Ideological and administrative agendas of the regional, city and district departments of education forced teachers and students to establish and maintain the relationships of poruka or mutual responsibility for the obligation imposed from above.

The study focuses on the administrative, teaching, …

Participatory Sensing-Based Geospatial Localization Of Distant Objects For Disaster Preparedness In Urban Built Environments, Hongjo Kim, Youngjib Ham

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Faculty Publications

Although the benefit of participatory sensing for collecting local data over large areas has long been recognized, it has not been widely used for various applications such as disaster preparation due to a lack of geospatial localization capability with respect to a distant object. In such applications, objects of interest need to be ro- bustly localized and documented for supporting data-driven decision-making in site inspection and resource mobilization. However, participatory sensing is inappropriate to localize a distant object due to the absence of ranging sensors in citizens' mobile devices; thus, the localization accuracy varies to a large extent. To address …

The Philosophy Of Dance, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This encyclopedia entry surveys the field of philosophy of dance both within and beyond Western philosophical aesthetics.

Vireo-Eurecom @ Trecvid 2019: Ad-Hoc Video Search (Avs), Phuong Anh Nguyen, Jiaxin Wu, Chong-Wah Ngo, Francis Danny, Benoit Huet

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we describe the systems developed for Ad-hoc Video Search (AVS) task at TRECVID 2019[1] and the achieved results.

Eurasian And Eastern European Evangelicals: Tested Over Two Centuries, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The oppression of evangelicals has been a persistent legacy, but it has not applied to all of them. Therefore, we must begin by defining evangelicals and oppression. A further query to pursue is: what intensity of oppression has permitted creative survival?

Post-Soviet Transformation For Evangelicals, 1991-2018: Deepening Causes For Discord, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

During the great transformation between 1989 and 1991, the majority of American journalists were completely surprised by the transformations of 1989 in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the USSR in 1991, since it contradicted their stereotypes so profoundly. Several developments within the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe turned out to be signposts for those with the eyes to see. Literary figures and philosophers circulating their thinking in samizdat form, or through the emergence of dissenting movements, pointed to the disillusionment with the grand socialist promises. Solzhenitsyn had already drawn attention in his Nobel speech to the power of truth …

Enhancing Clinical Concept Extraction With Contextual Embeddings, Yuqi Si, Jingqi Wang, Hua Xu, Kirk Roberts

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

OBJECTIVE: Neural network-based representations ("embeddings") have dramatically advanced natural language processing (NLP) tasks, including clinical NLP tasks such as concept extraction. Recently, however, more advanced embedding methods and representations (eg, ELMo, BERT) have further pushed the state of the art in NLP, yet there are no common best practices for how to integrate these representations into clinical tasks. The purpose of this study, then, is to explore the space of possible options in utilizing these new models for clinical concept extraction, including comparing these to traditional word embedding methods (word2vec, GloVe, fastText).

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Both off-the-shelf, open-domain embeddings and …

Building The Nest: How Native English Speaking Teachers (Nests) In The Tefl Field Develop Intercultural Competence, Emily S. Kraus

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The role of an English foreign language teacher requires expertise in the English language and pedagogical skills to make the learning process approachable for a variety of students. There are certain characteristics that make a person ostensibly suitable for the role such as patience, intelligence, trustworthiness and creativity. However, the development of teachers is often shaped by their certification preparation, experiences in the field of education and the lessons they learn from their students. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine how native English speaking teachers (NESTs) in Costa Rica teaching English as a foreign language develop …

Investigating The Impact Of Video Gaming On Children’S Magical Thinking In Early Childhood, Rafi Antar

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

In our present time, young children are exposed to various forms of electronic media, in particular video games. Several studies have discussed the impact of video games on children’s behavior, and brain development; however, almost none have framed this impact in the context of magical thinking. By using a qualitative narrative inquiry approach and a grounded theory approach, this dissertation aimed at discussing the meaning three children (ages 4 and 5) made after playing a video game called Super Mario bros. This study answered two questions: (1) how is children’s thought processes related to the notion of reality (i.e., understanding …

A Mixed-Methods Study Of Applying Andragogical Practices To An Online Tesol Teacher Training Course At A Midwestern University, Daisy Anne Mary Skelly

Dissertations

Preservice teachers needed to be prepared to teach culturally and linguistically diverse learners, because English learners continued to enroll in new geographic areas. In response to the reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, requirements for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students were added to teacher certification programs at the state level. Universities offering teacher certification programs addressed new program requirements in different ways, including adding competencies to existing courses or creating new courses. The purpose of this mixedmethods study was to investigate the knowledge, pedagogical skill, and self-efficacy levels of preservice teachers and their perceptions of English …

Back Matter

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Eurecom At Trecvid Avs 2019, Danny Francis, Phuong Anh Nguyen, Benoit Huet, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This notebook reports the model and results of the EURECOM runs at TRECVID AVS 2019.

Power, Process, And Automated Decision-Making, Ari Ezra Waldman

Fordham Law Review

Automated decision-making systems based on “big data”–powered algorithms and machine learning are just as prone to mistakes, biases, and arbitrariness as their human counterparts. The result is a technologically driven decision-making process that seems to defy interrogation, analysis, and accountability and, therefore, undermines due process.

Exposures At Day Labor Corners: Using Existing Georeferenced Data To Describe Features Of Urban Environments, Maria Eugenia Fernández-Esquer, Amy E Hughes, Sandi L Pruitt

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

PURPOSE: Latino day laborers are male immigrants from mainly Mexico and Central America who congregate at corners, that is, informal hiring sites, to solicit short-term employment. Studies describing the occupational environment of Latino day laborers traditionally measure jobsite exposures, not corner exposures. We sought to elucidate exposures at corners by describing their demographic, socioeconomic, occupational, business, built, and physical environmental characteristics and by comparing corner characteristics with other locations in a large urban county in Texas.

METHODS: We used multiple publicly available data sets from the U.S. Census, local tax authority, Google's Nearby Places Application Programming Interface, and Environmental Protection …

Fourth Amendment Textualism, Jeffrey Bellin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable searches" is one of the most storied constitutional commands. Yet after decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence, a coherent definition of the term "search" remains surprisingly elusive. Even the justices know they have a problem. Recent opinions only halfheartedly apply the controlling "reasonable expectation of privacy" test and its wildly unpopular cousin, "third-party doctrine," with a few justices in open revolt. These fissures hint at the Court's openness to a new approach. Unfortunately, no viable alternatives appear on the horizon. The justices themselves offer little in the way of a replacement. And scholars' proposals exhibit …

Defining Translinguality, Bruce Horner, Sara P. Alvarez

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This article reviews the history of conflicting meanings for translinguality in composition studies, locating that history in the context of other competing terms for language difference with which translinguality is sometimes affiliated and competes, and conflicting definitions of these, and in the context of perceived changes to global communication technologies and migration patterns. It argues for approaching translinguality and the confusion surrounding it as evidence of an epistemological break and explains confusions as a response to the challenges such a break poses. It demonstrates the residual operation of monolingualist notions of language in arguments for “code-meshing,” “plurilinguality,” and “translanguaging” and …

What Is Clinician Presence? A Qualitative Interview Study Comparing Physician And Non-Physician Insights About Practices Of Human Connection, Cati Brown-Johnson, Rachel Schwartz, Amrapali Maitra, Marie Haverfield, Aaron Tierney, Jonathan Shaw, Dani Zionts, Nadia Safaeinili, Sonoo Thadaney Israni, Abraham Verghese, Donna Zulman

Faculty Publications

Objective We sought to investigate the concept and practices of ‘clinician presence’, exploring how physicians and professionals create connection, engage in interpersonal interaction, and build trust with individuals across different circumstances and contexts.Design In 2017–2018, we conducted qualitative semistructured interviews with 10 physicians and 30 non-medical professionals from the fields of protective services, business, management, education, art/design/entertainment, social services, and legal/personal services.Setting Physicians were recruited from primary care clinics in an academic medical centre, a Veterans Affairs clinic, and a federally qualified health centre.Participants Participants were 55% men and 45% women; 40% were non-white.Results Qualitative analyses yielded a definition of …

Legislating Morality: Moral Theory And Turpitudinous Crimes In Immigration Jurisprudence, Abel Rodríguez, Jennifer A. Bulcock

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Congress could have framed the country’s immigration policies in any number of ways. In significant part, it opted to frame them in moral terms. The crime involving moral turpitude is among the most pervasive and pernicious classifications in immigration law. In the Immigration and Nationality Act, it is virtually ubiquitous, appearing everywhere from the deportability and mandatory detention grounds to the inadmissibility and naturalization grounds. In effect, it acts as a gatekeeper for those who wish to enter and remain in the country, obtain lawful permanent residence, travel abroad after admission, or become United States citizens. With limited exceptions, noncitizens …