Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding The Challenges And Ways In Which High School Principals Lead For All, Alexia Adele Ellett

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the complexities of equity work in suburban high schools and the challenges in leading this work as a high school principal, and it is organized into three separate parts. Paper 1 is a review of the literature defining equity, examining equity of what, and delving into the many reasons why there is resistance to this work. All three of these topics are interrelated and help one to understand why creating schools that work for all students has become increasingly challenging work, and also, the most important work that we, as educators, must focus on to truly serve …

Risk-Aware Path Planning For Autonomous Vehicles, Shaghayegh Gaeini

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Autonomous vehicles have been the subject of intense research leading to great improvements in safety, comfort, accessibility, efficiency, etc. Path planning which provides the autonomous vehicle with a smooth, collision-free, and safe path towards its destination, is a crucial part of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Various path planning techniques have been developed in the past decades that can successfully plan a smooth and safe path in various driving scenarios. Nevertheless, these algorithms perform poorly in critical situations where the vehicle needs to quickly make a decision. To address this issue, a couple of algorithms have been proposed to replace the AV’s …

Preservice Teacher Socialization For Social Justice: Exploring Stances And Enactments Of Social Justice Pedagogies, Eric R. Junco

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This multicase study examined the socialization experiences of four preservice high school English teachers from four different Midwestern teacher education programs to understand how their acculturative and professional socialization experiences influenced their social justice beliefs. This study also examined how participants’ most salient social justice beliefs took shape within their social justice stances, mission-oriented approaches to enact social justice pedagogies like culturally responsive teaching, antiracist pedagogy, and culturally sustaining pedagogy within their classrooms. This study was framed by occupational socialization theory and critical race theory. Data were collected from the Learning to Teach for Social Justice Belief Scale, interviews, and …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Factors Contributing To Adult Education Students’ Transition To Credit Courses, Heather Martin

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Adult education programs serve students with low literacy and numeracy skills. They provide instructional services below the postsecondary level for students who have limited English proficiency and students who are working towards obtaining their high school equivalency. Once adult education students complete their programs, they may choose to transition to college credit courses or enroll in a job training program. This study examined student factors that impact the likelihood of adult education students transitioning to college credit courses. Stepwise regression was used to analyze five years of adult education data from over 3,000 students in an adult education program in …

“It Takes A Village”: Student Mothers’ Experiences With Barriers And Support While Navigating Community College, Jeanine Mcmillen

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Student parents may feel invisible on college campuses, especially student mothers, who often feel ignored and overlooked when institutional policies and practices are not tailored to their needs and challenges. These students are especially vulnerable to withdrawing from college, even in institutional contexts that boast a positive and welcoming climate for underrepresented students. Using validation theory with a critical lens as the guiding theoretical framework, this qualitative case study examined how student mothers at one community college navigate barriers and supports within and outside of the institution. Findings revealed three themes, indicating that student mothers must cobble together a village …

Writing In Film Studies: Poetics And Pedagogy, Bryan Mead

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is writing instruction inside undergraduate film courses. While the existence of textbooks devoted to teaching students how to write about film highlights the need for such instruction, evidence suggests many courses underuse or neglect such texts. Instead, most instructors focus their efforts on content instruction, expecting students to translate an increased content knowledge into written argumentation. Yet, as is the case across the disciplines, students struggle to write successfully in these disciplinary courses. One of the main reasons for this disparity between instructor expectation and student success is the notion of disciplinarity, and how influential …

Evidence-Based Decision Making In Elementary Schools: A Case Study Of How Districts Make Decisions When Implementing Foreign Language Programs, Danielle Elizabeth Moran

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Learning another language is considered a key 21st century subject, something that all students should begin in elementary school. However, most school districts in Illinois do not offer students the opportunity to learn another language in elementary school. There are effective and high quality programs available to learn another language that are also mutually beneficial to English learners (ELs). District leaders in charge of planning curricular programs have choices about which programs are offered and are tasked with considering the many needs of the districts they serve. The purpose of this study was to learn about the decision making of …

Engagement Detection Using Prosodic Cues: An Approach For Measuring Child Emotional Engagement Level In Child-Robot Interaction Scenario, Mustafa Oztoprak

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The ultimate goal of advanced child-robot interaction is to develop a high-level intelligencecommunication channel in a closed-loop configuration with the child as the focal point of the instructional scenario. This goal can be met by establishing efficient sensing mechanisms on the robot’s side, such as automatic engagement measuring, which will allow the robot to alter its behavior or even the instructional scenario’s execution.Recent researches, regarding engagement recognition systems mostly based on facial or multi-modal features.We would like to investigate this topic using prosodic cues only. We believe speech characteristics are more likely to be related to child speaker engagement level.This …

Case Study Of Elementary Teacher Perceptions Regarding Technology Integration In The Writing Curriculum, Dana Marie Robinson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative study focused on the perceptions three elementary school teachers had regarding their ability to integrate technology into the writing curriculum as well as their understanding of how technology and multimodalities can actually be integrated. The three teachers were asked to reflect on their technology use in teaching writing for a 12-week period. Each was selected based on their self-reported Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) as measured by a screening survey. In addition to these reflections, they were interviewed at the beginning, middle, and end of the study period. Data collection methods also included weekly lesson plan reflections …

An Exploration Of Middle School Teachers’ Utilization Of Culturally Responsive Teaching, Samantha Phillips

Masters Theses

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) can be used as a means for effectively teaching and managing students and decreases the achievement gap between students of Color and their White counterparts. This qualitative study with an ethnographic design examines the utilization of culturally responsive teaching strategies of two middle school teachers and two principals in public schools on the Southwest side of Chicago. The study is guided by one research question: What aspects of culturally responsive teaching practices are teachers using in their teaching strategies? The study has two purposes: To analyze the effectiveness of two middle school teachers’ utilization of culturally …

Eat Glass And Walk On Fire, While Managing A Pandemic: A Narrative Study Of African American Women Who Serve As Chief Housing Officers, Valronica Marie Scales

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Creating uncertainty and stress, the COVID-19 pandemic and increased attention on racial relations, drastically changed how higher education and student affairs operated. For African American women, combatting racism and sexism has always been a daily occurrence in their professional and personal life but the pandemic heightened the challenges African American women had to overcome. This narrative inquiry study explored the lived experiences of African American women who were serving as Chief Housing Officers at Predominately White Institutions during the first 18-months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings highlight how the intersection of sexism and racism shaped the lived experiences of the …

Languaging School Into Being : A Discourse Analysis Of Online Ela Classes Within The Context Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jason Christopher Toncic

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, school buildings across the United States shut their doors and transitioned students and teachers to remote learning, most often utilizing internet-based technology to provide either asynchronous or synchronous lessons. I was a high school English Language Arts teacher in Stone Valley School District in Northeastern New Jersey when the unprecedented school closures moved my classes online for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year.

As a teacher researcher who specialized in New Literacy Studies, I was particularly sensitive to how students and I used technology to continue lessons after the school building shut …

Local Parish Responses To The Global Laudato Si’ Socio-Ecological Agenda, Anne Jennings

Nulungu Research Papers

In this extraordinary time of multiple, interconnecting crises with compounded costs in social, economic, and environmental degradation, calls for transformative change are emerging from all levels – local to global. Ways people living in regional and remote areas of Australia can apply a global Christian agenda that pursues spiritual and ecological changes within their lives, their parishes and local community, are examined in this paper, the question explored is ‘How can people respond to global challenges and embrace ecological conversion within their local parishes and community?’ Consideration is grounded within Pope Francis’ encyclical (teaching letter) Laudato Si’: On Care for …

“No Matter Where You’Re From, We’Re Glad You’Re Our Neighbor”: Enacting Justice Initiatives And Community Formation In Faith-Based Organizations, Jenna M. Smith

Senior Independent Study Theses

Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) in the United States offer a variety of services and influence social dynamics within their communities, specifically in northeast Ohio. Churches, service agencies, and ministries often pursue immigration advocacy initiatives and ground their work in religious doctrine, using frameworks such as ‘hospitality’ and ‘welcoming the stranger’ to motivate their own initiatives and connect with uninvolved or antagonistic populations. Due to current climates of political polarization and dehumanizing rhetoric in immigration dialogues, this study seeks to analyze the ways in which religious actors define and enact community and explore the contributions of the groups in which they serve. …

Hands That Grab And Tongues That Say: Understanding Animal Narrators And Protagonists, Sophie Ryan

Senior Independent Study Theses

Whether through owning a pet or merely seeing a squirrel outside the window, we cannot avoid encountering the non-human animal inhabitants of the world around us. This project considers how animals are represented as narrators and protagonists in predominantly 21st-century literature. Although extensive research in the fields of animal studies and human-animal studies has explored literary non-human animal characters, few have asked questions about the narratological construction of animal narrators and protagonists. This project uses the lenses of narratology and ecocriticism to discuss six texts: Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, …

The Identity Experiences Of Maya Q'Anjob'al American Youth And Mayan Language Loss: A Post-Colonial Perspective On Language, Culture And Identity, Juanatano Cano

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the experiences of Maya American youth of the Q’anjob’al ethnic group in the United States. It examined whether American-born Maya children affirmed their indigenous Maya Q’anjob’al background and if they performed better in school and had a better adjustment to life if they had a secure sense of identity. The study includes a discussion of major findings related to the literature on the Post-colonial theory and the theoretical approach of William G. Demmert’s Culturally Based Education (CBE) practices, which refers to education that recognizes the importance of indigenous languages, culture, …

“I Save Me”: Gender, Agency, And Power In Better Call Saul, Stephanie Kocer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Historically, women on television have been portrayed in wife and mother roles, making them a foil to their husbands, but never the main focal point of the show. These characters stay on the sidelines, without being given truly original storylines where they are allowed to drive their own narratives. During the first season of Better Call Saul, Kim Wexler is a supporting character, without any storylines that aren’t linked to Jimmy McGill. Jimmy often treats Kim as a damsel in distress. He thinks it’s his job to save her, and usually from the chaos that he’s created. In this thesis …

Recognizing Capital: A Study Of Cultural Wealth, Grit, And Student Success, Jessica Lauritsen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The widening gap between the demographics of faculty and students in higher education is exemplified by the racial, ethnic, and economic disparities in student achievement outcomes. Expecting students to adapt to an unwritten set of rules to successfully navigate higher education is not the solution. Understanding the strengths of students is essential to validating their ability to be successful in college. This study will measure two-year college student recognition of their individual aspirational capital, navigational capital, and grit connected to their perceived academic success, as well as their perceptions of faculty understanding of and recognition of their skills and experiences.

The Ability Of Dibels To Predict Proficiency On The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment And The Wida Access For Ells, Katherine Schultz

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Recent educational reform gave birth to accountability testing and development of student sub-groups meant to track gaps in achievement. Because of the high-stakes nature of these assessments, educators have sought efficient progress monitoring tools. Oral reading fluency’s link to overall reading success has made it a desirable means of measuring growth. This link is well researched with native English speakers but less researched with English learners. This research seeks to determine if the commercially-produced oral reading fluency suite of assessments, DIBELS, can predict reading success on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) in English learners to the same degree as with …

Feasibility And Acceptability Of Administering A Functional Cognitive-Communication Assessment To Individuals With Self-Reported Concussion, Mackenzie Ann Brown

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Purpose: Individuals who experience ongoing symptoms after sustaining a mTBI may not receive the help they need because the deficits they endorse on self-report measures are not identified on current standardized cognitive assessments. The purpose of the current investigation is to determine how to better document ongoing cognitive-communication deficits and to characterize the nature of how these deficits impact daily life and communicative participation, using a multidimensional assessment protocol.

Method: A multiple case study design was selected to comprehensively document the cognitive-linguistic functioning of multiple individuals with concussion. Five participants completed one session over a telehealth platform that included four …

Mark My Words: The Linguistic Complexity Of The Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology Abstracts And Subsequent Citations, Alivia Lauren Zubrod

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Through language, scientific communication can positively impact the progression and advancement of science. Given the value of scientific communication, it is important to explore what factors might be associated with influential scientific communication. Surprisingly, relatively little research has examined the linguistic properties of influential scientific communication. In effort to overcome this gap in the literature, I used integrative complexity, a well-validated linguistic variable, to assess the relation between article abstracts and subsequent number of citations from one of the most highly-cited social psychology journals (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). In an analysis of over 1.4 million words from 9,884 …

Insistence: The Active Quest Of Citizens For Achieving Their Health And Justice Rights In Mexico, Julia Hernández-Gutiérrez

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In Mexico’s public healthcare and justice institutions, where insufficient infrastructure, unnecessary, confusing procedures, and mistreatment are common obstacles to fundamental rights, insistence can be interpreted as an indicator of a citizen’s active quest to ensure their rights are respected. Even if citizen dependence on the State is reinforced on a daily basis within some public institutions, service users are not inactive patients or victims waiting for their turn, but rather are active agents claiming their rights, because access to healthcare and justice cannot be achieved in Mexico without the ability to cope with bureaucratic barriers and the despotic attitude of …

What Do We Know About Access To Public Benefits And Services Among Low-Income Minority Families?: A Scoping Review Of The Literature, Chi-Fang Wu, Steven G. Anderson, Anissa Sheena Chitwanga, Soohyun Yoon

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In a time of economic crisis following decades of reduced commitments to low-income families, it is critically important to improve our understanding of the obstacles encountered by low-income families attempting to access public benefits and services. Following PRISMA guidelines, this paper offers a scoping review of research published since 2000 that addresses the distinctive barriers encountered by minorities in the United States when attempting to access public benefits. While our review included studies on access to all types of public social welfare benefits, most research during the study period focused specifically on access issues in obtaining various forms of health …

Using Complex Adaptive Systems Theory To Identify Best Adaptive Practices For Inclusion Within Systems Of Care: The Impact! System Of Care And Its Model Theory Of Change, Marya R. Sosulski

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Systems of Care (SOCs) are distinctive among health care organizations because they focus on process as much as outcomes and consider families as equal partners in improving clients’ outcomes. Because SOCs attend to interactions among all aspects of the clients’ world, we may think of them as ecosystems with continually changing environments. “Theories of Change” (TOCs) are logic models that structure and coordinate SOCs’ conceptualization, implementation, evaluation, and adaptation. Of these elements, current SOC literature is least focused on adaptation, though adaptive practices are vital to addressing clients’ interests. A Complex Adaptive Systems model is used to analyze an exemplary …

When Police Discursive Violence Interacts With Intimate Partner Violence, Janet Ainsworth

Faculty Articles

Linguists analyzing the practices of American-style police interrogation have revealed the discursive attributes of police interrogation that can, often unwittingly, induce false confessions from suspects. Further, psychologists have identified a number of factors that can make particular subjects of police interrogation especially vulnerable to false confessions under interrogation. This article suggests that women who have been victims of serial domestic violence may be a heretofore unrecognized class of those particularly vulnerable individuals. Because the psychodynamics of American-style police interrogation so closely parallel the psychodynamics of intimate terroristic domestic violence, victims of domestic violence may react to police interrogation with the …

The Molly Hootch Schools After 40 Years: Successes, Failures, And Opportunities, Jody Lynne Drew

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This quantitative study was designed to understand the relationship between the variables of student attendance, educator experience and turnover, and student achievement at the Molly Hootch schools in rural Alaska in an effort to understand the current state of achievement according to data from 2002–2019 collected from the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (AKDEED) database. Data revealed that Molly Hootch school attendance was at 90% and that proficiency among student dropped from 40% to 15% during the years under review. The researcher was not granted access to review further data that could provide more concrete answers to the …

Understanding The Underidentification Of Autism In Native American Students, Emily A. Brooke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

School psychologists are called upon to promote nondiscriminatory practices that ensure equity and fairness for all youth, including racially minoritized students. Despite being overrepresented in almost every other disability category of special education, Native American students nationwide are underrepresented within the category of autism. The current study focuses on factors within educators that might lead to the underidentification of Native American students with autism. In alignment with the cultural humility model, and the tripartite model of multicultural competence embedded within it, the current study explored 36 educators’ attitudes, knowledge, and skills as they relate to the culturally responsive assessment of …

Parent And Child Characteristics Impacting Identification Of Children With Developmental Language Disorder (Dld), Sarah E. Floyd

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Purpose: Previous research has shown that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and dyslexia are under-identified in the general population. Parent or caregiver concern is a primary referral tool for these conditions, but may fail to accurately align with the actual presence of a disorder. The purpose of this study was to examine child and parent characteristics related to a child’s likelihood of receiving a diagnosis of DLD.

Methods: Within a large, 5-year, longitudinal study, kindergartener performance on a battery of speech, language, and literacy measures was examined to identify children with and without DLD and possible risk of dyslexia. …

Understanding Effective Parental Involvement Activities Across Ses, Monique Antoinette Carrington Young

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Parental involvement is pivotal for impoverished middle school students to achieve academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship of parental involvement activities and academic achievement for impoverished middle school students. Epstein’s six parental involvement types was the theoretical framework for the research study. The six independent variables of parental involvement were parenting, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, communicating, and collaborating with community The relationship for each parental involvement activated to academic achievement as measured by grade point average was evaluated. A quantitative research design was applied using archival data from the U.S. Department of …

Principals’ Leadership Role In Supporting Culturally Responsive English Language Learner Programs, Lawrence Cowger

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

English language learners face different challenges in accessing relevant curriculum content compared to native English speakers. There is limited research on effective strategies that teachers use to ensure learning outcomes among English language learners. The purpose of this case study was to explore the leadership strategies that principals implement to support teachers’ culturally responsive strategies when working with English language learning (ELL) students. Culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL) was the basis of the conceptual framework, using research from Walker and five CRSL concepts. The research questions focused on school leadership and how administrators support teachers of ELL programs using CRSL. …