Digital Commons Network^™

Navigating Challenges In Teacher Preparation: Case Studies In Practice And Innovation, Kathleen M. Randolph

Journal of Case Learning & Exceptional Learners

No abstract provided.

Rhythm Against Poethics, Jayvyn Dacas

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis stages an auto-poetic ethnography that listens to, and moves with, the anterior spaces of Black life. Those murmurs, hums, musical hesitations, and infrastructural vibrations that refuse capture by dominant epistemic regimes. Drawing from Ramon Amaro’s reading of Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick and Alexander Weheliye’s reflections on sound, Fred Moten’s insights on displacement, and Tendayi Sithole’s attention to the phonographic, the project situates music production as method and unworlding. Through engagements with the 808, sampling, sound systems, and embodied listening across Florida. Spaces like the warehouse, the party, record stores, and community become the work of Black voices, and …

Business Communication And Editing Students’ Evaluations Of Written Error: An Eye-Tracking Study, Matt Baker, Grant Eck, Ana Barraza, Benjamin Duffield

Faculty Publications

Using eye-tracking and interview methods, this study investigates how business communication students and editing students attend to and evaluate writing. Participants reviewed blog posts embedded with errors and judged publication readiness. While both groups visually fixated longer on errors than non-errors, business communication students were more likely to approve error-containing texts for publication. Qualitative data revealed that business communication students prioritized content while editing students prioritized surface-level issues. These findings suggest that disciplinary background informs evaluative standards, even when error-detection behavior is similar. The results carry implications for instruction in business writing and editing, especially concerning collaborative, cross-disciplinary workplace writing.

Cerebellar Contributions To Speech And Clinical Outcomes In Stroke: A Multimodal Investigation Of Structural Integrity Across Chronic And Acute Cohorts, Makayla Joy Gibson

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the critical role of the cerebellum in speech production, with a focus on chronic post-stroke apraxia of speech (AOS), lesion-related cerebellar degeneration, and age-related changes in cerebellar structure among healthy individuals. While speech deficits have traditionally been attributed to cortical lesions, mounting evidence suggests that the cerebellum contributes significantly to speech-motor planning, execution, and error correction. Using multimodal neuroimaging, lesion-symptom mapping, and standardized speech assessments, this research examines cerebellar gray matter volume (GMV) across three complementary studies.

Aim 1 evaluates the association between cerebellar GMV and AOS severity in individuals with chronic left hemisphere stroke. Findings support …

A Math Teacher’S Reflexive Journey Into The Opportunity Gap, Richard A. Ball Iii

Theses and Dissertations

This multiple case study sought to determine what educational factors, if any, impacted Black students in a public school located in the South-eastern United States, to enroll in a lower-level math course. The study also aimed to view the mathematical identities of these students and have myself reflect on my practice both locally and globally. This, however, is a result of the Problem of Practice, the opportunity gap. H. Richard Milner’s (2012) opportunity gap framework served as the theoretical framework for this study and for which all findings were situated. The data was analyzed using deductive coding, with the elements …

Facing The Tension: A Grounded Theory Of Perceptions Of Bias, Cultural Responsiveness, And Social Justice Advocacy Among Forensic Evaluators, Magen M. Hauser

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Forensic psychologists are held to culturally responsive standards by the American Psychological Association, which reflect the latest research calling for professionals to acknowledge and reflect on power, privilege, and biases within themselves, their practice, and other elements of their work. However, forensic psychology has not kept pace with this movement. Additionally, the credibility and livelihood of forensic evaluators and their professional judgments rely on their ability to be as objective and unbiased as possible. Often, the idea of focusing on one’s own identities and biases as the evaluator is conflated with a lack of objectivity. This perceived conflict of expectations …

Relating To Pain: Attachment As A Framework For Understanding Chronic Pain, Katie H. Brenner

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Despite contemporary Western healthcare’s emphasis on the biopsychosocial model of illness, there has been relatively limited attention given to the way that attachment relationships, as part of the social sphere of the model, impact individuals’ chronic pain experiences and management. Attachment influences help-seeking behaviors, sense of self-efficacy, coping skills, and communication abilities, all of which are implicated in pain experience and management. As such, this dissertation examines the question: Do attachment experiences influence how individuals perceive and manage chronic pain? This study expands on the existing research by conceptualizing attachment as a fluid experience that varies across relationships and circumstances, …

At The Table: Queer Identity And Exploration Through Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Seth Carroll

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study explored the phenomenon of a growing queer subculture within the tabletop role-playing game community. Eight participants, all self-identified members of the LGBTQIA+ community with significant experience playing tabletop role-playing games, were interviewed to better understand their lived experience within this subculture, what draws them to playing tabletop role-playing games, and the personal impacts and meaning they draw from engaging in them. Participants identified as White, between the ages of 23 and 30, and represented a variety of queer identities in both sexuality and gender. Data was analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) in order to derive six group …

The Perceptions Of Training And Development And Emotional Intelligence Among Virtual Leaders In Public And Private Institutions Of Higher Education, Ryan J. Trautweiler

Theses and Dissertations

This applied qualitative dissertation explored virtual leadership in higher education, examining virtual leaders' perceptions of training and development and emotional intelligence. Using an inductive research approach, data were collected through semistructured interviews and a questionnaire distributed via Google Forms to eight virtual leaders from public and private higher education institutions. Data were analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) and thematic analysis to identify key patterns and themes. Findings revealed distinctions between public and private institutions. In public institutions, training and development focused on faculty preparedness, resourcefulness in overcoming limitations, and its impact on student engagement. In private institutions, training was …

Developing Proportional Hazards Mixture Cure Models And Predicting Risk For Persons With End-Stage Kidney Disease, Nathan Meyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditional survival analysis techniques assume that all individuals will eventually experience the event of interest. This is as opposed to allowing for a subset of cured individuals. Hence, we consider a mixture cure model that can allow a subset of people to be cured of the disease and will never experience the event of interest. This gives a more accurate interpretation of survivability by analyzing both the shortand long-term effects of a set of variables on the individuals’ survival probabilities. However, the cure status is considered an unknown variable. Thus, the expectationmaximization algorithm is required to estimate this latent variable …

Digitally Collaborative: An Analysis Of Peer Review In Fyc Classes And The Affordances Of Digital Tools, Arianna Bartolone

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Digital technology has significantly impacted students and their learning environments. Jobs that do not require at least an entry-level understanding of basic computer skills are nearly impossible to find. Online platforms have become integrated into our daily lives and are now essential in the classroom. Students are expected to grasp the functions of technology and its intersection with the curriculum. Universities utilize various online learning technologies in their classrooms. While basic computer literacy and understanding are crucial components of university education, students require additional support when using these platforms in their writing. I will explore how to integrate digital literacy …

Tiny-Physics: A Compact Large Language Model For Physics Word Problems On Mobile Devices, Akhil Vallala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This thesis offers Tiny-Physics, a compact large language model optimized for solving physics word problems on mobile devices. While Small Language Models (SLMs) offer potential for on-device learning, there is a lack of domain-specialized models for physics. This research fine-tunes smolLM2-360M, a state-of-the-art SLM, using a combination of publicly available datasets (e.g., camel-ai/physics) and a novel synthetic dataset generated through a multi-agent system based on GPT-4o and 1000 Solved Problems in Classical Physics.

The fine-tuning process incorporates both supervised and instruction-tuning methods, including LoRA for parameter-efficient training. The resulting model is converted to GGUF format for deployment on resource-constrained mobile …

Making Hot Chocolate: Connecting Hypersexuality And Violence Against Black American Women In 20th And 21st Century Literature, Ashlan Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

African American literature in the early 20th and 21st centuries have been employed as a method of protest against the deleterious stereotyping of Ebonic (read: Black American) people in the United States, addressing and challenging the monolithic notions that define Ebonic people in life and media. In the process of expressing these protests, challengers to racist social norms utilize the Ebonic female body and image for the benefit of their personal interests through a combination of hypersexuality and violence. This thesis addresses the lack of accountability in these political lenses and assesses the ways in which authors objectify and abuse …

Amalia E Carlo (1812) By Pietro Carlo Guglielmi In Napoleonic Naples: Unearthing A Forgotten Opera, Barbara Salani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This dissertation offers a significant contribution to musicology, illuminating an opera lost to obscurity for over two centuries. Its reconstruction is the result of interdisciplinary research encompassing Italian socio-political history, philology, and cultural-linguistic analysis. The opera is Amalia e Carlo, a masterpiece by Pietro Carlo Guglielmi, composed in 1812, which enjoyed a brief period of success before succumbing to the shifting tides of time and political change. Its libretto and musical score were scattered and relegated to the obscurity of archives and closets in Tuscany, Naples, and Munich. The research aims to elucidate the opera's importance not only within the …

Materia Non Medica: Reading Disability And Medical Narratives In The Daughter Of Doctor Moreau, Jessica Elizabeth Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This thesis presents a close reading of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, engaging Indigenous studies and disability studies to illuminate how the novel interrogates embodiment, medical authority, and human difference. By situating the text within historical frameworks of medicine and corporeality in Mexico, and alongside speculative modes that seek to recuperate non-Western epistemologies, the analysis reveals how Moreno-Garcia reimagines the body as mutable, relational, and politically charged. The narrative’s hybrid characters and transgressive identities offer a generative lens through which to explore bodily variance, not as deviation, but as a site of possibility. Ultimately, this thesis argues …

#Tribe: A Study On Digital Tribalism In Saudi Arabia, Maha Alrehaili

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This dissertation examines digital tribalism in Saudi Arabia as a lens through which to explore the complex interplay between state, identity politics, and social media in an era of rapid transformation. Amidst ambitious modernization efforts under Vision 2030 and ongoing economic restructuring, the Saudi state has sought to establish a national identity by leveraging tribal heritage. This study investigates how the three major tribes, Harb, Qahtan, and Otaibah, are responding to rapid modernization through an examination of their digital presence on X (formerly Twitter).

Employing a comparative case study design and content analysis of three years of digital activity, this …

Dual Language Programs: An Exploration, Amanda Burke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

This research is an exploration into: 1) the utilization of programs that teach students English as a second language in the US, particularly Dual Language programs, 2) a history of research surrounding the formation of an individual or group identity, both overall and through an ESOL lens, and 3) how ESOL instruction in the US may be impacted by certain aspects of this identity construction.

After a review of research, this dissertation analyzes a cohort of students from the Palm Beach County School District who were enrolled in either a Dual Language program or in a “traditional” ESOL program from …

A Study On Sentence-Level Argument Identification In Imbalanced Student Essay Corpora, Rishabh Lingam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Writing is an essential skill that affects success in nearly every academic subject and professional field. For undergraduate students, strong writing helps them organize ideas, communicate clearly, and perform better in both written assignments and overall coursework. Good writing also supports critical thinking, which is key to problem-solving and academic growth. Beyond school, writing continues to be important in the workplace, where it is used for emails, reports, presentations, and formal documents. Yet, despite its importance, many students and graduates do not have strong writing skills, and this gap is noticed by employers. A recent survey by Ashley Finley [1] …

Department Of English Newsletter, Winter 2024-2025, Illinois State University, Department Of English

Department of English Newsletter

Newsletter of the Illinois State University Department of English

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan I. Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

Suicide Phenotyping From Clinical Notes In Safety-Net Psychiatric Hospital Using Multi-Label Classification With Pre-Trained Language Models, Zehan Li, Yan Hu, Scott Lane, Salih Selek, Lokesh Shahani, Rodrigo Machado-Vieira, Jair Soares, Hua Xu, Hongfang Liu, Ming Huang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Accurate identification and categorization of suicidal events can yield better suicide precautions, reducing operational burden, and improving care quality in high-acuity psychiatric settings. Pre-trained language models offer promise for identifying suicidality from unstructured clinical narratives. We evaluated the performance of four BERT-based models using two fine-tuning strategies (multiple single-label and single multi-label) for detecting coexisting suicidal events from 500 annotated psychiatric evaluation notes. The notes were labeled for suicidal ideation (SI), suicide attempts (SA), exposure to suicide (ES), and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). RoBERTa outperformed other models using binary relevance (acc=0.86, F1=0.78). MentalBERT (F1=0.74) also exceeded BioClinicalBERT (F1=0.72). RoBERTa fine-tuned with …

Similarity May Be Safer: The Effect Of Similarity Between Speech-Based Takeover Request Style And Driver Personality On Self-Driving Takeover Performance, Keer Ma, Jianfeng Wu, Yanxi Lin, Zihan Li, Songyang Guo, Dongfang Jiao, Shihan Yu

Psychology Faculty Publications

In Level 3 automated driving, it is critical that drivers can rapidly and effectively shift from non-driving related tasks (NDRT) back to the driving task. While previous research has examined the modality, timing, and vocal characteristics of takeover requests (TORs), little is known about how the style of speech-based TORs interacts with drivers’ personality traits. This study conducted a driving simulator experiment with 49 participants using a 2 × 2 within-subjects design. Drawing on the dominant-submissive dimension of personality, we examined the similarity of personality tendencies between speech-based TORs and drivers under takeover scenarios of varying urgency (low: road construction; …

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

The Performance Of Neurologically Intact Sequential Shona-English Bilingual Speakers On The Bilingual Aphasia Test, Mcloddy R. Kadyamusuma, Antony R. Joseph

Faculty Publications – Communication Sciences and Disorders

Background
Currently, no standardized culturally and linguistically appropriate assessment tools may be used to provide speech and language assessment for Shona-English bilingual speakers.

Aims
This study examined the performance of Shona-English sequential bilingual speakers on the full versions of the Shona and English Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT).

Methods and Procedures
The adapted BAT-Sh and BAT-E were administered to 20 neurologically intact sequential bilingual individuals 30 to 40 years of age. Each participant was administered 32 tasks to facilitate a complete assessment of language skills at all levels of processing and for all modalities.

Results
The Shona-English sequential bilingual speakers performed …

Community Immersion For Homegrown Teachers: Learning “There Are Never Just Negatives…”, Elizabeth A. Skinner, Apryl Riley

Faculty Publications - College of Education

The authors describe an initiative between an urban public school district, a city college, and a college of education to establish a pipeline of teachers of color from and for the school district. The qualitative research occurred during the teacher candidates’ participation in a community immersion program. Centering the teacher candidates’ experiences and reactions to the community immersion highlights their identity, commitment to teaching, and the importance of exposing homegrown teachers to communities beyond their own. The authors discuss community-based curriculum in the preparation of teachers and consider how the experiences of teacher candidates of color impact program implementation.

Restoring Wonder: Play, Inquiry, And Humanizing Pedagogies In Early Childhood Teacher Education, Christie Angleton, Xiaoying Zhao, Robby Anggriawan

Faculty Publications - College of Education

At a writing retreat in the middle of the woods, we considered the trees. Inspired by our surroundings, we discussed possibilities for how we might demonstrate an inquiry cycle with our undergraduate teacher candidates. We considered our spaces: the buildings in which we teach our classes, the university campus, and the broader community. We reminded one another of our campus quad and its status as an arboretum, owing to the diverse variety of trees there, representing myriad species and varieties. We posed questions. “What do we have available within our reach? What do we have that students can literally touch? …

Journey To Well-Being: An Exploration Of Thrivership Post-Domestic Violence, Kader Gumus

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Domestic violence profoundly affects multiple facets of a survivor’s life. While most existing literature on survivorship addresses the immediate aftermath of domestic violence, this study delves into the extended process following the trauma of abuse to attain “thrivership,” a new concept in the scholarly and practice literature that emphasizes enduring well-being and flourishing. This dissertation examines the journeys from surviving to thriving for 13 women who transformed themselves and their lives to achieve well-being after traumatic domestic violence. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory was applied to examine the multiple layers of environmental influences on an individual’s development, including the micro, meso, …

Lend Me Your Hands: Engaging Waldorf Teachers In Pedagogical Puppetry For Student Growth, Corinna Rezzelle-Pennypacker

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Although puppetry has a long history as a holistic teaching tool, it remains an underutilized arts integration technique in elementary and secondary schools. To better understand Waldorf teachers’ perspectives on pedagogical puppetry and the necessary training to effectively implement the work, this explanatory mixed-methods dissertation sought to fill the gap in research on teachers’ views of puppetry and what training they believe is important to feel comfortable doing the work. Committed to using an action research approach, a professional development workshop and lesson plans were created for 1st-8th grade Waldorf teachers based on the feedback from this dissertation’s explanatory interviews …

The Influence Of A Northwestern School District's Equity And Inclusion Initiative On Classroom Teachers' Perceptions Using Culturally Responsive Practices: A Pilot Study Of Selected Principles, Latrica Rich

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Racial tensions are high in the United States of America in the 21st century, and hate crimes are on the rise due to political rhetoric and more frequent litigation. This situation challenges current approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion, commonly known as (DEI). Although these tensions affect many societal areas, the public education system has seen particularly dramatic changes as the nation's diversity grows. This shift has invoked the first moves to adapt culturally relevant practices to promote inclusion and belonging in response to evolving classroom dynamics. This study examined some of the significant issues surrounding the implementation of cultural …

Becoming The Donkey Derby’S ‘Karen’: A Humane Educator’S Autoethnographic Journey Toward Anti-Speciesist Communication, Jesika Keener

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Language not only carries oppression as an educative force, but research indicates that language is inherently speciesist and highly pervasive (Ethical Globe, 2021; Guevara Labaca, 2017; Hamlett, 2024; Leach et al., 2023). However, the ontological commitment to speciesism is historically foundational, which makes the total eradication of speciesist communication only viable through an unemerged hypothetical future society (Kahn, 2011). For the possibilities of such a world to come into being, pivotal steps must first be taken to critically engage with the communicated forms of speciesism in order to better understand it and actively resist its reproduction—with the aspiration for this …