Digital Commons Network^™

Developing Cultural Competence Among Sixth-Grade Students Through Indigenous Knowledge And Place-Based Education, Tyus Roanhorse

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

There is a need to develop cultural competence in educational settings. While there is a focus on training K-12 educators to be culturally competent, there is little focus on developing and examining the impact of student cultural competence training. Integrating Indigenous knowledge in an education setting is a unique way to start developing cultural competency by recognizing cross-cultural worldviews and perspectives. This can be done while using place-based education, which links the classroom to the cultural environment that has significant meaning to Indigenous peoples while enriching the learning experience for all students. The current study examines and measures the development …

From Jerome To Dermott: Comparing The Treatment And Experiences Of Japanese Americans And German Prisoners Of War In Arkansas During World War Ii, Taylor Cash

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During WWII the US government housed German POWs at a camp in Denson, Arkansas that it had previously used to incarcerate Japanese Americans. This thesis compares how US authorities treated the camp’s two different inmate populations—one composed of enemy soldiers and the other US residents, about 70 percent of whom were citizens—to analyze larger questions surrounding how the US government interpreted race, citizenship, gender, and nationhood during the war. Federal authorities regulated and surveilled Japanese Americans at Jerome concentration camp with more vigor and energy than they did German prisoners of war at Dermott POW camp. Moreover, US officials provided …

Conspicuous Asceticism: Collapsing Consumers' Hungry Ghosts, Ash Zareian

Theses and Dissertations

The author investigates an emerging construct called conspicuous asceticism expositioned from a narcissism-centric view. The understanding of this construct is approached by drawing an idiomatic semantic parallel in opposition to conspicuous consumption and by utilizing its current theoretical framework of narcissism. Moreover, this paper seeks to extend conspicuous consumption’s theoretical framework as synonymous with the construct of compulsive consumption. Furthermore, I illustrate that consumers must transcend narcissism through engaging in treatment modalities requisite to operationalize a pioneering effort in which consumers can engage in marketing campaign efforts to advertise conspicuous ascetic contexts. This dissertation gleans from extant literature in sociology, …

An Inquiry Into The Number Of Traffic Tickets Issued And Implications For African Americans Motorists, Casey J. Davis

Dissertations (2016-Present)

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of race and gender disparities in police traffic stops as they relate to the number of tickets issued, number of consent searches, and number of arrests of traffic violators in the southern region of Texas, Harris County. The research will further shed light on how implicit bias affects police discretion and provide implications for police officers. This research will bring attention to the sanction disparity and examine the relationship between race and gender in motorist outcomes at the conclusion of traffic stops. The data for this research was conducted from …

Police Militarization And Overuse Of Force: An Analysis Of The Efficacy Of Paramilitary Units And Society, Ronald R. Burnett

Dissertations (2016-Present)

The role of the police is to maintain social order and safety through the enforcement of law. They investigate, prevent, and detect criminal activity. However, the problem with police protection today is overuse of force which often comes through the term militarism regarding agency tenets and dogma. Also, social media has focused on police overuse of force, exacerbating race riots and retaliatory police killings. Because of this, police reform has become a significant concern, not only in the United States but also abroad. The methodological approach for this dissertation is a quantitative analysis, data used is secondary, statistical procedure is …

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: Three Essays In The Educational Context, James D. Paul

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many universities and K-12 public school systems express a significant, formal commitment to the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Relative to the emphasis on DEI in America’s educational institutions, however, there has been little research describing DEI trends and evaluating the efficacy of DEI bureaucracies. This three-chapter dissertation examines DEI trends that have been the subject of much discussion—but rarely studied empirically.

For example, chapter one analyzes how universities promote DEI when hiring new faculty. I audit a subset of academic job postings and present the first evidence on how many require DEI statements, as well as the …

Drawn To Life: A Common Theory Of Making, J. Ryan Garner

All Dissertations

My research pivots around questions of making, its importance to all of life, and the challenges it faces in the contemporary world. The research is grounded in simple questions such as: what is making, what are its instruments, and can we do it on purpose? I approach these questions as if through binoculars. With one eye, I want to establish an account of making that is plain and somewhat quotidian. This will ensure the long-term viability of my study. With the other eye, I look for an account of making that is theoretically substantial and thoroughly vigorous. I apply …

Arsenic And Old Feathers A Survey Of Detection, Mitigation And Treatment Approaches For Pesticide-Affected Objects And Creating A Treatment Protocol Proposal For Suny Buffalo State., Liatte Dotan

Art Conservation Master's Projects

Animal hides and skins present in taxidermy and other organic artifacts have long been known to have potentially poisonous pasts due to the presence of residual pesticides that were applied by creators, collectors, and museums. While chemicals such as arsenic and mercury compounds were commonly used to combat agents of deterioration, these hazardous materials pose a serious health threat to those caring for collections as well as the environment at large. Whether by natural disaster, institutional necessity, legal repatriation, or ethical obligation, conservators and collection managers must be equipped with standard practices to provide adequate care even for these seemingly …

The Story Of Writing And Publishing A Research Article: An Autoethnographic Account Of An Early Career Researcher (Ecr) In India, Abhradip Banerjee

The Qualitative Report

Process of peer-reviewing plays a pivotal role in scientific development, especially in academic writing and publication. The process of peer-reviewing, however, is surrounded by issues like inconsistent, subjective, unprofessional comments from reviewers, abuse of peer-review leading to reviewers stealing original ideas, and most importantly huge gap between the actual time requirement and sheer time wasted for evaluation of manuscripts. This article provides an autoethnographic account of conceptualizing, writing, and publishing a research article of an early career researcher (ECR) in India, through which it aims to show how outcomes of the peer-review process make an impact upon the minds of …

"Religion, Culture, And The Monstrous: Of Gods And Monsters"[Review]/Mikles, Natasha L., And Joseph P. Laycock, Eds, Nathaniel Gibbs

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Nathaniel Gibbs.

Exploring The Assetisation And Financialisation Of Non-Fungible Tokens: Opportunities And Regulatory Implications, Iris H. Y. Chiu, J.G. Allen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article explores the emerging phenomenon of use cases for Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) in novel forms of crypto-finance, a stage we call “NFT financialisation”, that can be developed from stages of consumption and commoditisation of NFTs, which are increasingly observed. Despite the emerging contests regarding property rights conferred by NFTs, the needs for commoditisation and financialisation in NFT markets would likely shape the delineation and framing of such rights in order for users to exploit the asset potential of NFTs. We argue that an institutional response is timely and beneficial for NFT financialisation. Financial regulatory governance can provide the institutions …

Habitats And Heritage: An Analysis Of The Natural And Cultural Resource Management Of The South Carolina Lowcountry, Patricia Ploehn

All Theses

The South Carolina Lowcountry is replete with cultural landscapes, each one featuring a unique collection of natural and cultural resources. These resources are valuable for their environmental and cultural heritage, a heritage which defines and benefits the communities who call the Lowcountry home. This study presents a comparative analysis of public and private land management organizations operating in the South Carolina Lowcountry. The purpose of this study is to compare how public and private organizations are currently managing natural and cultural resources on cultural landscapes that they protect and oversee. The history of federal and private land management was investigated …

Opioid-Related Content On Twitter And The Impact Of Covid-19 Government Stimulus Distribution, Alyssa Seeman

All Theses

The United States has continuously faced an opioid epidemic that has resulted in a severe loss of human life. The coronavirus pandemic began in December 2019 and affected many aspects of daily life. One result of this pandemic was government financial aid in the form of stimulus checks that were directly deposited into peoples’ bank accounts. This study aims to understand better the impact stimulus checks had on opioid overdose rates within America by using content collected from Twitter to gauge public opinion. The sample consisted of a stratified random sample of 600 overall tweets that contained at least one …

Teachers’ Views Of Situational Factors Influencing Teaching Efficacy During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Holly Gillespie

All Theses

COVID-19 created many disruptions in the field of education as teachers and administrators navigated the many changing protocols affecting learning environments and pedagogy over the past two years. This thesis examines secondary teachers’ perceptions of managing these protocols through their lived experiences while teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic through the 2020-2021 school years. Previous research has shown a teacher’s sense of self-efficacy is related to both learning situations and teacher performance. However, research exploring the impact COVID-19 has had on teachers and their learning environments is limited. This qualitative exploratory study fills the gap by investigating situational factors in learning …

Climbing The Masculine Hierarchy: Examining Constructions Of Masculinity Through Incel Identities, Alyssa Jewel Davis

All Theses

In a gender-segregated digital space known as the Manosphere, a group of men calling themselves “Incels,” or involuntary celibates, express feelings of hostility and hatred towards women. Incels hold a low position on a masculine hierarchy where the men who hold the most power in society are those who have access to women’s emotional and sexual services. Incels are characterized by feelings of entitlement to women’s services and aggrievement by their inability to access them. As a result, they often appear to fantasize about or engage in acts of violence to compensate for their lack of masculine privilege. However, there …

Sovereign Imaginaries: Visualizing The Sacred Foundation Of Law’S Authority, Richard K. Sherwin

Articles & Chapters

If a world is to be lived in, it must be founded. This foundational function belongs to the sovereign imagination. What a polity names as sovereign in the state of exception, when the sacred irrupts anew, is a matter of individual and collective responsibility. In this dispensation, law, politics, and religion become inescapably entangled in metaphysics. It behooves us to understand the nature and consequences of this state of affairs.

Comparative Assessment Of Human Exposure To Antibiotic-Resistant Salmonella Due To The Consumption Of Various Food Products In The United States, Yifan Wu

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Antibiotic resistance (AR) was increasingly recognized as a global and national problem. Prevention efforts are hampered by a lack of complete understanding of how transmission pathways contribute to human AR exposure. Many reports have indicated the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in foods at retail, suggesting that food consumption, animal-derived foods in particular, can represent a significant source of AR exposure among consumers. The presence of Salmonella, including antibiotic-resistant Salmonella, has been frequently reported in terrestrial animal-derived foods such as meat, poultry, and dairy products, as well as in aquaculture products. Identification of the significant food sources that harbor …

Piloting A Qualitative Interview For Malaysia Primary School Active Learning Needs Analysis Regarding Learner Control Experiences, Leow Min Hui, Siti Hajar Binti Halili, Rafiza Binti Abdul Razak

The Qualitative Report

This paper describes a holistic process of a pilot test to determine the trustworthiness of semi-structured interview questions to be used in the qualitative investigation of Malaysia primary school active learning needs analysis, by focusing on the learner control peculiarity in the context. The researchers carried out the pilot test based on a sequential cycle of determining, assessment, adjustment, revisiting, and reflection. The researchers generated semi-structured interview questions mainly based on Hutchinson and Waters’s (1987) framework for analysis of learning needs. The researchers tested the semi-structured interview questions on two teacher and two pupil participants mirroring the intended subjects in …

Media Ideologies And The Politics Of Digital Literacy: Discourses On Technology And Media In A Small School District In The U.S. Heartland, Chris Borntrager

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uses a discourse studies approach to investigate key communicative processes by which digital technology is given situated meanings within the institution of public education, including at the level of official discourse, administrative texts, and the spoken discourse of professional educators. The discursive processes under analysis, referred to here as “institutional media ideologies,” arguably function as discursive frameworks which, akin to tactics of management in organizations, constrain the further production of discourse in a particular professional domain, including through the codification of contextualization practices, participant roles, and the social meanings of practices implicating the use of digital technology. Furthermore, …

The Mangrove Walks: An Econometric Analysis Of Climate Migration Drivers From Coastal Bangladesh And Their Geopolitical Impacts, Kendall Scott Byers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coastal Bangladesh is subject to extreme climate change forces upon poor, rural populations. The aim of this thesis is to determine the strength of environmental drivers of migration and discern whether planned or catastrophic migration predominates in the polder areas of Bangladesh. I use regression analysis on a 1,025 household, 2016 IRRI/IWMI analysis of Polder 28/1, 28/2, and 30 within Satkhira district to determine factor correlations with migration. Progressive salinization is the strongest environmental driver, while flooding decreases migration through trapping household capital investment. Religion has the greatest correlation with migration. Hindus migrate less frequently, but do so with more …

Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising A Generation Outside The Gender Binary, Toni Noelle Martinez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, the social and cultural reality remains organized around the gender binary. The binary legitimizes itself on the widely held belief that gender is determined by biology and, therefore, is “natural.” By exploring and firmly placing gender as a cultural construct, this thesis looks at the possibilities of fracturing the binary. Borrowing from Stephan Hirschauer (1994) and Judith Butler’s (2004), this thesis theorizes what a gender neutral world could look like and examines how Gender Neutral Parents contribute toward a gender revolution. Gender Neutral Parents, a community that is mostly found online, represent a small group that …

Implications Of Ancestry Estimation: An Analysis Of Identification Rates In Unidentified Persons Cases, Gabrielle Mace

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Recently, attention has been drawn to the biases present in the methodologies employed by Forensic Anthropologists, and in the medicolegal system, towards People of Color throughout the identification process. As one of the important contributors to the medicolegal system, it is essential that forensic anthropologists understand the impact of their analyses on the identification rate of marginalized unidentified decedents. Thus, through the utilization of positive identification records from Wayne and Ingham Counties in Michigan, U.S., this research investigated the disparities in identification rates between decedents reported as White and those reported as People of Color (POC). The data indicated that …

A Bioarchaeological Investigation Of The Courtney-Anderson Cemetery, Lauren Scott

Master's Theses

Located in Perry County, Mississippi, the Anderson Family Cemetery represents an abandoned turn-of-the-century Piney Woods cemetery. The cemetery is located on land once owned by the Courtney and Anderson families, who farmed the area until it was taken under eminent domain by the United States government in 1942. The purpose of this thesis is to present three osteobiographies created from human remains and material culture recovered from three graves excavated from within the cemetery in 2022 to explore the lifeways of rural Piney Woods families of Mississippi at the turn-of-the-century.

Among the graves explored, one did not contain evidence of …

Validation In Vietnam: Motivations And Experiences Of Vietnam Veterans Who Returned To Vietnam As Tourists, Brian Washam Ii

Master's Theses

The current historiography on the memory of the Vietnam War has primarily looked at how the collective memory of the war has been constructed through various factors. Scholars such as Jerry Lembcke, Patrick Hagopian, and Marita Sturken tend to examine monuments, film, and oral histories to establish a basis for how the memory of the Vietnam War was constructed and how these legacies from the war shaped the U.S. as a society going forward. Recently, scholars have begun looking more at the return trips of veterans to Vietnam as a source for understanding how veterans remembered their service.

By engaging …

Mathematics Education As Dystopia: A Future Beyond, Peter Appelbaum, Charoula Stathopoulou, Constantinos Xenofontos

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

We argue that scholars and practitioners of mathematics education need to find new directions through recognition of its dystopic characteristics, and embrace these characteristics as both the source of challenges and method of response. This contrasts with the generally utopic approach of most scholarship in the field. We offer critical ethnomathematics education as a model, since it has its own origins in lingering dystopic legacies. A perpetual hopelessness and disempowerment is one implicit curriculum of contemporary mathematics education, where the mathematics one learns might help to describe things, yet hardly assists in transforming the reification of power and agency in …

Review Of Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism, Charles Whitmer Wright

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Catholic Peacebuilding In Times Of Crisis: Hope For A Wounded World: A Summary With Link To Recordings Of Presentations, Gerard Powers

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

A Beacon Of Hope In A Troubled Context: Sketches Of The Life Of Mons. Paride Taban, Shepherd And Bridge-Builder, Alberto Eisman Torres

The Journal of Social Encounters

Monsignor Paride Taban, Bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Torit in Southern Sudan, is a multifaceted figure. Apart from his role as pastor and religious leader, he is an outstanding peace builder and the co-founder of the New Sudan Council of Churches, one of the most significant civil society institutions during the second civil war (1983 – 2005). This institution spearheaded numerous ecumenical initiatives including development work, humanitarian relief, training of grass-roots leaders and last but not least peace mediation. He is a relentless fighter for peaceful coexistence and tolerance in an environment marked by violence, oppression and impunity and …

Archbishop Antonio J. Ledesma: Advocate Of Peace And Development, Loreta Navarro-Castro

The Journal of Social Encounters

This essay describes the advocacy of Archbishop Antonio J. Ledesma, currently the co-president of Pax Christi Philippines and archbishop emeritus of the archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao, Philippines, towards peace and development not only in Mindanao but also throughout the country. He is a strong proponent of interreligious dialogue and the importance of addressing the roots of the armed conflict so there can be an enduring peace in the Philippines and beyond.

An Angry Shepherd: Sudanese Bishop Macram Max Gassis, John Ashworth

The Journal of Social Encounters

Bishop Macram Max Gassis is a near-legendary figure in Sudan since he first spoke out against human rights abuses in his country before a committee of the US Congress in 1988. Targeted by the Islamist military dictatorship which ruled Sudan for thirty years, for protesting enslavement, religious oppression, forced starvation and mass murder in Sudan, he lives in exile, bringing help and hope to his persecuted people.

This essay is condensed from the 2021 book by the same author with the same title.