Digital Commons Network^™

Table Of Contents (V. 65, No. 5)

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abolition Economics, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, René Reyes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Over the past several decades, Law & Economics has established itself as one of the most well-known branches of interdisciplinary legal scholarship. The tools of L&E have been applied to a wide range of legal issues and have even been brought to bear on Critical Race Theory in an attempt to address some of CRT’s perceived shortcomings. This Article seeks to reverse this dynamic of influence by applying CRT and related critical perspectives to the field of economics. We call our approach Abolition Economics. By embracing the abolitionist ethos of “dismantle, change, and build,” we seek to break strict …

Examining Adaptation To Diagnosis And Decisions About Medical Care Among Caregivers Of Children With Medical Complexity, Johanna Michlig

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Relatively little research has examined the experiences of caregivers of children with medical complexity (CMC). Additionally, it has been well documented that CMC, who are Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) graduates, have high healthcare utilization. As CMC often have ambiguous or multiple diagnoses, caregivers may face a period of adaptation to diagnosis differently from those with a singular diagnosis. Caregivers of CMC are at higher risk for anxiety, depression, and difficulties with the healthcare system. To date, no published studies have examined the experiences of caregivers of CMC, their adaptation to diagnosis, and their well-being. This study was conducted in …

Performing Information Extraction For Mission Engineering Applications, Samuel R. Koski

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The process of extracting structured data from unstructured and semi-structured text is manual, time consuming and error prone. Current natural language processing approaches for automating this process are difficult to verify for non-trivial and context-sensitive corpora. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have become a subject of considerable interest, opening a promising avenue of exploration. However, there is limited evidence on the performance of LLMs for information extraction.

In this dissertation, an approach is proposed to evaluate the accuracy of Stanford OpenIE and OpenAI's ChatGPT for this purpose. This includes comparing Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples extracted by each of …

Inviting Submission: Isabella Beeton At The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1856-1865, Julie Megan Sorge Way

English Theses & Dissertations

Isabella Beeton, creator of the iconic domestic manual Beeton’s Book of Household Management, died suddenly in 1865, just before her twenty-ninth birthday. Her popular book survived to codify stereotypical Victorian female ideals. Yet the “Mrs Beeton” mythos camouflages a remarkable talent: far from domestic drudgery, Beeton maintained a vibrant career as a writer and editor at the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (EDM), traveling widely to research the latest fashions and laboring behind the scenes to ensure the magazine’s success. Closely examining Beeton’s EDM work demonstrates how these formative, productive years shaped her later, more popular writing. Such a …

Bikeability Disparities In Orange County, California: Intersection Of Place And Demographics, Jeanette Gritton, Maria Cristina Martinez, Georgiana Bostean, Megan Thiele Strong

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Active transportation modes such as walking and biking are gaining popularity for their extensive health and environmental benefits, yet scholars know little about how place-based accessibility varies by area sociodemographic composition. This study is among the first to examine sociodemographic disparities (by both race and socioeconomic status) in bikeability while allowing for heterogeneity in disparities. Consideration of bikeability disparities is particularly critical within the framework of urban planning concepts that promote equitable accessibility and reduced dependency on automobiles, such as the 15-minute city. Geographically Weighted Regressions examined associations between census tract-level bikeability (using an index that combines five components), socioeconomic …

Best Practices In Professional Learning Communities That Influence Teacher Self-Efficacy, Silian Molly Hornsby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined best practices in professional learning communities (PLCs) that influence teacher self-efficacy. Participants were primary and intermediate teachers and teacher leaders from a large suburban elementary school in Texas. Participants had to have at least 1 year of teaching and PLC experience. The semistructured teacher and teacher-leader interviews were recorded and transcribed in real time using Otter.ai software. After members checked the transcription, the transcription was uploaded into the NVivo software for coding and identifying common themes. The findings were separated into themes based on the study’s research questions. Research question 1 explored what teachers and …

Empowerment In Patriarchy: A Phenomenological Study Of Working Mothers In The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Michael Snapp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore systems of empowerment and support for female members of a patriarchal society who work full-time outside of the home. Specific to this study are the lived experiences of female members of The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church) who are married, have at least one child at home, and have full-time employment outside the home, and the systems of support or empowerment that have been in place, or that they wish had been in place. Ten participants described their experiences as they related to working full-time outside the home, …

Implications Of Minimum Description Length For Adversarial Attack In Natural Language Processing, Kshitiz Tiwari, Lu Zhang

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Investigating causality to establish novel criteria for training robust natural language processing (NLP) models is an active research area. However, current methods face various challenges such as the difficulties in identifying keyword lexicons and obtaining data from multiple labeled environments. In this paper, we study the problem of robust NLP from a complementary but different angle: we treat the behavior of an attack model as a complex causal mechanism and quantify its algorithmic information using the minimum description length (MDL) framework. Specifically, we use masked language modeling (MLM) to measure the “amount of effort” needed to transform from the original …

Lbsci 790.3 Digital Humanities, S E. Hackney

Open Educational Resources

This course examines the history, methods, tools, and scholarly practices of teaching and research in the digital humanities (DH), including ways in which the library can engage with, enhance, and support those activities. The course will focus on digital humanities as a burgeoning field in its own right, as well as the development of digital methods in specific disciplines within the humanities. Students will consider their role as information professionals in the creation, cleaning, storage, and dissemination of digital humanities datasets and research projects, as well as gain hands-on experience with some of the tools and methods used in these …

Spanish-Speaking English Learners’ Experience In Spanish/English Dual Language Immersion Schools, Sara Worthington

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Research has demonstrated that dual language immersion (DLI) schools provide one of the most viable pathways for students of families who speak a language other than English to maintain and develop their home language proficiencies while also learning and improving their proficiencies in English. The professional development (PD) designed for this project focuses on maximizing the English instruction time in Spanish/English dual language immersion schools. Across the United States, the number of DLI programs has increased dramatically in the past few decades yet often the educators employed in the programs have little or no specific training in teaching English as …

Self-Regulated Learning For English Language Learners In Asynchronous Online Community College Courses, Nicole Olalde

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The number of students who take asynchronous online courses has soared, notably since the onset of COVID in 2020. Success in these courses requires a significant amount of self-discipline. Students who struggle in this context have cited a lack of support, feelings of isolation, and difficulties regulating their learning. For adult English language learners, (ELLs) this is an additional burden because they are taking post-secondary education courses in a language that is not their first language. There is a positive correlation between the use of self-regulated learning (SRL) and academic performance. The ability of students to self-regulate accounts for a …

How Student Name Choice Affects Identity, Raquel Hunt

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Over the years, research on language and identity has been abundant in the field of sociolinguistics. This capstone reviewed some of the background literature on language and identity as well as more recent literature on how multilingual learners’ identities are affected by what name they choose to be called at school and what teachers actually call them. A few themes emerged: multilingual learners have difficulty with non-English names in school, multilingual learners and their families consider many factors as they choose a name to use at school, and teachers can profoundly impact students’ identities by the way they treat student …

The Connection Between Depth And Complexity And Culturally Relevant Teaching, Aisling Schlosser

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This paper is the documentation of an educational coach’s journey to find the most effective small group instructional practices for teaching phonemic awareness and phonics to kindergarten and first grade students. The need to share this research led to the development of four professional development sessions for effective instruction of phonemic awareness and phonics instruction specifically created for teachers of kindergarten and first grade students. The Capstone project began by answering the question, How do kindergarten-first grade teachers use best practices in phonemic awareness and phonics to develop effective small group reading instruction that will increase students reading proficiency? The …

Inclusive Approaches To Teaching Writing To Users Of Diverse Englishes In The Secondary Ela Classroom, Rachel Mann

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Many teachers expect their students to produce writing that adheres to academic language norms. However, these expectations are often rooted in socially-constructed ideologies rather than founded on established linguistic facts. Academic language forms derive from standard language varieties, which, contrary to popular belief, are not more correct, more prestigious, or more valuable than any other variation. Instead, “standard” language is an embodiment of the linguistic practices of the dominant social group, and notions of its superiority are used to reinforce societal power structures. Since academic language is derived from standardized forms, it too is used to maintain social hierarchies and, …

Egan-Inspired Year-Long Lid Project For An Ela Secondary Classroom, William Hoiseth

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a curricular exploration of the educational philosophy of Kieran Egan. Egan's LiD project proposes a student learning project centered on his theory of the development of understanding which posits children as mimicking the process through which society has used language tools in order to develop new forms of thought. The author drew on descriptions of LiD projects to meet a desire to make education a more engaging and natural process. The research question "In what ways can teacher instruction support Learning in Depth in a secondary English and Language Arts classroom?" uses LiD as the magnifying …

The Importance Of Black Authorship In Curriculum As A Way To Develop Literacy Skills In Black Students, Aleah Felton

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Black students continue to lag behind in literacy scores across the United States. Amidst sweeping book bans and new legislation that seeks to rewrite America’s bloody history, the United States may see a swift return to canonical literature. However, studies demonstrate the need to incorporate multicultural literature in classrooms to increase engagement and develop critical literacy skills. Therefore, the presence of Black authoriship is essential for developing Black literacy–the pursuit of mastery in certain skills, especially reading and writing, amongst Black people. This project seeks to answer the central question: What does it mean to pursue Black Literacy, and how …

Supporting Learning Experiences For English Learners At Environmental Learning Centers Through The Creation Of Pre-Teaching Materials, Nicole Bolduc

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Environmental education should not be limited to those who speak a specific language. All students benefit from the integration of environmental education into their curriculums and spending time outdoors. Environmental learning centers are just one of the many places that students can visit to increase their environmental literacy, yet the lessons are not always easy for language learners to access. My capstone project seeks to answer the question: How can Environmental Learning Centers improve learning experiences for English Learners through pre-teaching resources and strategies? For this project, I partnered with an environmental learning center to create supplemental vocabulary curriculum based …

Second Language Acquisition For General Educators: An Accessible Professional Development Course, Angela Cabreana

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This capstone project was built in response to the research question “How can general education educators learn the process of language acquisition in an accessible way?” With the population of multilingual learners (MLs) in public schools steadily increasing and teacher preparation programs often not preparing teachers for these students, many general education teachers are looking for professional development (PD) on best practices for teaching MLs. Thus the idea for developing a free, asynchronous website professional development course that instructs general educators on the process of second language acquisition (SLA) was born. The literature review explores the theories and processes that …

Toward A Pedagogy Of Linguistic Justice Through Empathy In Owi, Marcela Hebbard, Janine Morris, Catrina Mitchum

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

This article argues that in the teaching of writing online, incidents of linguistic discrimination can be (in)directly caused by faculty unfamiliarity with online teaching best practices, lack of critical linguistic awareness, and the prevalent legacy of racist and monolingual ideologies. To address this issue, it is necessary to cultivate empathy as a bridge between instructors and students. This article calls for the interconnectedness of empathy and linguistic justice in online writing courses as tools to create more equitable and inclusive environments for all students. The article uses data from a longitudinal, cross-institutional study to apply an empathetic, linguistically just approach …

Digitalization Of German Higher Education And The Role Of Europe, Hans G. Schuetze

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Special Issue

Book Review Of O’Dowd, R. (2023). Internationalising Higher Education And The Role Of Virtual Exchange, Adam Freed, Grace Cleary

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Digitalization Of Higher Education In Vietnam, Le Thi Thanh Thu

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Diachronic Demographic Patterns Of Enslaved People At Mulberry Hill, Quincey Urban

Longwood Senior Theses

The Atlantic Slave Trade was responsible for forcibly importing captive Africans to North and South America as enslaved laborers for white plantation owners. This process acted as a catalyst for the creolization of enslaved African communities inside plantations across the Americas. This research thesis discusses the diachronic demographics of one such plantation community, Mulberry Hill, located in Charlotte County, Virginia. The goal is to determine which of the enslaved Africans were brought to the planation directly from Africa, and which ones were acquired from existing plantations in the Americas. The specific combination of these sources for Mulberry Hill’s enslaved community …

The Celts: The Story Of A Brilliant Culture And Its Mysterious Disappearance, Cynthia Klima

Global Citizenship Pedagogy Community

This module will introduce the student to the Celtic peoples, whose presence over Europe spread from present-day Czech Republic to Spain, and from Anatolia to Italy to the Northern European Plain. The mysteriousness of these people has conjured up many legends of the Celts, stories based mainly on oral history as there exists no written record from the Celtic period. It is only known that the Celts eventually disappeared as a group, swallowed up by the Roman and German empires and now etched into oblivion. In this module, we will explore the history of the Celts, what is known, and …

Solar Energy Adoption In Unguja, Tanzania: Influence Of Awareness, Socioeconomics, And Technology Knowledge, Maxime Warnery

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study looked into the effect of information dissemination on the willingness to adopt solar energy on Unguja Island in the Zanzibar Archipelago. Utilizing an information provision survey, I collected data on demographic factors, personal beliefs, and attitudes towards solar energy. The research focused on determining how information provision affects public perceptions and the likelihood of adopting solar technologies. The findings revealed a significant positive correlation between detailed and contextually relevant information and increased acceptance of solar energy solutions. The enhanced intervention was particularly effective in changing beliefs about solar energy's reliability and economic benefits, addressing critical local issues such …

Improving Literacy Skills For Els Through Targeted Pd, Kayla R. De Vos

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Over the last few decades, schools have seen an increase in the number of English learners entering their classrooms. Meeting the needs of English learners continues to be a topic for discussion. Schools and teachers across the United States are struggling to appropriately meet the unique learning needs of this demographic of students. English learners continue to be pushed through the educational system while the gap between them and their non-EL peers continues to widen. This school improvement plan was created with the intention of providing a professional development plan that focuses on improving teacher knowledge and providing teachers with …

Navigating Literacy Proficiency: Merging Science Of Reading And Guided Approaches, Amber Toms

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This action research was prompted by the recognition that a "one-size-fits-all" instructional approach may not cater to the diverse needs of all students, particularly those in special education. The study emphasizes science of reading principles with an appreciation for incorporating guided reading elements to enhance implicit learning and to fast-track learning in order to close the gap, while still catering to the child’s specific needs. The researcher, currently serving as a PK-2^nd grade special education teacher, adjusted the current norms to promote student success. Rather than allocating the usual 45 minutes per day for group instruction with her second-grade …

Play Having Its Place In Early Childhood Education, Emily Streicher

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This literature review and school improvement plan focuses on the power of play for early childhood learners. Play is an innate characteristic in humans and various species alike. Despite the overwhelming evidence supporting play for children, academic demands and pressures felt by teachers and administrators are causing play in early childhood settings to be eliminated or reduced. Teachers, along with administrators, play a key part in this. Early childhood research suggests that teachers' beliefs indicate the likelihood of teachers' intentions to develop a child-centered curriculum and pedagogy that meet children's development and needs (Cheung et al., 2022). Ergo, this school …

Decommodifying Cultural Heritage: A Linguistic Unpacking Of "Cultural Property", Zoe Creamer

William & Mary Law Review

The complex history of cultural property regulation in the United States, discussed below, suggests a lack of consensus regarding the definition of the legislation’s target. However, as this Note argues, it is futile to attempt crafting a precise definition of the objects qualifying for protection under such legislation without first addressing the dueling interests inherent in the operative words. An examination of the various aims of cultural property legislation reveals two competing goals. On one side exists the desire to protect cultural heritage for the world’s enrichment, and on the other is the desire to protect private ownership rights. These …