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It’S /Tʃuzdeɪ/, Innit?: Yod Coalescence In British English, Jenna Rose Rees-White

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research on British English (BE) has shown that variation in dialects stems from both regional and social differences (Hughes & Trudgill, 1979; Kwon, 2006; Glain, 2012; and others). For instance, if a speaker identifies as middle- to upper-class in the UK, they are more likely to use RP (Received Pronunciation) than a speaker who identifies with a lower-class social status. This, and other variables, accounts for variability among regionally similar but phonologically different British dialects.

This thesis analyzes the use of Yod Coalescence (YC), a phonological phenomenon that focuses on C-/ju/ sequences and their tendencies to drop yod and …

“Where Beauty And Anguish Had Contended”: Eden, Gender, And Creativity In Melville’S Pierre, Kersey Reynolds

Theses and Dissertations

Much critical interest regarding incest in Pierre has been focused horizontally on the Glendinning family tree, in terms of the brother-sister relationship forged between Pierre Glendinning and Isabel Banford. But this thesis evaluates incest within Melville’s scheme of creativity and gender in the novel. As Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have established, to author a text is to become owner of its subjects—a father of one’s “brain-children” (Gilbert and Gubar 7). So, as Pierre writes Isabel into the Glendinning name, the incestuous relationship between Pierre and Isabel may be viewed through the lens of a father-daughter dynamic between the …

Exploring Neurocognitive Processes That Underlie Reading Performance In Children: A Foundational Study, Ayan Mitra

Theses and Dissertations

With advancement in brain research, neuroscience researchers have collectively informed our understanding of reading-related processes. Despite an extensive body of literature, many educators are not aware of specific neuroimaging findings related to phonological processing and word reading. Therefore, the study builds on this body of research by exploring the connection between the brain and reading scores. Quantitative EEG and standardized academic achievement analyses were performed on 60 school-aged children. Intrahemispheric coherence analysis at rest were conducted across the sample of participants and several coherence networks were extracted and compared to standardized reading achievement scores. Specifically, networks that included Brodmann area …

A Historical Analysis Of U.S.-Based Study Abroad Program Providers, Chrissie Faupel

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to analyze the emergence and development of study abroad program providers as a distinct model of study abroad program through archival research and interviews. This particular focus will allow scholars and international educators to understand how program providers emerged, evolved, and responded to the changing nature of education abroad. The combination lock theory and institutional theory provide a lens through which we can reconstruct the historical underpinnings of study abroad program providers. There is scant research on the historical aspects of the development of program providers. In this way, this research offers scholarly significance. …

Politics Of Belonging: Identity, Integration, And Spatial Practices Of Algerian Immigrants And Their Descendants In Paris, France, Elizabeth Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Using a geographic framework, this dissertation explores how Algerian immigrants and their descendants perform identity and negotiate belonging in French society. Bringing together critical theorizations of race, identity, space, and place, this work investigates what it means to be a racialized minority in a postcolonial context and to learn and experience the boundaries of ‘Frenchness.’ It is based on the narratives of Algerian immigrants who have migrated to Paris, France, and their French-born children. The empirical evidence of the case studies highlights the myriad ways in which Algerian immigrants and their descendants encounter and structure their interactions with French society, …

Let’S Talk About It: Bridging The Gap Between Diverse Students And Their White Teachers, Beth Dean Boring Shoff

Theses and Dissertations

The achievement gap is a notorious construct of 21st-century schools and refers to the achievement of marginalized groups as compared to their White counterparts. This qualitative action research studied this phenomenon in a small, suburban school district experiencing shifting demographics by analyzing educators’ perceptions and attitudes for multicultural education and culture-centered themes. Survey responses and interview data were coded using Banks’s five dimensions of multicultural education (content integration, knowledge construction, equity pedagogy, prejudice reduction, and empowering school culture) to frame professional learning opportunities for White, middle-class educators. Additionally, emergent themes were identified that impact the achievement gap in this setting: …

Destabilizing The Ivory Tower: An Autoethnography, Chelsea Mcfadden

Theses and Dissertations

The education system of the western world is a tool of hegemony used to command replication of an ontology rooted in oppression. Teachers interested in combating oppression must work toward decolonizing their praxis, a nuanced task accomplished with the help of critical inquiry done through autoethnography. I seek to synthesize literature that validates and confirms autoethnography as a mechanism of critical inquiry. I will explore the following research questions: How does autoethnography function as a tool of decolonization? Are there ways in which it reifies colonizing practices? How might autoethnography be used in the classroom to encourage nontraditional discourse? Themes …

“Hey, I’Ve Got This Kid”: A Study Of Multimodal Semiotics In Adapted Physical Education Strategies, Nancy Morrow Crowe

Theses and Dissertations

General education physical education (GPE) teachers currently face difficulties in providing for the special needs of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in inclusion GPE classes. In addition, there is currently no best practice in how to present information on adapted physical education (APE ) strategies to GPE teachers effectively. This study aims to address the problem of practice through a multimodal semiotic approach in offering GPE teachers APE strategies to implement in their inclusion classes. Specially, the study investigates three GPE teachers as they participate in multimodal semiotics and employ APE strategies in inclusion classes. Three GPE teachers were …

Southern United States English As A Rhetorical Device In The Field Of Marketing: A Study And Implications For Business Writing Pedagogy, Megan Jacklynn Busch

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation project, I examine how professionals in the South use their Southern United States English (SUSE) to communicate in business situations. My goals are to (1) understand how regional language variety rhetorically shapes writtenprofessional communication and (2) establish a pedagogical framework for business writing that attunes to the nuances of language variation in the workplace. I hypothesize that speakers of SUSE implement regional dialects to form interpersonal business connections and build ethos and that SUSE has a significant rhetorical role to place in professional communications. To test this hypothesis, I develop a hybrid method of interviewing, discourse analysis, …

Deep Learning Based Models For Classification From Natural Language Processing To Computer Vision, Xianshan Qu

Theses and Dissertations

With the availability of large scale data sets, researchers in many different areas such as natural language processing, computer vision, recommender systems have started making use of deep learning models and have achieved great progress in recent years. In this dissertation, we study three important classification problems based on deep learning models.

First, with the fast growth of e-commerce, more people choose to purchase products online and browse reviews before making decisions. It is essential to build a model to identify helpful reviews automatically. Our work is inspired by the observation that a customer's expectation of a review can be …

A Stylistic Analysis Of Edvard Grieg’S Slåtter, Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72, Zhiyuan He

Theses and Dissertations

Slåtter, Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72 is a composition for solo piano by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). This set is one of his greatest contributions to piano literature, and shows his attempt to bring the traditional folk music to the rest of the world. The object of this study is to aid musicians toward a better understanding of Slåtter through a stylistic analysis of the work. The study includes historical information about the composer and his connection with nationalism in Northern Europe, and conveys how Slåtter can be considered a culminating work representing traditional Norwegian style characteristics.

The document …

Foxy Ladies And Badass Super Agents: Legacies Of 1970s Blaxploitation Spy And Detective Heroines, Carlie Nicole Todd

Theses and Dissertations

The presentation of Black femininity in Blaxploitation spy and detective films like Cleopatra Jones (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), and Get Christie Love! (1974) – depicting powerful, independent, and multidimensional characters – was a sharp departure from the derogatory images of African American women in film prior. These films also included some of the first Black spy and detective film heroines – Foxy Brown, Cleo Jones, and Christie Love – that portrayed a “serious” female detective or government agent as the main protagonist and center of the film’s action. These Blaxploitation heroines were unique in how their characters departed from prior …

The Shape Of The Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Testing The Cognate Continuum, Danielle Kristine Fahey

Theses and Dissertations

Items in the mental lexicon have three storage and processing strata, the concept, lemma, and lexeme, which equate to semantic, syntactic and phonological information. Lexical items relate to each other at each stratum. Bilingual lexicons, which contain items from all languages, may contain cognates, items sharing concepts and with overlapping lexemes. Because cognates likely relate at the lemma level also, this research proposed the Cognate Continuum, a categorization of cognates and noncognates in the bilingual mental lexicon. The Cognate Continuum includes three sets of cognates:

(i) true cognates have the closest phonology and syntax.

(ii) lemma cognates have close syntax …

Examining College-Level Ells’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs And Goal Orientation, Hong Shi

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Theoretical Perspectives On International Student Identity, Vander Tavares

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Tensions, Transformations And Travel: Comparative Narratives Of ‘Becoming’ A Cosmopolitan Educator Through An Overseas Study Tour In Singapore, Hannah Soong, David Caldwell

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Guided Reading Adaptations For Multilingual Learners, Ashley Morlock

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Elementary educators continue to face the challenge of providing an equitable education for all students. As more multilingual students are seated in the classroom, the challenge to support literacy and language development becomes increasingly important. This capstone seeks to answer the question: How can elementary educators improve guided reading instruction, and what adaptations support multilingual learners? The research concludes that guided reading modifications should be made through the additive approach to language, translanguaging, teacher and student participation, corrective feedback, and assessment. Using these modifications during guided reading can have many positive benefits on a student’s academic achievement and linguistic identity.

Code-Switching In The Classroom, Rebecca Maki

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research has shown that code-switching can aid in students’ English learning and help them feel as if their first language (L1) and its culture are valuable; however, many teachers who are not educated in English Language Learner (ELL) best practices can be hesitant to include code-switching in their lessons and might even actively discourage it. The question addressed in this project is: how can code-switching be used in the mainstream high school classroom taught by monolingual teachers to enhance learning for ELL students in the areas of writing fluency and reading comprehension? The paper explores the literature that supports code-switching …

Research Based Strategies In Reading And Writing For Content Area Teachers: A Website To Support Growth In Academic Language, Kathryn Schmidbauer

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The population of English language learners in general education classrooms is growing every year and teachers are finding that they need strategies to support these learners in reading and writing along with helping them adapt to school in another culture. Without classroom support, it becomes more difficult for these students to acquire the academic language needed to be successful and the opportunity gap continues to widen. This website designed for this project focuses on research based reading and writing strategies for content area teachers at the secondary level, specifically grades six through 12. Strategies for skills such as comprehension, vocabulary …

The Advantages Of Existing English-Medium Models In Meeting The Linguistic Needs Of Elementary Ell Students, Molly Neumann

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research on an equitable education for English Language Learner (ELL) students shows that ELLs underperform on standardized and grade-level assessments as compared to their non-ELL peers. This specific achievement gap persists when ELLs are taught and assessed in only English— a language they are not yet fully proficient in. In order to close this achievement gap, ELL students should be taught content and language simultaneously by teachers who are all experienced in using English language development strategies, while valuing multilingualism as an asset to learning. English-medium schools attempt to meet this goal through the English Language Development (ELD) program models …

Creating An Esl Curriculum In A Type C International School In China, Song Yang

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The research question for this capstone project was: what does an ESL curriculum look like in a Type C Chinese international school and how will it reflect the cultural and linguistic needs of its students? The Type C international school is a relatively new kind of school that has become more common in the last few years that caters to affluent families who want their children to gain a Western curriculum and at the same time still maintain their national curriculum. Research on Type C international schools is scarce, but Bala Kumaravadivelu’s postmethod theory would insist that this author’s experience …

Engaging Secondary School Students In The Process Of Writing With Expressivist Pedagogy, Alla Boulos

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The composition pedagogy of expressivism, which grew out of process theory in the 1960s has been influencing academia’s approach to teaching writing for several decades. The major characteristics of this pedagogy first outlined by its most prominent champion Peter Elbow include the focus on the process rather than the product of writing, the personalization of academic writing with inclusion of personal experiences and pronouns, the lack of textbooks and prescriptive atmosphere, the use of low stakes writing assignments like freewriting and journaling, and the prevalent use of formative assessment techniques such as writing workshops, peer responses, and portfolios. Although expressivism …

How To Be An Antiracist Educator, Veronica Myers

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Every educator should be antiracist. Racism, both overt and inadvertent, in the classroom leads to students entering the school to prison pipeline, the widening of the opportunity gap, and lack of support for English language learners. This capstone project works to answer the research question: How can educators be antiracist and incorporate antiracist practices into teaching elementary students? Antiracist strategies in the classroom include developing strong and positive relationships with all students, using culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom, and providing ESL students with language support. This project also provides educators with the opportunity to engage in a series of …

Building Collective Ownership In The School Community Through Authentic Engagement Of Latino Families And Students: A Professional Development For School, Molly Barajas

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research has shown that students who have parents that are involved in their education have higher school attendance, school participation and graduation rates. The professional development series developed for this project focuses on the most effective methods teachers and support staff can utilize to authentically engage Latino families in their child's education. In the past, teachers and support staff have expressed frustration at what they perceive as lack of participation in school activities by English Language Learner families. This project discusses traditional and non traditional methods for authentically engaging Latino parents in their children’s education. These methods first require staff …

Implementing Phenomenon Based Learning Into English Language Development Curriculum, Makenzie Johnson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Finland has one of the most successful education systems in the world, and a significant reason behind that is their utilization of Phenomenon-Based Learning. Students work together to solve real-world problems in project-based learning units, while using language to problem solve alongside their peers. This capstone answers the question, How can a professional development workshop be created that teaches educators in the United States how to build an English Language Development curriculum that is centered around PhenoBL and language domain incorporation while being as culturally inclusive and responsive as possible? Collectively, these pillars of instruction promote a learning environment that …

Raising The Awareness Of Somali Families: The Positive Impact Of Dual Language Education On Student Success, Khaleef Warsame

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Studies have found that dual language education is powerful for all learners and particularly essential for the success of first- and second-generation immigrant learners in the United States. The learning model enhances students’ academic achievement, school participation, and healthy identity development. Students proficient in both their heritage language and culture and their new homeland’s dominant culture and language are also more likely to gain higher upward mobility and enjoy advanced cognitive development. While the benefits of dual language education (DLE) are explicitly illustrated in the literature, there are currently no Somali dual language programs found to be existing in Minnesota …

Songs For The Journey: The Music Of Pilgrimage, Joshua Taylor

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Pilgrimage has been a part of Christian experience since biblical times. Creating new stories, pilgrimage affords sacred travelers experiences that transcend nationalism, denominational identity, and cultural borders melding their individual constructs of meaning with communal experiences to create new insights. On these pilgrimages, music has played a significant role in the development of community. While pilgrimage is an independent act, it is also a shared existence with other pilgrims with music serving as a bridge between these two realities. With an estimated 100 million people undertaking pilgrimages at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the rediscovery of pilgrimage, and the …

Enlaces In Reflections And (Re)Memberings As Latina Border- Crossers: Journeys Of Childhood And Professional Un/ Welcomings, Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, Paty Abril-Gonzalez, Cinthya M. Saavedra, Michelle Salazar Perez

Mexican American Studies Faculty Publications

We are humbled to be part of this special issue honoring the life work of Jonathan Silin. His scholarship and activism have opened spaces for future generations, like our own, to share our testimonios. We are straddling between being former early childhood teachers and current teacher educators—between our profe lives and our everyday lived experiences as Latina border crossers. Testimonios, which we engage in for this piece, have herstorically captured intimate tellings that connect individual struggles and strengths to the larger collective (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona, 2012; Latina Feminist Group, 2001). It is in these testimonios that women …

Saint Mary's Magazine - Spring 2021, Saint Mary's College Of California

Saint Mary's Magazine

No abstract provided.

A Case Study Of Pedagogical Practices That Boost Chinese Students’ Oral English Self-Confidence, Michael D. Knapp

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

Practice is necessary for developing oral English proficiency, but many Chinese learners of English lack the self-confidence to practice oral English; furthermore, students’ self-confidence deficiency is perpetuated by insufficient oral English proficiency. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to discover pedagogical practices that break the cycle of the reciprocal effect of deficiencies in oral English and in self-confidence in Chinese adult PhD non-English major students. Six participants who raised their oral English proficiency and self-confidence during their PhD studies described their English learning journeys by responding to interview questions. Analyzation of data from interview responses developed into two …