Digital Commons Network^™

Maintaining And Retaining The Home Language While Learning English, Panhia Vang

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The Hmong are an Asian ethnic group that has been living in the United States for over 50 years now. Given the history of the Hmong, many Hmong parents have had no formal education or the highest education attainment they have is a high school diploma. Having little to no formal education, many parents do not know how to navigate the American school system to support their children with their academics. With the influence of American media and the school system, many Hmong American students are fluent in English, however, they are losing their cultural identity and home language. Despite …

Esl Curriculum: Oral Language Acquisition For Teaching Under-Privileged School-Aged Children Of Hopeful Academy, Ibadan, Nigeria, Oloruntoba Ajibero

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project is centered on the development of the ESL curriculum for teaching of oral language to under-privileged school-aged children of Hopeful Academy, Ibadan-Nigeria. It investigated the question “How does Poverty impact the Oral Language Acquisition of English by School-Aged Children in Nigeria?” The content-based learning approach and the input-based approach served as useful guides in designing this ESL curriculum. The materials, activities, and units of this ESL Curriculum are mostly based on the Total Physical Response (TPR) from the WIDA English Language Proficiency standards. Children’s poor environments prevent them from being exposed to higher quantity and quality language learning …

How Do Schools Assess And Deliver Effective Professional Development To Mainstream Teachers With A Focus On Supporting Multilingual Learners?, Michelle Tornga

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

A significant educational concern in the state of Minnesota is that there is a substantial achievement gap between native English speakers and Multilingual Learners (MLLs). Despite implementation of federal (ESSA) and state legislation (LEAPS Act) designed to address this issue, an achievement gap still persists and Minnesota educators continue to struggle to support MLLs academically. This capstone project uses a synthesis from a literature review and the creation of a website, survey and pre-selected curated professional development resources in order to answer the question: How Do Schools Assess and Deliver Effective Professional Development to Mainstream Teachers With a Focus on …

Teachers Of Color And American Indian Teachers In Suburban Schools: Retaining Through Resilience And Community Cultural Wealth, Dua Yang

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The capstone question in this paper was: How can a Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) Model be used to develop the resilience, resistance, and retention of Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers (TOCAITs) in suburban school districts? The paper addressed the contextual challenges in the suburban school districts and ways to retain Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers (TOCAITs) in this context. The literature reviewed how suburban school districts responded to demographic shifts. It highlighted issues around systems and practices that were colorblind and inequitable to the diverse learners it served. In addition, these contextual problems were connected to …

The Impact Of French Cultural Beliefs And The French Philosophy Of Eating On The Structure Of Lunch In French Public Schools, Colline Roland

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The purpose of this capstone is to explore the guiding question of how the French cultural beliefs of food impact public elementary school lunches in France so that administrators of French immersion schools can better understand how the French philosophy of eating directly impacts/contributes to the structure of school lunch. This capstone analyzes contemporary French culture, food and eating culture in France, school lunches, and the socialization and time structure of lunches. It illustrates how French culture has shaped the French lunchroom and the impact these elements have on the health of students. To communicate this research, this project involved …

Best Practices To Improve English Language Acquisition For High School El Students Who Have Experienced Trauma, Hannah Sundermeyer

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

English Learner students are a rapidly growing subset of the U.S. student population with unique strengths and needs compared to their monolingual peers. My experiences as an EL teacher with secondary EL students who have experienced trauma led to my capstone question: what best practices can be used for high school EL students who have been impacted by trauma to build their English language acquisition? While there is a plethora of research on EL students and on trauma, there is little research connecting the two topics. However, research demonstrates a number of proven strategies to help EL students and students …

Implementing Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy Through The Use Of Music In The Esl Classroom, Libby Arnosti

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

In a time when progressive educators in the United States are increasingly motivated to develop their pedagogies to embody anti-racist and culturally sustaining teaching practices, there is demand for authentic curricula that ground these theories in practice. One core component of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy is teaching in a way that puts students’ lived experiences at the center of their learning. However, finding curricula that center student choice in an authentic, culturally sustaining way can be a challenge. Music, being a meaningful component of personal identity and culture for most people beginning in adolescence, provides a means to craft such curricula. …

Effective Reading Strategies For Multilingual Learners In The Mainstream Classroom, Megan Hebert

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone project was designed to provide educational support for the literacy development of multilingual learners in the mainstream classroom. The guiding questions this project seeks to answer are: How can multilingual learners develop strong literacy skills within their mainstream classrooms? What strategies, resources, and instructional models best support them in this learning? These questions led to relevant literature that provided research in the areas of instructional model design, engagement strategies, home language scaffolds, and cultural considerations. Through these four key areas, educators will be able to grow in their ability to meet the needs of their multilingual learners and …

Looking In To Speak Up: How White Educators Can Utilize Literacy To More Confidently And Competently Discuss Race And Racism With Early Elementary Students, Morgan Hanlon

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

literacy to more confidently and competently discuss race and racism with early elementary students? Research indicates children are ready to begin discussing race and racism as early as three or four years old, but that educators tend to avoid these conversations assuming their students are not yet ready to handle these topics. This paper reviews literature on racism in education, understanding bias, developmental readiness, and literacy resources supporting discussions of race. The project created in connection with this research question involves a five session professional development course aimed at supporting educators in feeling more confident and competent in discussing these …

Teaching Growth Mindset In A Secondary Mathematics Classroom, Katherine Sneider

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Carol Dweck’s research in fixed and growth mindsets has garnered attention in mathematics education, especially as the frustration of students of mathematics becomes more apparent with new or more difficult content. The literature review and subsequent project seeks to answer the question: How can teaching high school students about growth mindset affect their attitudes toward mathematics learning and academic achievement? Research demonstrates that students with a growth mindset perform better academically than students with a fixed mindset. While these mindsets may be more inherent in nature, students have the potential to develop a growth mindset through classroom learning and skill …

Social And Emotional Learning In An Open Space, Emily Stein

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Utilizes an adaptation of the open space technology (OST) method to support 9‐12‐year‐old attendees of residential summer camps in proposing, developing, and facilitating own camp activities. Provides intentional support for development of social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies laid out by Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (2020). Specifies examples of skills from each competency and where practiced in the curriculum. Offers considerations for supporting diverse individuals and groups in practice.

Which Original Public?, James C. Phillips

Chapman Law Review

Original public meaning originalism 1 seeks to know what the Constitution would have meant to an ordinary person at the time a specific provision was enacted. So originalist scholars tend to look to see what the Constitution’s words would have meant to an ordinary, average, or competent user of American English at the time a specific constitutional provision was adopted. In District of Columbia v. Heller (“Heller”), however, Justice Scalia’s majority opinion took a more specific view of exactly who qualified as the ordinary person of interest. At one point Heller declares that the “Constitution was written to …

April 2022 News Releases, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of University Relations

University of Montana News Releases, 1928, 1956-present

No abstract provided.

The Lived Experience Of Teachers’ Socratic Practice: A Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Mark A. Jedrzejczyk

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

This hermeneutic phenomenology studied the lived experiences of four high school teachers’ Socratic practice. The purpose of the study was to describe the essence of high school teachers’ lived experience of Socratic practice and explore what the teachers’ lived experiences suggested about their understanding of Socratic practice. The data for this study were collected in semistructured interviews with four teachers. As a hermeneutic phenomenological study, the researcher did not bracket himself. Instead, he clarified his reflexivity and examined transcripts of the written interviews through a hermeneutic circle. The study found four significant themes among teachers’ descriptions of their lived experiences …

Implementing Self-Selected Outdoor Play For Preschoolers, Shannon Jensen

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

As preschool-aged children spend more time using electronic devices and studying academic content, they are spending increasingly less time playing outdoors. Preschoolers spend a large portion of their days participating in sedentary activities. Outdoor play facilitates children' s development and learning in many areas including health, social and emotional skills, and motor skills. Outdoor play has also been shown to assist children with academic learning. Early childhood professionals spend significant amounts of time with young children and are largely responsible for providing outdoor play experiences for the children within their care. This school improvement plan documents the need for an …

Class(Ify)Ing Christianity In Singapore: Tracing The Interlinked Spaces Of Privilege And Position, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper considers how two facets of identity – religion and class – are performed, (re)produced and negotiated within the spaces of the Christian school, home and church in Singapore. We show how the social structuring of one space can inform and influence the structuring of another. Spaces of Christianity in Singapore tend to be mutually reinforcing, strengthening the linkages between religion and class, and in particular reifying the position of Christianity as a religion of the privileged classes. However, the ways in which Christian spaces are reified can become problematic when space is in fact shared with less privileged …

Aestheticized Temples, Rationalized Affects: Sacred Modernities And The Micro-Regulation Of Hinduism In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper develops the idea of “sacred modernities” to explore how the state- led regulation of religion shapes religious communities and religious subjects therein. Sacred modernities define the ways in which sacredness is understood and engaged with under conditions of secular modernity, and in particular, how sacredness is experienced within a context of micro-regulated religious space. We illustrate these ideas through an empirical examination of how Singapore’s Hindu community engages with the idea of sacredness in and through the temple. By contrasting the experiences of Singaporean and non-Singaporean Hindus, we argue that Singapore’s temples offer an aestheticized experience of the …

"Spreading Stupidity: Intellectual Disability And Anti-Imperialist Resistance To Bioinformational Capitalism" In Bioinformational Philosophy And Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies, Derek R. Ford, Megha Summer Pappachen '20

Education Studies Faculty publications

We are aware that to resist in the coming age of bioinformational capitalism, we will require new knowledge ecologies. These knowledges must be socialist: able to resist the dominance of productivist and imperialist pedagogies that are saturated with capital, and now bioinformational capital’s aims. These knowledges must also be stupid: able to refuse bioinformational capital’s lust for visibility and access to the working class biology. Stupidity is able to resist primarily because it can’t be quantified, articulated, or rendered transparent. To express the importance of this refusal, we visit concepts of colonialism and disability. Disabled and colonized struggles animate the …

Providing Culturally Competent Eldercare For Asian Americans, Britney Ngo

Honors Theses

As the Asian American elderly population continues to grow, it is important to acknowledge cultural factors that may impact their behavior, attitudes, preferences, and decisions in the context of eldercare. Cultural competency acknowledges and considers these factors while providing care that includes biophysical factors of healthcare as well as non-medical dimensions of care such as language and culture.

This thesis seeks to address the applications of providing culturally competent eldercare to Asian Americans and offer future recommendations to care settings that have limited resources by utilizing a multidisciplinary review of literature accompanied by interviews with representatives from On Lok, a …

The Maximal Reconstruction Of Chen Zi-Ang’S Physical Appearance From The Perspective Of Psychology, With A Discourse On Those Of Chen Yuan-Jing, Wu Zetian, And Madam Gao (從心理學角度，最大限度重構陳子昂形貌；兼議陳元敬、武則天、高氏形貌), Xiao-Yu Chen

Student Publications

Chen Zi-Ang was a young man who had long black hair and black eyes. When appearing in public, as long as he had the conditions to do so, he bound his long, black hair in the common hairstyles among his contemporary Chinese men. Nevertheless, when in situations such as resting in his bed because of his long-term illness, his long, black hair was often untied. For a long time, Chen was very thin, and he had suffered from long-term physical illness. Chen's physical appearance further included most if not all of these characteristics: a light skin color, a comparatively soft …

Denmark And Sweden: The Collision Between Welfare State Politics And Immigration, Amy Elizabeth Cantrell

Student Publications

The Scandinavian welfare states of Denmark and Sweden have famously similar socio-political and cultural systems, ones which have advanced the common perception of these nations as united in a common humanitarian and progressive global position. However there exists a significant divergence within either nation’s approach to immigration, asylum and integration policy, one indicative of the deeply ingrained deviations in popular understandings of national belonging and perspectives on greater European and global integration. By contextualizing the historical progressions of either nation and juxtaposing their individual responses to both the 2015 European refugee crisis and the contemporary Ukrainian conflict and resulting refugee …

The Religious Lexicon Embedded In Public American Curricula, Daniel R. Jones

Student Publications

What is the relationship between one's own religious beliefs and their everyday colloquial diction choices? Moreover, why is the subfield that encompasses the intersection of sociolinguistics, education, and religious studies one that has gained little scholarly interest in recent years, where one could argue the importance of religious belief, and other socio-political beliefs in education have come center stage in the heart of American political debate? This article will tackle this broad range of topics through a case study focusing on my primary research question: How does a teacher’s own religious identity affect the religious language utilized in their classroom …

Freedom Within Convention: A Cooperative Analysis Of The Zhuangzi And A Thousand Plateaus, Giacomo Coppola

Student Publications

The Zhuangzi, a foundational text in Classical Chinese philosophy, presents a notion of ideal humanity that involves a seemingly paradoxical relationship between a liberated existence and the barriers that restrict it. To achieve ideal humanity, one must confront the boundaries and attachments that have coalesced into a web of socio-physical conventions and developed dominion over human thought and action. This paper aims at shedding some light on this tension by offering a comparative analysis of the Zhuangzi and A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in terms of their conceptions of ideal humanity. While an abundance of time …

Reframing Definitions Of School Quality Through The Lens Of Stakeholders In A Diverse School, Jennifer L. Watters

Theses & Dissertations

A dominant narrative of school quality currently exists based on race, Euro-centric school quality frameworks, economics, and test scores. This qualitative case study aimed to redefine school quality for diverse communities by sharing the counter-story of stakeholders in a diverse school district on Long Island, New York. This study utilized the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory, community cultural wealth, culturally responsive leadership, and Schneider’s framework for school quality, to elevate the voices of stakeholders in a diverse school district on Long Island and gain their perspectives on school quality in terms of teaching, leadership, and family engagement. Findings generated …

Promoting Cognitive Complexity Among Violent Extremist Youth In Northern Pakistan, Feriha Peracha, Sara Savage, Raafia Khan, Asma Ayub, Andleeb Zahra

Journal of Strategic Security

This article reports on the results of an intervention to promote cognitive complexity (measured by integrative complexity, IC) and perspective taking for youth detained for violent extremism at the Sabaoon Center for Deradicalization and Rehabilitation in northern Pakistan. Participants are sixty-four males (mean age 19.77, SD = 3.26) comprising three cohorts: CVE Detained, CVE Reintegrated, and PVE At-risk.

The Sabaoon IC intervention consists of eight sessions with action learning contextualized according to an assessment of the push, pull and personal factors that shape the life experience of the youth. Pre and post testing results show significant gain in IC in …

In Search Of Divine Liberated Love: A Yoga Memoir, Katie D. Davidson

LMU Theses and Dissertations

I opted to write a memoir about my personal experiences in yoga, rather than a traditional research-based thesis. A key distinction between memoir and autobiography or auto-ethnography is that it’s not linear—much like my yoga journey. Often, experiences, particularly around healing emotional trauma, are more circular in nature, perhaps even more of a spiral. According to Carl Jung, “The spiral in psychology means that when you make a spiral you always come over the same point where you have been before, but never really the same, it is above or below, inside, outside, so it means growth.” (Jung 5, p. …

The New Frontier Or A Billionaire’S Joy Ride? Artificial Intelligence Driven Analysis Of Twitter Conversations Of The Spacex Company, Meghan Whittle, Miranda Butler

Senior Theses

In recent years, space travel has become less of a vision for select individuals in the field of research and is now on the cusp of becoming an experience available to paying customers. The purpose of this study is to determine Twitter users’ perceptions of SpaceX during the COVID-19 pandemic period from March 2020 to December 2021. We identified Twitter sentiment and emotions regarding such a new and abstract notion of a service that could be more widely available in the future. To achieve these goals, we collected tweets related to SpaceX using Brandwatch – a tool allowing the search …

Social Justice And Racial Equity And Animals, Todd Levasseur

Assignment Prompts

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Hiv Treatment Disparities In The Latino Population Of South Carolina, Elizabeth G. Caulk

Senior Theses

The Latino population in the United States faces a heightened risk in terms of contracting HIV/AIDS and experiencing negative health outcomes from said infection. HIV/AIDS continues to disproportionately impact ethnic/racial minorities, and the Latino population exemplifies this unfortunate trend, with Latino Americans making up around 18.4% of the national population, but nearly 30% of the HIV/AIDS infections (US Office of Minority Health, 2021). More enduring changes to the current resources available to this population will need to be made in order to address this disparity. Thus, the current study examined social determinants, how they increase risk of infection, and how …

“Pandemias Políticas: The Effects Of Political And Social Instability On Infectious Disease Epidemiology In Latin America"”, Sarah H. Noonan

Senior Theses

This paper seeks to analyze the relationship between political and social unrest and conflict and infectious disease epidemiology in Latin America. An analysis of published literature regarding epidemiological, biomedical, political, and historical content was conducted to highlight potential connections between infectious disease epidemics and sociopolitical conflict in the region. Specific analyses of Smallpox, Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, Chagas disease, Cholera, Dengue, and COVID-19 were conducted, in an effort to uncover potential causations and context of epidemics of these conditions. Results of this analysis depict a necessity for further research into public health and disease control mechanisms during times of conflict and …