Digital Commons Network^™

My Journey Toward A Culturally Relevant Music Pedagogy, Adam Michael Steele

Theses and Dissertations

In this study I utilized critical autoethnography to examine my role as a White, male implementing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) in an early childhood music classrooms. Five research questions were posed: (a) In what ways does White supremacy appear in an elementary music school curriculum? (b) What curricular transformations occur when I, as a White teacher, seek to make my curriculum more relevant to students of Color? (c) What dispositional transformations occur when I, as a White teacher, seek to make my music curriculum more relevant to students of Color? (d) What happens when students of Color engage in a …

Critical Literacy And Self Efficacy Among Secondary Students Repeatedly Engaged In Literacy Intervention, Haley Rowles

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed-methods study investigated how critical literacy questioning impacted the self-efficacy of secondary students who had been repeatedly engaged in literacy intervention because of failed standardized assessments as well as the teacher experience in using critical literacy questioning. The study was conducted over four and a half weeks in a secondary literacy intervention classroom. Data was collected using surveys, observations, and interviews, which were analyzed through inductive coding. The results of the study indicate that critical literacy questioning, on average, increased student self-efficacy under certain conditions. It also illustrated that the use of critical literacy questioning, which sometimes leads to …

Measuring School Bullying Experiences Among Chinese Middle School Students: The Structural And Predictive Validity Of Bullyharm-China, Jingyi Yang

Theses and Dissertations

Bullying is a growing concern in China, yet few measures have been validated to assess different types of bullying among Chinese children. Despite a wealth of evidence on the negative effects of bullying victimization, how gender influences the experience of specific bullying behavior is under-examined. The present study thus aims to adapt and validate the initial BullyHARM scale, as well as explore the predictive validity of six types of bullying for male and female Chinese youth. BullyHARM has previously been shown to be a reliable scale for measuring six bullying domains (i.e., physical, verbal, social/relational, cyber, property, sexual) among children …

How Do The Students Feel? Long-Term English Learners And Their Experience Under The Esl Label, Molly M. Staeheli

Theses and Dissertations

Far too many English learners in my district enter elementary school as non-native speakers, gradually developing skills only to plateau at early intermediate levels as determined by the annual proficiency exam. As these students become long-term English learners (LTELs) in junior high, the pattern of failing and retaking the test wears on them, likely exacerbated by the district-mandated curriculum for English language development (ELD) classes. Unit topics such as money matters and U.S. national monuments at advanced levels fail to tap into students’ lived experiences. I responded to this problem of practice through mixed-methods action research, beginning with a quantitative …

Decentering The White Gaze: The Effects Of Involving African-American Students In Curricular Decision-Making In An Independent School Library, Michelle Efird Rosen

Theses and Dissertations

Many Black students at independent schools across the nation spend most of their educational lives with few classmates or teachers who look like them. This isolation is exacerbated by a curriculum that historically has taught to a White standard of excellence. Long the bastion of wealthy, White families, independent schools have generally failed to make headway in their efforts to recruit Black families to their campuses. This has left Black students with the burden of finding their own methods of adapting to a predominantly White school environment. This study sought to determine how involving four African-American fourth-grade students in a …

Investigation Of Discrepancies In South Carolina Traffic Collision Forms, Jackson Wegmet

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to improve the accuracy of information recorded in the South Carolina traffic collision forms. To accomplish this, it examines 200 forms containing information about fatal crashes in work zones between 2014 and 2020 to determine how many discrepancies exist between the written narrative and other fields. In addition to obtaining these statistics, this thesis seeks to identify factors that influence discrepancies. To test the hypothesis that crash complexity and weather influence the investigating officer’s level of processing (a theory developed by Craik and Lockhart in 1972), and consequentially his/her ability to complete the traffic …

Unruly Ideas: A History Of Kitawala In Congo, Nicole Eggers

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Original oral and ethnographic sources inform this conceptual history of power in central Africa, imagined through the lens of Kitawala religious practices.

Unruly Ideas: A History of Kitawala in Congo recounts the multifaceted history of the Congolese religious movement Kitawala from its colonial beginnings in the 1920s through its continued practice in some of the most conflict-riven parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo today. Drawing on a rich body of original oral, ethnographic, and archival research, Nicole Eggers uses Kitawala as a lens through which to address the complex relationship between politics, religion, healing, and violence in central …

Pursuing Culturally Responsive Math Teaching By Secondary Math Educators: A Professional Development Action Research Study, Emily Bell Redding

Theses and Dissertations

This action research study examines the use of professional development to build the self-efficacy of secondary math teachers in culturally responsive mathematics teaching (CRMT), with the hope to address achievement gaps of Black and Hispanic students. Seven math teachers from a school division in Southwest Virginia participated in a 9-week professional development that included virtual meetings to learn about CRMT, collaboration with colleagues, classroom applications, and self-reflection. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected throughout the 9 weeks in the forms of questionnaires, meeting transcripts, and reflection journals. The research study results found the professional development to build teacher self-efficacy, especially …

Structure V-1: A Mississippian Mica Workshop In Kershaw County, South Carolina, John Mclellan Dodge

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reanalyzes the pottery assemblage of Structure V-1 at the Mulberry site (38KE12). Because Structure V-1 was originally hypothesized to be evidence of a late seventeenth century occupation at the Mulberry site, the framework I use for this research focuses on identifying evidence of community coalescence after Mulberry’s initial occupation ended. However, new evidence from both the pottery and radiocarbon analysis conclusively dates the structure to around the sixteenth century Mulberry I phase. With that new date in mind, I explore the role mica craft production within Structure V-1 might have had in linking the community at Mulberry to …

Decoding Trustworthiness And Helpfulness Of Online Reviews In Hospitality: A Reader-Centric Perspective, Xiaonan Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Online review is an ongoing popular topic for both researchers and practitioners. Consumers’ decision-making is largely influenced by the online reviews, especially those that are perceived as trustworthy and helpful given the information overload issue and existence of fake reviews. This dissertation consists of three independent but closely related studies focusing on trustworthiness and helpfulness of online reviews in hospitality industry. The objectives of this dissertation are to explore the factors affecting review trustworthiness and helpfulness as identified in previous research and determine their relevance to consumers' real-world reading and decision-making experiences, as well as the impact of message framing …

Eugene O’Neill Returns: Theatrical Modernization And O’Neill Adaptations In 1980s China, Shuying Chen

Theses and Dissertations

After nearly vanishing from the Chinese literary world map for thirty years from 1949 to 1979, Eugene O’Neill’s works underwent a reevaluation and resurgence in the reform era of the 1980s. This decade witnessed a wide range of introductions to, research on, translations, and productions of O’Neill’s play in the Chinese theatrical and cultural landscape. Chinese theater practitioners staged some thirty adaptations of O’Neill’s works in both domains of spoken drama and traditional opera, including productions by colleges, state-owned troupes, and independent theater groups. This dissertation contextualizes some of O’Neill adaptations in the socio-cultural context of the transitional period and …

Unveiling The Lifeworld Of Educators’ Social Justice Journeys: A Phenomenological Investigation, Maria Rocas Halkias

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this qualitative phenomenological action research was to explore the viewpoints of educators participating in a community of practice that integrates the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework with culturally responsive teaching and personalized learning. The study involved six teachers from a competitive public school district in New Jersey. Data collection methods encompassed weekly reflections, researcher’s field notes, audio-recorded sessions, and interviews. The study yielded valuable insights into organizational frameworks and learning strategies that enhance educators’ ongoing reflective practices, while also advocating for districts to allocate resources to support teachers' continuous personalized professional development. Analysis of the findings …

Willy-Pierre Mbuinga-Mayunda, Le Père Duparquet, Elochukwu Uzukwu Cssp

Spiritan Horizons

No abstract provided.

Human Error Assessment In Software Engineering, Benjamin S. Meyers

Theses

Software engineers work under strict constraints, balancing a complex, multi-phase development process on top of user support and professional development. Despite their best efforts, software engineers experience human errors, which manifest as software defects. While some defects are simple bugs, others can be costly security vulnerabilities. Practices such as defect tracking and vulnerability disclosure help software engineers reflect on the outcomes of their human errors (i.e. software failures), and even the faults that led to those failures, but not the underlying human behaviors. While human error theory from psychology research has been studied and applied to medical, industrial, and aviation …

Hallucination Detection: Robustly Discerning Reliable Answers In Large Language Models, Yuyuan Chen, Qiang Fu, Yichen Yuan, Zhihao Wen, Ge Fan, Dayiheng Liu, Dongmei Zhang, Zhixu Li, Yanghua Xiao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large language models (LLMs) have gained widespread adoption in various natural language processing tasks, including question answering and dialogue systems. However, a major drawback of LLMs is the issue of hallucination, where they generate unfaithful or inconsistent content that deviates from the input source, leading to severe consequences. In this paper, we propose a robust discriminator named RelD to effectively detect hallucination in LLMs' generated answers. RelD is trained on the constructed RelQA, a bilingual question-answering dialogue dataset along with answers generated by LLMs and a comprehensive set of metrics. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed RelD successfully detects …

When Planetary Cosmopolitanism Meets The Buddhist Ethic: Recycling, Karma And Popular Ecology In Singapore, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

By thinking with and through Buddhist cosmology, this paper explores the emergence of an ethical sensibility—what we call planetary cosmopolitanism—that is based on not just a spatially expanded ethic of care to ecological worlds, but also a temporally extended sense of justice to the future Earth. This transtemporal sense of ethical becoming reflects how the possibility of future ‘rebirth’ and accountability for past actions can motivate new ecological consciousness in the present. We forge these ideas through an empirical focus on popular Buddhist ecological practices in Singapore, where green recovery visions have primarily been driven by a secular and technocratic …

Help-Seeking Behavior Among Resettled Refugee, Mahfoudha Sid’Elemine

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The refugee resettlement process is a huge part of refugees’ journeys in their new countries that has a lasting impact on their long-term integration. The literature highlights the importance of trust for successful refugee resettlement. This dissertation, however, challenges assumptions about the primary importance of “trust” and argues that the importance of trust is relative and can depend on the nature of the resettlement program and the perspective and background of refugees. In other words, there is not a one-size-fits-all of trust building in the context of resettlement. For certain resettlement programs trust building can be counterproductive when resources are …

Partnering With Patients And Families To Improve Diagnostic Safety Through The Ourdx Tool: Effects Of Race, Ethnicity, And Language Preference, Fabienne C Bourgeois, Nicholas J Hart, Zhiyong Dong, Long H Ngo, Catherine M Desroches, Eric J Thomas, Sigall K Bell

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Patients and families at risk for health disparities may also be at higher risk for diagnostic errors but less likely to report them.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to explore differences in race, ethnicity, and language preference associated with patient and family contributions and concerns using an electronic previsit tool designed to engage patients and families in the diagnostic process (DxP).

METHODS: Cross-sectional study of 5,731 patients and families presenting to three subspecialty clinics at an urban pediatric hospital May to December 2021 who completed a previsit tool, codeveloped and tested with patients and families. Prior to each visit, patients/families …

Catching Elusive Depression Via Facial Micro-Expression Recognition, Xiaohui Chen, Tony Tie (T.) Luo

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Depression is a common mental health disorder that can cause consequential symptoms with continuously depressed mood that leads to emotional distress. One category of depression is Concealed Depression, where patients intentionally or unintentionally hide their genuine emotions through exterior optimism, thereby complicating and delaying diagnosis and treatment and leading to unexpected suicides. In this article, we propose to diagnose concealed depression by using facial micro-expressions (FMEs) to detect and recognize underlying true emotions. However, the extremely low intensity and subtle nature of FMEs make their recognition a tough task. We propose a facial landmark-based Region-of-Interest (ROI) approach to address the …

A Novel Method Of Decision Making Based On Plithogenic Contradictions, Nivetha Martin, Florentin Smarandache, Sudha S

Neutrosophic Systems with Applications

Plithogenic decision-making models are evolved integrating the Plithogenic modelling approach with various methods of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). The earlier Plithogenic based decision methods are primarily based on the degrees of appurtenance. This paper introduces a novel Plithogenic ranking genre of decision-making paradigm based on degrees of contradiction. The method of Decision Making on Plithogenic Contradictions (DMPC) developed in this research work is indigenous and unique as the modeling procedure doesn’t resemble any of the decision methods. This simple and logical approach proposed in this paper is applied in making optimal decisions on supplier selection. The proposed contradiction based Plithogenic model …

The Big Cheese ‘Important Person’, Gerald Leonard Cohen

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing Summary Writing: Further Exploration Of L2 Reading And Writing, Jingjing Qin, Timothy Groombridge

All Works

The hybrid nature of reading-to-write tasks calls for more empirical research on understanding the relationship between L2 reading, writing, and proficiency. This study examines summaries written by 46 Emirati university students, who were asked to write a 150-word summary of an expository text on the topic of “consumerism” during class hours. The summary was assessed based on an analytic rubric. It was also assessed quantitatively in terms of the inclusion of the number of important ideas from the source text, namely, content analysis scores. In addition, the students’ language proficiency, reading proficiency, and writing proficiency had already been externally ascertained …

Regulating Discourse: How Children With And Without Send Internalize The Evaluative Framework Of Adults, Efthymia Efthymiou

All Works

This study presents a Bakhtinian analysis of discourse among children with Special Educational Needs and Disorders (SEND) in two elementary classrooms, delving into the complicated interaction of voices and perspectives within their communication. The research investigates how the evaluation of peers provides a contextual backdrop for the voices of children with SEND. Conducted as a longitudinal investigation in an English primary school, data were collected over a three-month period to disclose communication dynamics. Notably, the discourse analysis reveals the use of “hybrid constructions” by students, wherein they skillfully blend adult values with their own viewpoints when discussing peers, thus navigating …

Tackling Misperceptions About Immigrants With Fact-Checking Interventions: A Randomized Survey Experiment, Syngjoo Choi, Chung-Yoon Choi, Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

We conduct a randomized online survey experiment to study the impact of fact-checking offers and financial incentives on misperceptions about immigrants. We find that natives overestimate the number of immigrants and the social and economic costs of immigration. Offering a free check of the factual information about immigrants reduces these misperceptions; it becomes more effective when combined with financial incentives. However, more than half of the participants never took up offers to check factual information. Using a model of information search with limited attention, we identify the presence of non-negligible costs of information search and processing, which limits the effectiveness …

Flacgec: A Chinese Grammatical Error Correction Dataset With Fine-Grained Linguistic Annotation, Hanyue Du, Yike Zhao, Qingyuan Tian, Jiani Wang, Lei Wang, Yunshi Lan, Xuesong Lu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Chinese Grammatical Error Correction (CGEC) has been attracting growing attention from researchers recently. In spite of the fact that multiple CGEC datasets have been developed to support the research, these datasets lack the ability to provide a deep linguistic topology of grammar errors, which is critical for interpreting and diagnosing CGEC approaches. To address this limitation, we introduce FlaCGEC, which is a new CGEC dataset featured with fine-grained linguistic annotation. Specifically, we collect raw corpus from the linguistic schema defined by Chinese language experts, conduct edits on sentences via rules, and refine generated samples manually, which results in 10k sentences …

Dramatic Storytelling Develops Emergent Literacy In Efl: Evidence From The Uae Kindergartens, Ghada Yahya Alkilani

Dissertations

There is increasing importance of the English language for educational excellence and career success in the UAE. The early years is a sensitive period for language acquisition, and preschool age is the best time to learn English as a foreign language (EFL). Stories are a main vehicle used in early childhood education (ECE) to engage children in language learning. Although previous studies have found dramatic storytelling to be particularly effective in developing children’s emergent literacy in English as a native language, little is known about the effect of dramatic storytelling on developing young children’s emergent literacy in EFL. Also, there …

Evlog: Identifying Anomalous Logs Over Software Evolution, Yintong Huo, Cheryl Lee, Yuxin Su, Shiwen Shan, Jinyang Liu, Michael Lyu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software logs record system activities, aiding maintainers in identifying the underlying causes for failures and enabling prompt mitigation actions. However, maintainers need to inspect a large volume of daily logs to identify the anomalous logs that reveal failure details for further diagnosis. Thus, how to automatically distinguish these anomalous logs from normal logs becomes a critical problem. Existing approaches alleviate the burden on software maintainers, but they are built upon an improper yet critical assumption: logging statements in the software remain unchanged. While software keeps evolving, our empirical study finds that evolving software brings three challenges: log parsing errors, evolving …

Identification Of Factors Influencing Refusal Covid-19 Vaccine Using Fahp, Norpah Mahat, Nur Izyan Nabilah, Izleen Ibrahim

Malaysian Journal of Computing (MJoC)

The pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread rapidly worldwide, initially emerging in China. It had spread to more than 180 nations and infected more than 18.4 million people just over six months as recorded in August 2020. Thus, all countries were fighting to get rid of this virus and to find a vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccine is currently being offered to people who qualify, but many Malaysians chose not to sign up to receive the immunization. The initial booster dose of vaccine was only administered to half of the nation's total population. Studying the motivational elements and health beliefs that influence …

Supporting Care Partners Of People Living With Dementia, Sherril Gelmon, Walter Dawson, Jenn Hollandsworth Reed

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report addresses the need to better support care partners of people living with dementia, including a proposal for a new Dementia Care Partner Hub (the “Hub”) that will facilitate care partner access to information, supports, services and activities. This work is the culmination of the “Supporting Care Partners of People Living with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD)” project funded by the Portland State University Institute on Aging’s “Gerontology Education & Research Initiative” (GERI) faculty grant, conducted from June 2022 to October 2023. The project focused on addressing concerns and needs of care partners and people living with dementia …

The Relationship Of Two Co-Teaching Models In A Second Grade Special Education Inclusion Classrooms: Impact On Student Achievement, Natalie Hoffert

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research questions addressed in this study were: In a second grade special education inclusion classroom, how do the students experience two co-teaching models: station teaching and alternative teaching? Subquestion 1: How does students’ performance on ELA assessments vary depending on the co-teaching model? Subquestion 2: How does student involvement, enjoyment, and perceived sense of understanding compare after each co-teaching model? Subquestion 3: Do the ELA assessment scores and student attitudes correlate positively? The review of the literature included benefits and drawbacks of special education inclusion classrooms, the six co-teaching models, and the second grade Common Core English Language Arts …