Digital Commons Network^™

Retention Of Teachers Of Color In Predominantly White Suburban Schools, Jessica Lynn Hurt

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Substantive research exists to the benefits of teachers of color for all students but most dramatically for students of color. Teachers of color play a vital part in increasing student academic achievement, belonging, and connectedness. This research study sought to uncover the professional lives of teachers of color in a predominantly white suburban school district to gain insights into drivers of retention for these teachers of color. Results highlighted the realities that teachers of color face in predominantly white suburban schools including cultural synchronicity with students of color, opportunities to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion work but also over-scrutinization, isolation, …

Pachamama Over People And Profit: A Case For Indigenous Ecology And Environmental Personhood, Hilda Loury

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fostering A Dynamic Cross-Disciplinary Culture At The Preservice Level, Marie L. Manning, Susan Skees Hermes, Julie H. Rutland, Jade Robinson, Vanessa Tucker

Pedagogicon Conference Proceedings

Professionals from varied disciplines must engage in cross-disciplinary collaboration. However, such skills are not typically introduced and/or practiced prior to entering their respective professional fields. Using the Teaming, Roles, Ethics, and Communication (TREC) model, a team of interprofessional cross-disciplinary instructors discuss current practices when developing immediately useful activities to embed in pre-service curriculum using special education as the practical foundation.

The Quest For Institutionalization Of Indigenous Conflict Resolution Mechanisms In The Ethiopian Criminal Justice System To Spur Social Change In The Country, Daniel Wolde Sugamo

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study with the exploratory design was to explore the barriers, as perceived by Ethiopia’s national elders and women ambassadors of peace, that may impede the incorporation of Indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms (ICRMs) within the federal criminal justice system of the country to spur social change and to provide a clear policy orientation for this incorporation to take place. The servant leadership model and an ubuntu-based leadership approach provided the theoretical framework. A sample group of 20 elders who represent a number of ethnic groups at the national level participated in one-on-one interviews, and 15 …

Exploring English As A Foreign Language (Efl) Saudi Arabian Teachers' Perceptions Vis-A-Vis The English Education Context In Primary And Secondary Schools, Mona Abdullah A. Al Mogeerah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The education system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is given a great deal of attention by the government as it is keen to provide an educational system that caters to teacher and student needs. Because English has the potential to provide access to resources that may facilitate advancement in science and technology, it is difficult to deny or underestimate the importance of the English language in Saudi Arabia. Despite the history of EFL teaching and resources allocated to the teaching of English in Arabia, the quality of Saudi students' English language skills has raised many concerns. Saudi students currently …

Social Media Advertising: The Persuasive And Invasive Fundamentals, Madison Falvey

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

Over the past century, consumption of commodities and material goods has drastically increased. Americans today appear to consume more than they ever did in the past. This poses the question, why? What has caused society to consume habitually? Many researchers have discussed the persuasive methods used in advertising and the psychology behind consumer behavior. These researchers have primarily focused on TV commercials and newspaper advertisements. However, research has yet to dive deep into social media's role regarding conspicuous consumption. This thesis will explore how the fundamentals of social media have created the most persuasive advertising modality ever seen. This thesis …

Intellect Does Not Have An Accent: The Lived Experiences Of Women Native Speakers Of Spanish With Professional Leadership Positions In United States And Have An Accented English Speech, Isabel E. Rodriguez-Mendoza

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This qualitative study examined the experiences of eleven multilingual professional women between the ages of 35 and 65 who share the following characteristics: Spanish is their first language; they speak English with an accent and migrated to the United States as adults and are required to engage in public speaking in their professional leadership careers in the United States. The study’s interview process provided participants with a platform to share their voices and stories. The findings discussed how their accents have shaped their leadership careers as well as the social-emotional aspect of their lives through a phenomenological approach.

The emergent …

The Transformation Of Kurdish Women From Victimization To Liberation Through Learning Under Oppression In Turkey: A Phenomenological Study, Ebru Ilhan

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on the experiences of Kurdish women involved in the Kurdish women’s movement in Turkey. By utilizing intersectionality and social movement theories, this phenomenological study explores how these women navigate learning processes under oppressive conditions. Specifically, the concept of intersectionality, viewed through the lens of critical race theory, will be employed to examine the multiple oppression Kurdish women face due to their ethnic, gender, and religious identities. The aim is to understand how their lived experiences and pivotal moments have influenced their current positions within social movements and the political sphere. This research applies the theory of social …

Becoming Racially Aware: A Social Process Of (Re)Constructing An Alternative White Identity, Ashley Sobke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Structural and systemic mechanisms reinforce institutionalized racism, whiteness, and white supremacy in the United States. These mechanisms prove adaptable and resilient, shifting and changing to continuously restructure and reinforce the material reality that people experience within a racialized social order. White people's incomprehension of complicity in racism and privilege, along with color-blind ideologies, perpetuate racialized disparities resulting from this social order and render white superiority as "normal" and "universal." This underlies an often internalized sense of normative, white American identity interconnected with racism and white supremacy. In a society where many white Americans remain sheltered from and/or resistant to acknowledging …

On The Phenomenon Of Populism And Extremism In The Balkans, Mustafa Cerić

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper is based on my personal experience of war and peace in Bosnia. The basic notion is that it is easier to start a war than to stop it. Thus, postwar recovery or peacebuilding is not easy. But thanks to open-minded people who have been all along against a mythical populism that caused the bloody war against Bosnia and its autochthon people, the peace, although unjust, was reached after all. The focus here is on the idea of pluralism in Bosnia as an opposite to "populism" and "extremism." For a positive narrative like pluralism is a good way to …

Firm-Level Political Risk And Corporate R&D Investment, Emmanuel Boah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I examine how firms make R&D investment decisions during periods of political uncertainty. To minimize stickiness and overly generalized assumptions, I employ quarterly data. I find that firms invest more in R&D when facing high levels of political risk. The results suggest that this positive relationship between political risk and R&D investment is more pronounced for competitive and politically sensitive firms. Additionally, the positive association is evident among firms with higher growth opportunities and more liquid assets. The results are robust to the test for correlation, addressing endogeneity, and alternative proxies adopted for the variables of interest. Overall, the findings …

Teachers’ Perceptions About The Transition To English (T2e) Program In Bridging The Literacy Gap At The Elementary Level, Hilda Sarfo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study delves into the perceptions of Ghanaian teachers regarding the effectiveness of the bilingual literacy program – Transition to English (T2E) – in addressing the literacy gap at the elementary level. Recognizing the significance of second language acquisition for early-grade learners in multilingual communities, the research focuses on investigating the expectations and sustainability of the program. The study involved in-depth interviews with 11 Ghanaian teachers from three public basic schools who have experience with the T2E and one private school who has no experience. The findings of the study confirmed the pivotal role of the T2E in supporting young …

Dental Claires: Contrastive Language Image Retrieval Search For Dental Research, Tanjida Kabir, Luyao Chen, Muhammad F Walji, Luca Giancardo, Xiaoqian Jiang, Shayan Shams

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Learning about diagnostic features and related clinical information from dental radiographs is important for dental research. However, the lack of expert-annotated data and convenient search tools poses challenges. Our primary objective is to design a search tool that uses a user's query for oral-related research. The proposed framework,

Chatgpt: Exploring The Role Of Cybersecurity In The Protection Of Medical Information, Maad Mijwil, Mohammad Aljanabi, Ahmed Hussein Ali

Mesopotamian Journal of CyberSecurity

ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It is trained on a dataset of conversational text and can be used to generate human-like responses to prompts in a variety of languages and formats. It can be used for tasks such as chatbots, language translation, and text completion. The role of ChatGPT is to generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. It can be used in a variety of applications such as chatbots, language translation, text completion, and question answering. Additionally, it can be fine-tuned for specific tasks such as generating product descriptions or summarizing articles. …

Prioritizing Intellectual Property’S Freedom To Operate, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

“Luminescent As An Anglerfish”: Creative Writing As A Strategy For Building Figurative Language Skills In School-Aged Children, Dana Fitz Gale

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This pretest/ posttest nonequivalent groups study explored the relationship between classroom-based creative writing instruction and the figurative language abilities of fourth grade students. Figurative language is widespread within the oral and written discourse of K-12 classrooms and is an essential component of higher-level language and literacy development.

Despite the prevalence of non-literal language in educational settings and its relevance to children’s academic and social success, research concerning best practices for teaching non-literal language remains scarce. A few studies have suggested that creative writing may be an effective vehicle for fostering figurative language in children. Poetry writing seems especially promising, since …

A Comparative Study On Critical Thinking Skills Of Isec And Non-Isec Teachers In Institutions Of Higher Education In The North Of China, Liqin Tang

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Critical thinking (CT) has become a main focus in the higher education and is viewed as one of the essential skills for students to succeed in the 21^st century. Many studies focus on Chinese students and their CT skills. There is a scarcity of research targeting teachers’ CT. However, teachers are the key to successful education and they play a crucial role in any education reform. Teachers’ perception, attitude, and experience impact the educational practice. Therefore, it is imperative to examine teachers’ CT.

This study utilized a non-experimental causal-comparative methodology with an explanatory mixed methods research design. The purpose …

Micropolitics Of Urban Informality And Street Vendors In Kolkata, Tathagata Chatterji, Archit Sinha, Atanu Chatterjee, Anjita Paul

Socio-Legal Review

Street vending activities received formal legislative recognition in India, with the Parliament enacting the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act in 2014. Since then, the judiciary has sought to uphold the rule based order through the implementation of the Street Vendors Act. However, on-ground implementation of the progressive legislation remains challenging, and vendors continue to face harassment. Looking through the prism of “political society”, this article explores micro-level network politics around street vending in Kolkata. First, it discusses how the city’s political economic context played a role in the mobilisation of the vendors to resist …

Teachers’ And Education Leaders’ Perspectives On Using Technology To Develop Vocabulary Among Kindergarten English Learners, Nelsy J. Jackson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractResearch has shown that technology-mediated interventions in education can increase students’ understanding of academic vocabulary. However, it is not known how teachers provide opportunities for kindergarten English learners (ELs) to learn vocabulary using technology, and school leaders support teachers in this endeavor. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand teachers' and school leaders’ perspectives on opportunities for kindergarten ELs to use technology to develop vocabulary in an urban school in the southwest United States. The theoretical framework for this study was based on Cummins’s theory of basic interpersonal communication skills and cognitive academic language proficiency. Using purposeful …

“The Issue Is Already There; Just Have The Conversation!”: Culturally Sustaining Reflection In The Student Teaching Triad, Hanna M. Asrat

Dissertations

There is a vast demographic mismatch between California’s public school teachers (who are majority White, mono-lingual English-speaking women) and California’s public school students. Though universities responsible for educating preservice teachers often include coursework that attempts to help address this demographic mismatch, such as instruction about Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, if preservice teachers do not get the chance to practice this pedagogy in their fieldwork placement, they tend to fall into to the two-worlds problem. The two-worlds problem posits that preservice teachers view constructivist and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies learned at the university as theoretical and incompatible with actual teaching, and so they …

Ethnic Studies Implementation In A K-8 District: Culture, Critical Consciousness And Collective Efficacy, Genvieve Dorsey

Dissertations

This research was a descriptive study in which the researcher explored the beginning phases of Ethnic Studies implementation in a Kindergarten through Eighth grade (K-8) school district in Northern California. Using a social justice lens, and through a review of Ethnic Studies, Collective Efficacy, Critical Consciousness, and School Culture constructs, the researcher attempted to capture and articulate a cultural profile of the school district and the degree to which it aligned to the cultural typologies articulated among Ethnic Studies scholars.The study included the collection of several types of data, including: (1) archival documents; (2) teacher focus groups; and (3) administrator …

How Can I Help You Today? How First-Generation Latinx/A/O Community College Students Perceive Counseling, Isaac Escoto

Dissertations

Latinx/a/o students make up almost half of the California Community College system’s population. However, Latinx/a/o students account for about 15% of three-year completion rates (certificate, degree, or transfer). In support of student success strategies, the literature describes the role of counselors and how they help students navigate the complexities of higher education. This mixed-methods study investigated how community college counseling practices and services are perceived by Latinx/a/o students; and which of those practices and services best supported the success of this student population. Key findings included the importance of counseling services, as well as preferred counseling appointment logistics and topics …

Never Too Young: The Existence, Impact, And Sustainability Of Ethnic Studies In Elementary School, Angela R. Guzmán

Dissertations

Ethnic Studies has existed in higher education for more than fifty years. In high school, critical education researchers have recognized Ethnic Studies as vital to improving attendance, lowering suspension rates, and boosting GPAs for BIPOC students. This has given rise to the recent K-12 Ethnic Studies model curriculum adoption by the State Board of Education, and the signing of Assembly Bill 101, making California the first state to require that all high school students complete a semester-long course in Ethnic Studies. Regrettably, Ethnic Studies continues to be mostly limited to higher education and grades 9-12 in public schools despite research …

Voice Of The Inaudible: Well-Being Of Chinese American Young Adults, Chinese American Parents’ Parenting Competency, And The Correlation Of The Two, Diana Huang

Dissertations

Violence against Asian Americans since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has become a national crisis in the United States. Racism against Asian Americans in the country, however, has been deep-rooted since the nineteenth century. Chinese American adolescents, who are susceptible to identity crisis as young adults and confront racial discrimination as a minority race, face distressing challenges. It is critical to inquire into their lived narratives and hear their voices. The author investigated the early life experiences of nine Chinese Americans and identified how racial identity is shaped at a young age with negative external inputs, as well as …

Automated Framework To Extract Software Requirements From Source Code, Cameron Miskell, Richard Diaz, Parth Ganeriwala, Fitzroy Nembhard

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Software maintenance and innovation are constant challenges across industries, especially as programming languages evolve with technology. Similarly, poor lexicon quality degrades program comprehension, increasing the effort required by developers to improve existing software products. To address these challenges, we propose a novel automated framework that extracts software requirements directly from source code using a baseline AI language model applied to a Java code base. Leveraging natural language processing techniques, the framework validates programs and generates easily readable requirements by analyzing file contents. The framework enhances agility and flexibility by providing comprehensive documentation for existing software systems. It caters to both …

A Survey On Sentiment Classification Methods And Challenges, Neda Keivandarian, Marco Carvalho

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Sentiment classification (SC) is an important natural language processing (NLP) task that aims to determine the sentiment or emotional tone in a given text. With the increasing pervasiveness of internet-based applications and social media, massive amounts of unstructured data are generated daily, elevating the opportunity and challenges associated with automated sentiment extraction for tasks such as customer feedback analysis, social media monitoring, and opinion mining. In this review paper, we provide an update on the state of the art in sentiment analysis, including an overview of and classification methods leveraging machine learning and deep learning methods. © 2023 by the …

Sociophonetics And Dialectology, Dominic Watt, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

In this chapter we explore how the investigation of phonetic detail in speech seen through a sociolinguistic lens can inform and enhance our understanding of dialectal variation in languages. We begin by examining how sociophonetics can be considered an offshoot of dialectology, later to mature into a free- standing discipline during the late twentieth century. We next discuss the reconvergence of sociophonetics and dialectology as it became clearer that the two approaches to the study of language variation are, in combination, greater than the sum of their parts, even if their agendas may place different emphases on what should be …

How Performing Arts High School Students Experienced Involvement In A Black, Student-Created And Student-Led Organization Focused On Uplifting Black Art And Artists: A Critical Phenomenological Study With Implications For Culturally Responsive And Sustaining Educational Practices, Shaneka R. Ferrell

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This critical phenomenological study aims to understand the perspectives and experiences of members of Black Arts, a student-created, student-led organization focused on uplifting Black art and artists. The following research question guided this inquiry: What are the experiences of students involved in Black Arts, a student-created, student-led organization focused on uplifting Black art and artists? In addition, three sub-questions were explored: (a) How do students experience their involvement in Black Arts, a student-created, student-led organization focused on uplifting Black art and artists in ways that uplift and magnify their voices and agency? (b) How do student experiences in Black Arts, …

Examining The Cultural Adjustment Experiences Of International Students In Writing Dissertations In A Uk Campus, Mukhlash Abrar, Amirul Mukminin, Nur Fitriani, Failasofah Failasofah, Nunung Fajaryani, Hadiyanto Hadiyanto, Rafiza Abdul Razak, Herri Mulyono, Sri Kusuma Ningsih

The Qualitative Report

This qualitative study drew on a larger study which was to explore and understand the experiences of non-native speaker postgraduate students in writing dissertations at one university in the United Kingdom. In this qualitative study, we interviewed four international students from different countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan. We identified two main themes pertaining to the challenges in writing dissertations. The first included student-related challenges (technical writing matters, thinking in English, identifying research topics, writing literature review, lack of communicative competence and boredom) and the second focused on s-related challenges (meeting supervisor). To cope with those challenges, the participants …

Tblt: Authentic Tasks Designed For Second-Language Learners, Salma Ahmad Khan

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Thesis proposal structure: My thesis, which will be an alternative style thesis, will be organized as follows: I will define what TBLT is in my own words and how scholars define this term 2.) I will review research other scholars have done on TBLT 3.) .) I will describe the class I intend to teach, including the texts assigned, writing projects, and supporting TBLT tasks.