Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding Middle School Students’ Enrollment Choice For A Fully Online Educational Environment During The Fall Of 2020 Covid-19 National Health Emergency: A Mixed Methods Study, Wendy Maltais Duvall

Theses and Dissertations--Curriculum and Instruction

Students’ choice in enrolling in a distance learning environment was examined in a mixed methods study in the fall of 2020 during the COVID-19 national health emergency of that same year. After state mandated school closures in the spring 2020, students statewide were forced into a fully online learning situation until the end of that semester. In the fall, the district that was the study site offered families the choice of either hybrid or fully distance learning environments where students could attend school during the national health crisis that had persisted. That choice would be in force for the full …

Fostering A Sense Of Community Among Teachers Via A Community Of Practice: A Mixed-Methods Action Research Study, Apryl Clark Moore

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are learning communities that can improve the skills and knowledge of teachers and improve a sense of community. CoPs are designed to cultivate relationships among teachers and develop professional practices that increase a sense of community and knowledge attainment. This study examined the use an online CoP to increase teachers’ sense of community during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Teachers joined a private online community and shared resources about classroom management strategies.

A mixed-methods action research approach was adopted for this research study. Quantitative data was captured from pre- and post-intervention surveys that collected information about teachers’ …

High Performance: Exploratory Study Into The High Performance Model And Qualitative Secondary Analysis Of Elite Sport Management In The United States, Jon Gregory Hill

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation examines the area of high performance in elite sport through high performance professionals’ perspectives in the United States Olympic and Paralympic National Governing Bodies. The study’s purpose was to establish a shared meaning of the high performance sport management model by its elements in the athletic arena. Interviews with 16 high performance directors and managers were conducted to establish definitions, backgrounds, and anatomy of high performance in sport: high performance, high performance sport, high performance management, high performance model.

A qualitative secondary analysis was conducted to examine the high performance model in the U.S. and explore the job …

Leading In The Digital Age: A Multi-Case Study Of Leading Digital Citizenship, Ryan C. Schubart

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This study explored how school leaders make sense of and address digital citizenship as defined by Ribble (2011), and investigated what successes and challenges school leaders experienced while implementing digital citizenship programs in large Southeastern technology-rich schools. This bounded cross-case study, undergirded by Weick’s (1995) Theory of Sensemaking, is also designed to explore how school leaders implement digital citizenship programs at technology-rich schools in a large. 1:1, Southeastern public-school district, and how they view their role as producers of digital citizens.

Findings indicated that an influx of computer technology caused school leaders to make sense of digital citizenship and address …

Is What Works Working? Thinking Evaluatively About The What Works Clearinghouse, Andrew A. Nelson

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Since the mid-twentieth century, the U.S. Department of Education has drafted and enacted policies to bridge the research-practice gap—that is, the gap between “what works” according to educational research and what is actually practiced by teachers and their administrators (e.g., Dirkx, 2006; Joyce & Cartwright, 2019; Tseng, 2012). One of the latest manifestations of this “what works” political legacy is the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), which took shape as part of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in 2002. The WWC’s mission is to be a “central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education” (WWC, 2020d, …

The Public Service Motivation Of Kentucky 4-H Youth Development Agents, Kimberly Adams Leger

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The Cooperative Extension Service is known for bringing research and education from the land grant universities to local communities across the state through its County Extension Agents. Kentucky Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development Agents have a rich history of educating youth in life skill development. 4-H Agents who traditionally served in these roles often continued their public service until retirement. In recent years, the Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service has documented a decline in 4-H Youth Development Agents' retention. An online survey was administered to explore Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development Agents' employment motivation in Kentucky. Given CES agents' role as …

Important Attributes Of A Behaviorally-Based Coaching Culture, Sarah M. Eustice

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Professional coaching is still considered an emerging field. Over the past 30 years, professional coaches and researchers have worked to further this profession by developing coaching competencies, exploring the nuances between various coaching modalities, and developing models to explain the role of coaching in organizations. There remains, however, a dearth of literature on coaching culture, including limited agreement on what it is and how it should look in an organization.

This study aims to establish agreement by investigating the confluence of coaching culture definitions and models present in industry and scholarly literature, and garnering input from a sample of professionals …

Technology Leadership Practices Of Appalachian School Leaders During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Todd Norton

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The COVD-19 pandemic caused a global disruption to education. In some parts of the United States, schools were cancelled for the year, while others shifted their educational offerings to a distance learning model. Kentucky announced short term closures beginning March 13, 2020, but on April 20th the Kentucky Governor announced that schools would not reopen for in-person instruction for the remainder of the academic year. Many school districts quickly developed a plan to continue a modified version of school. In Appalachia, some school leaders were uniquely prepared because their district had implemented a 1:1 device program. In a 1:1 program, …

Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Practices And Perspectives On Whiteness: Development And Initial Validation Of The Whiteness Components Scale, Falynn Amor Thompson

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

For decades, educational scholars have considered and investigated a number of factors (e.g., teacher beliefs and expectations, racism, and inadequate school resources) that maintain the negative schooling experiences of Black students. Recently, scholars have identified components of whiteness as factors informing the adverse educational experiences of these students. To date, however, few researchers have empirically examined attitudes, behaviors, and perspectives of whiteness in educational settings and among educational stakeholders. In addition, no study has explored an association between whiteness components and Black students’ overall educational experiences. The dearth of these studies in the educational and psychological literatures is due in …

Computer Self-Efficacy And Math Performance In Adult Basic Education Students, Morgan Hilary Dow

Theses and Dissertations--Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education

Domain-specific self-efficacy is increasingly known to be related to student academic performance. This study investigated the relationship between computer and math self-efficacy, math performance, and guided in-class use of an online educational program for adult basic education students enrolled in classes at an adult education program during the 2019 – 2020 school year. Initial math test scores and pre-survey results indicated no statistically significant relationship between computer self-efficacy and math performance, or math self-efficacy and math performance. After attending between 1 and 15 class sessions where an online educational program was used, post-survey results indicated no statistically significant relationship between …

Factors In The Success Of Female Computing Majors In Community Colleges, Melanie Williamson

Theses and Dissertations--Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education

Historically, the role of women in computing changes over time as does their presence in the field. In 1985, 37% of computer science bachelor’s degree recipients were women, but in recent years, that number has decreased and currently holds at, around, 18%. Using a mixed methods approach, the study looked at the success of women enrolled in a computing degree program at a community college and the impact that self-efficacy, involvement in academic support opportunities, and profession perception influences persistence to successfully complete a computing course. Using Astin’s Student Involvement theory (1984; 1999) and Astin’s Involvement – Environment – Output …

Action Research As Professional Development: Creating Effective Professional Development In Every Classroom, Lori A. Cambareri

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

Professional development is a critical component of teacher professional growth that directly influences increased student learning and achievement. As professionals, teachers continue to develop their knowledge and skills with the aim of improving their teaching to assure that students can learn better. A huge investment in time and resources is invested in teacher professional learning every year. However, teachers report, and research supports, that teacher professional development often does not meet teachers’ needs and does not perform its integral function of creating a sustained change in teacher behavior that leads to a corresponding positive change in student achievement. This problem …

Transforming Outcomes To Increase Participation In The Independent Living Program Sponsored By Sunrise Children’S Services, Richard R. Burslem

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

Research demonstrates the transition for aging-out foster youth evidences they are not equipped with the necessary tools to live a self-sufficient adult life. Many children who age-out of the foster system have encountered trauma at multiple levels. Sunrise Children’s Services is an agency in Kentucky committed to changing negative outcomes for this population of individuals.

The optimum goal for children and youth is for them to grow up within their biological family where they receive guidance and support as they mature. For some individuals that is not an option, and the government along with agencies like Sunrise are focused on …

Understanding And Improving Outcomes For Students In An Underserved Secondary School In Kenya: A School-Community-University Partnership, Teresa A. Wasonga, Ximena D. Burgin, Mayra C. Daniel

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Although universities are positioned to lead change, specifically by improving educational systems, there is no evidence of universities in Kenya engaging with schools. Concurrently, the quality of education in Kenya is declining. This article explores the problem of disparities, poor educational outcomes, and ways to improve education at an underserved secondary school over the course of a three-year participatory action research project. Qualitative design was used to gather data through interviews, focus group discussions, and document analyses. Data were analyzed utilizing constant comparison technique and ecological and sociocultural theories. Emerging themes included: disparities and poor academic outcomes; focus on external …

Towards Enhancement Of Machine Learning Techniques Using Cse-Cic-Ids2018 Cybersecurity Dataset, Dharshini Ravikumar

Theses

In machine learning, balanced datasets play a crucial role in the bias observed towards classification and prediction. The CSE-CIC IDS datasets published in 2017 and 2018 have both attracted considerable scholarly attention towards research in intrusion detection systems. Recent work published using this dataset indicates little attention paid to the imbalance of the dataset. The study presented in this paper sets out to explore the degree to which imbalance has been treated and provide a taxonomy of the machine learning approaches developed using these datasets. A survey of published works related to these datasets was done to deliver a combined …

Rethinking Swing Voters, Jonathan S. Gould

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent decades, swing voters in courts and legislatures have made many of the United States’ most important decisions of law and policy. It would be easy to conclude from the recent history of the Supreme Court and Congress that democracy or majority rule inevitably entails placing many of a society’s most important decisions in the hands of swing voters. Far from being inevitable, however, swing voters result from a highly contingent set of circumstances, both ideological and institutional.

This Article probes these contingencies, describing and evaluating swing voters and the power they hold. It first explains the conditions under …

Worker Voice And Corporate Governance: Putting Words Into Actions, Thomas A. Kochan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Two decades ago, Margaret Blair and I edited a book focused on governance of modern corporations. At the time it was evident that the dominant paradigm governing corporate governance and behavior centered on maximizing shareholder value. This was a shift in practice that began in the 1980s and was endorsed in 1997 by the Business Roundtable, when it recanted on its 1990 statement that supported a broader stakeholder view of corporate responsibilities.

The effects of the shift from a stakeholder to a shareholder-maximizing set of practices have been devastating for American workers and the overall economy. It reinforced and accelerated …

Policing In An Era Of Sousveillance: A Randomised Controlled Trial Examining The Influence Of Video Footage On Perceptions Of Legitimacy, Megan Mohler, Christopher M. Campbell, Kelsey S. Henderson, Brian Renauer

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Controversial incidents of police-citizen interactions, coupled with advancements in internet media technology has created a new dynamic of how public perceptions of the police might be influenced. This paper reports results of an experiment examining how videos of police-citizen interactions found on social media platforms might influence civilian perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice. Using 173 randomly assigned participants and a pre/post-test design, we compare perceptual effects of positive, negative, and neutral depictions of police-citizen interactions. Results indicate all media had an effect on perceptions of legitimacy, with negative content yielding the largest effects, significantly diminishing global perceptions of legitimacy, …

Reflections On Building And Then Teaching In A Hyflex Classroom At Allard Hall, Douglas C. Harris, Samuel Beswick

All Faculty Publications

How to teach in a pandemic? This is the question we were forced to answer over the course of a weekend in March when UBC’s physical campus closed and in-person teaching was no longer possible. The pivot to the world of online teaching was abrupt and reactive; there simply wasn’t time to do anything other than keep courses going as best we could, with technology and techniques we were learning as we taught.

Re- Imagining Agenda 2063: A Socio-Legal Foundation Of The Africa We Want, Sara Ghebremusse, Toby S. Goldbach, Oludolapo Makinde

All Faculty Publications

Re- Imagining Agenda 2063: A Socio-Legal Foundation of the Africa We Want, June 21 - 24, 2021 Virtual Conference Report

The Growth Of Vancouver As An Innovation Hub: Challenges And Opportunities, Camden Hutchison, Li-Wen Lin

All Faculty Publications

This article assesses the development of Vancouver as an entrepreneurial region. Using data collected from commercial startup databases, we find that Vancouver produces more startups and receives more venture capital financing per capita than any other major Canadian city. However, we also find that Vancouver lags many U.S. cities on these same metrics. In light of our empirical findings, we explore whether differences in entrepreneurial activity between Canada and the United States are due to differences in the countries’ legal environments. We conclude that legal differences do not explain observed economic disparities, and that differences in entrepreneurial activity are due …

Risky Education, Osamudia James

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Leadership... From A To Z, Anne Klinefelter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

When Therapy Goes Public: Copyright Gatekeepers And Sharing Therapeutic Artifacts On Social Media, Amanda Reid, Pablo Miño

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Auditing Imperative For Automated Hiring, Ifeoma Ajunwa

Faculty Publications

The goal of this Article is neither to argue against or for the use of automated decision-making in employment, nor is it to examine whether automated hiring systems are better than humans at making hiring decisions. For antidiscrimination law, the efficacy of any particular hiring system is a secondary concern to ensuring that any such system does not unlawfully discriminate against protected categories. Therefore, the aim is to suggest collaborative regulatory regimes for automated hiring systems that will ensure that any benefits of automated hiring are not negated by (un)intended outcomes, such as unlawful discrimination on the basis of protected …

Diversity From The Perspective Of Corporate Boards And Lawyer Disciplinary Boards, Lissa L. Broome, John M. Conley

Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the organizing question of this symposium—whether diversifying state medical boards (SMBs) would improve their effectiveness in disciplining doctors—by drawing on the comparable experiences of corporate boards of directors and lawyer disciplinary boards. Reexamining our own qualitative study of corporate board diversity conducted several years ago, we find that almost of all of the arguments for board diversity raised in the business literature or our own interviews also tend to support diversity on SMBs. Reviewing the legal profession’s experience with the diversity question on lawyer disciplinary boards, we find that many of these arguments have also been recognized, …

Cruise Contracts, Public Policy, And Foreign Forum Selection Clauses, John F. Coyle

Faculty Publications

A cruise ship contract is the prototypical contract of adhesion. The passenger is presented with the contract on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. If she refuses to sign, the ship sails without her. To ensure that cruise companies do not draft one-sided contracts that are unfair to passengers, Congress has enacted a number of statutes that regulate these agreements. One such statute is 46 U.S.C. § 30509. This law stipulates that any contract provision that limits the liability of the cruise company for personal injury or death is void as against public policy if the ship stops at a U.S. port.

In …

The End Of School Policing, Barbara A. Fedders

Faculty Publications

Police officers have become permanent fixtures in public schools. The sharp increase in the number of school police officers over the last twenty years has generated a substantial body of critical legal scholarship. Critics question whether police make students safer. They argue that any safety benefits must be weighed against the significant role the police play in perpetuating a school-to-prison pipeline that funnels Black and Brown students and students with disabilities out of schools and into courts, jails, and prisons. In suggesting remedies for this problem, commentators have proposed several regulatory fixes. These include changes to the standards for evaluating …

Access Riders (Web), Jessie Bullivant, Jemina Lindholm

Access Riders

Jemina Lindholm, Jessie Bullivant, Camille Auer, Nora Heidorn, Heidi & Kaino Wennerstrand (BIITSI), Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, Anonymous

An access rider is written by an individual, and can be shared when one is invited to take part in a project or any working relationship. It can work as a starting point for a conversation between the inviter and invitee about the accessibility of a certain situation.

Access Riders is a collaborative project by artists Jessie Bullivant and Jemina Lindholm. The project is a compilation of access riders by eight of the contributors to Frame Contemporary Art Finland's Rehearsing Hospitalities event. The access …

Access Riders (Print), Jessie Bullivant, Jemina Lindholm

Access Riders

Jemina Lindholm, Jessie Bullivant, Camille Auer, Nore Heidorn, Heidi & Kaino Wennerstrand (BIITSI), Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, Anonymous

An access rider is written by an individual, and can be shared when one is invited to take part in a project or any working relationship. It can work as a starting point for a conversation between the inviter and invitee about the accessibility of a certain situation.

Access Riders is a collaborative project by artists Jessie Bullivant and Jemina Lindholm. The project is a compilation of access riders by eight of the contributors to Frame Contemporary Art Finland's Rehearsing Hospitalities event. The access …