Digital Commons Network^™

Preface, Margaret C. Hannon, Ruth Anne Robbins

Other Publications

The overarching theme of Volume 19 of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD is how legal communication shapes the law, and how doers of legal writing can use their resources to make it better. The volume begins with a fascinating article from Aaron Kirschenfeld and Alexa Chew, “Citation Stickiness, Computer-Assisted Legal Research, and the Universe of Thinkable Thoughts.” In their article, Professors Kirschenfeld and Chew shed light on whether the switch from print research to digital research has changed the way that law students and lawyers conduct research. To do so, the article uses the “citation stickiness” metric, which analyzes whether …

The Hidden Harms Of Privacy Penalties, Mary D. Fan

Articles

How to frame privacy penalties to protect our personal information is an important question as demands for legislation and proposals proliferate. The predominant assumption in calls for a comprehensive consumer privacy regime is that regulation and penalties arm the consumer David against Goliath businesses. Missing in the focus on powerful companies is attention to the potential harms of expanding privacy penalties for small-fry individuals and entities, especially from disfavored or marginalized groups. This article is the first to illuminate the regressive risks of privacy penalties, showing how broad privacy penalties can become tools for harassment of small businesses and individuals …

Psychiatric And Neuropsychological Sequelae Of Herpes Simplex Encephalitis, Carla F. Cabrera, Charles J. Golden

Archives of Assessment Psychology

Herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE) is caused by the herpes simplex virus (HSV), often from the Type 1 (HSV-1) viral infection. This neurotropic double-stranded DNA virus impairs the integrity and permeability of the blood-brain barrier, allowing the virus to enter the brain. In several studies, HSV-1 impacts the temporal lobe, frontal lobe, and limbic system, leading to brain damage. While significant progress has occurred in understanding this infection, clinicians should be vigilant for acute and chronic complications associated with HSE, such as autoimmune encephalitis, differential diagnoses, and psychological disorders. A growing body of literature focuses on the evidence of an association …

Understanding The Involvement Of Parents Of Children With Disabilities In Island Rural Communities, Catherine Ava Ali

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research shows that parental involvement in children's school life has a positive impact on children's academic and social success, especially for children with disabilities (CWD), and even more so for CWD in island rural communities. The involvement of parents of CWD in primary schools in rural communities in Trinidad and Tobago has not been studied previously. This qualitative case study was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of why parents of CWD in three primary schools in adjacent rural southern communities in an education district in Trinidad do or do not become involved in their children’s education. At the same …

Postsecondary Faculty Perceptions Of Social And Emotional Learning Professional Development On Instructional Practice, Kurt Victor Spady

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Mental health distress for students is prevalent on postsecondary campuses, which negatively affects students’ psychological well-being and academic success. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to examine the influence that social and emotional learning (SEL) professional development focused on respect had on the instructional practice of full-time faculty at a community college in Western Canada. Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning was the conceptual framework that grounded this study. The research question explored faculty perceptions of the influence of Respect-focused training on their instructional practice. This study used purposeful sampling of 12 full-time faculty members who had taken the …

Self-Identifying Latino/A/X Former Mental Health Therapy Clients’ Experiences Receiving Mental Health Therapy, Teresa Sypolt

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Latino/a/x population in the United States continues to increase as does the need for mental health professionals who are bilingual and knowledgeable on multicultural issues. Spanish is the native language spoken in approximately 13% of the households in the United States, with 36% of Spanish-speakers seeking mental health treatment. Research on therapists serving Latino/a/x clients indicated that therapists struggled to provide culturally sensitive and linguistic appropriate interventions. While therapists’ challenges and experiences have been explored, little is known on the therapeutic experiences of Latino/a/x former clients. The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis was to explore the therapeutic experiences …

Context-Responsive Learner-Centered Education In A Secondary School, Chukwemeka Michael Enemuoh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Learner-centered education (LCE) has historically proven difficult to implement in non-Western countries, despite being perceived as synonymous with quality education. Although context-responsive pedagogy has been proposed as the key to successful LCE implementation, the literature on context-responsive pedagogy has not focused on LCE specifically, but on education in general. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore Nigerian teachers’ understanding of context-responsive LCE. The conceptual framework consisted of Fernandes et al.’s curricular contextualization framework and Schweisfurth’s minimum standards for LCE. The research question examined teachers’ perceptions of context-responsive LCE. Participants were 10 teachers in a Nigerian urban secondary …

Knowledge-Infused Reinforcement Learning, Kaushik Roy, Manas Gaur, Qi Zhang, Amit Sheth

Publications

Virtual health agents (VHAs) have received considerable attention, but the early focus has been on collecting data, helping patients follow generic health guidelines, and providing reminders for clinical appointments. While presenting the collected data and frequency of visits to the clinician is useful, further context and personalization are needed for a VHA to interpret and understand what the data means in clinical terms. This has made their use in managing health limited. Such understanding enables patient empowerment and self-appraisal – i.e., aiding the patient in interpreting the data to understand the changes in the patient’s health conditions, and self-management – …

Strengthening Respeakers’ Training In Spain: The Research-Practice Connection, Nazaret Fresno, Pablo Romero-Fresco

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

After countless petitions and complaints from end users, live subtitling quality is slowly attracting the attention of broadcasters, regulators, the subtitling industry and scholars working in Media Accessibility. These stakeholders share an interest in providing better live subtitles, but their quality assessment is a thorny issue. Although quality studies are still scarce, the research undertaken so far has proven valuable in identifying the weaknesses of live subtitles in several countries. This article presents the main findings of the pilot project that preceded the first national quality assessment in Spain, which is currently underway. By focusing on this case study, we …

A Study Of The Language Shifts In The Book Of Daniel : A Comparative Narrative Analysis Of Daniel 1 And 2, 7 And 8, Laura K. Morrow

Dissertations

Problem

The problem this dissertation seeks to address is the use of bilingualism in the book of Daniel. Previously, scholars have utilized diachronic methods to explain the phenomenon of bilingualism in Daniel and have concluded that it is the product of compositional redaction. However, such studies have not produced a consensus in scholarship. In the last 40 years, several studies have emerged that conclude the use of bilingualism in the book of Daniel may best be explained as a rhetorical device. In contrast to the diachronic methodologies of prior studies, these examinations utilized methodologies that addressed rhetorical elements. Chapter One …

Strengthening Mission Through Strategy: An Analysis Of The Mission-Driven Excellence Strategy, Osvaldo Souza Santos Jr.

Dissertations

The Office of Strategy and Research (OSR) for the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) churches in the North America Division (NAD) is beginning to implement a new strategy that focuses on mission. The OSR designed the strategy, created tools and materials to support the churches in implementing the Mission-driven Excellence (MdX) strategy. MdX combines planning and direction that helps church leaders to think strategically. MdX is a combination of pre-events, processes, and resources combined with local church strategies toward mission. The purpose of this study was to suggest strengths and improvements to the Mission-driven Excellence (MdX) strategy by seeking to better understand …

"You Must Prophesy Again": The Mission Of God's People In Revelation 10-14, Adenilton Tavares De Aguiar

Dissertations

The primary task of this study was to delineate the theology of mission in the book of Revelation, with a focus on chaps. 10–14 and special attention to the people of God as participants in the mission of God. The historical survey demonstrated that the theology of mission conveyed by the book of Revelation is a topic broadly neglected in recent scholarship and, hence, requires an in-depth treatment. The object of research was addressed from a biblical-theological perspective by means of an exegetical analysis of relevant passages and key terms that were identified on the basis of a semantic field …

Increasing Cancer Survivorship Knowledge Through Individualized Cancer Survivorship Packets, Ashley Atkins

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

This project was developed with the aim of formulating an individualized educational packet that would improve patients’ knowledge of their initial cancer diagnosis and provide additional information to facilitate a smooth transition from treatment to remission. Using a pretest and posttest, quantitative data was collected pertaining to 10 different types of patient education. The pretest survey collected eight questions that related to gathering information about their cancer diagnosis, resources, and knowledge level. The DNP Project Leader secured a Cancer Survivorship Guide through the American Society of Clinical Oncology that was added to the initial cancer survivorship education for all patients. …

Narratives Of Positionality In Primatology: Foreign/Range–Country Collaborator Perspectives From Africa And South America, Michelle A. Rodrigues, Vicent Kiiza, Matthew R. Mclennan, Sérgio L. Mendes, Karen B. Strier

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Primate research and conservation may inadvertently reproduce neocolonial dynamics when primatologists from affluent, imperialist nations conduct studies in primate habitat countries. Here, we consider how interrogating the positionality of both foreign researchers and range-country collaborators can strengthen primatology. Such consideration may help us to better understand where each member of the collaboration is coming from, both figuratively and literally, and how those situated perceptions shape the research process. Centering the perspectives of the range-country collaborators, whose perspectives are infrequently voiced within the primatology literature, may illuminate challenges in cross-cultural communication and imbalances of knowledge and power. Here, we explore how …

Bargaining For Abolition, Zohra Ahmed

Scholarly Works

What if instead of seeing criminal court as an institution driven by the operation of rules, we saw it as a workplace where people labor to criminalize those with the misfortune to be prosecuted? I offer three different ways to think about labor in criminal court: (1) labor as a source of sociological value, (2) labor as an input that generates certain measurable outcomes, and (3) labor as a vehicle to advance abolitionist reforms. First, through their quotidian activities, criminal courts’ workers enact a practical philosophy that communicates lessons about who and how we value each other. Drawing on ethnographic …

Taking Corwin Seriously, Itai Fiegenbaum

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Corporate law’s most important development is founded on a misunderstanding of the channels and consequences of shareholder empowerment. The Article’s title references the seminal Delaware Supreme Court decision that ruled that a positive shareholder vote effectively insulates a friendly sale from judicial oversight. Central to Corwin’s reasoning is the notion that the shareholder vote provides an effective restraint against insider overreaching. Yet every deal that includes a premium over the market price is assured of shareholder approval. The doctrinal lynchpin’s real-life insignificance exposes a baffling inconsistency in contemporary takeover jurisprudence.

This Articles makes two novel contributions to the bourgeoning scholarship …

“I Kind Of Pushed Back”: Efficiency And Urgency In A No-Excuses Writing Curriculum, Katie Nagrotsky

Education Faculty Publications

Drawing on the concept of structuring contexts (Berchini, 2016) this article explores a white teacher’s understanding of teaching writing in a no-excuses charter management organization network. Through a deductive analysis, the author traces how the teacher’s beliefs about language were shaped by the CMO’s emphasis on efficiency, influencing how he acted on and adapted centralized curriculum and assessment practices. Documenting the ways that whiteness works within the writing curriculum and assessment practices despite stated broader organizational commitments to culturally relevant teaching, the author shows how the curriculum appropriated texts written by People of Color while the assessment practices prioritized correctness …

Fostering A Social And Cultural Literacy Classroom Through An Administrator-Teacher Relationship, Khary S. Fletcher

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the social and cultural instructional process on independent reading. In addition, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the administrator-teacher relationship on educational practices in a lab site classroom. Using an action research design, data was collected through pre-study and post-study interviews, a Likert-scale questionnaire, lab site meeting journal reflections, lesson implementation journal reflections, observations captured in fieldnotes, and students’ reading logs. Data was collected for a total of seven weeks during a once per week, hour and a half lab site meeting, one non-observed …

A Comparative Study Of Immigration Integration Programs For Selected City Governments In California, Oregon, Washington, And Texas, Christelle Lorenzana

Master's Projects

Over the last eight decades, immigration into the United States has increased and has become a prominent political issue in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2015). Although the federal government is responsible for enforcing immigration laws, municipalities work with immigrants directly in a more supportive role. Currently, no national policy focuses on integration or welcoming immigrants to the urban community. In recent decades, the federal government has focused on immigration enforcement, border control, and what to do about the influx of undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. However, cities are working to develop their own programs, tools, and policies to …

Vicks In The Classroom: A Study On The Effects Of Teacher Cultural Awareness On Hispanic/Latinx Student Discipline, Arthur A. Maldonado

Dissertations

With the booming Hispanic/Latinx populations nationwide, particularly in the state of California, the disproportionate disciplining of this student population for minor infractions such as defiance is an issue that has persisted for many decades. Therefore, to better inform this phenomenon, a historical perspective and critical look into the cultural awareness of teachers was examined throughout this research. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the relationship between middle school teacher cultural awareness and the disciplining of Hispanic/Latinx students in the schools being studied. The findings in this study reveal cultural perceptions from teachers that current body of research …

“I Think I’Ve Always Thought I Have To Prove Myself”: Interpretations, Perceptions, And Teacher Sensemaking At A Distance, Rafael Zavala

Dissertations

This grounded theory, constant comparative method study provides a Critical Race Institutional Logics Perspective account of Latina teacher sensemaking of distance learning. Distance learning—while not a particularly new school initiative, school reform effort, or organizational change—brought forth an organizational change that unmasked racist systems and deficit policy models perpetuating persistent, pervasive, disproportionate, low academic achievement for Latinx students. This study looked at how Latina teachers made sense of and enacted distance learning from their own personal values, beliefs, perceptions, and or impressions. Particularly, this study analyzed the role of race and its effects in shaping Latina teacher practice through these …

A Transformative Framework To Investigate The Influences Of Chineseness On Chinese International Students’ Learning Experiences On U.S. College Campuses, Wenjin Guo

Dissertations

This study applied a mixed-methods, social-justice approach to explore how Chinese international students interpret their success and/or challenges influenced by their Chinese forms of community cultural wealth in their academic learning at a predominately White Catholic university in the Midwest of the United States for over one year. I adopted a transformative paradigm to guide my study. Since the reviewed theoretical frameworks solely failed to form a profound comprehension of how Chineseness influenced Chinese international college students, I analyzed essential components of socio-cultural and critical race theories and created China as Method as the framework to guide my study.

This …

The Emotional Side Of Dynamic Assessment: L2 Writing From Vygotsky's Perezhivanie Lens, Ali Kushki

Dissertations

This qualitative multiple-case study investigated the emotional perceptions of English-as-a-foreign language learners (EFLs) and an English writing instructor as they met online via the Zoom application. Dynamic Assessment (DA) and the Vygotskyan perezhivanie notion guided the study. DA is an interactive assessment approach that combines instruction and assessment processes during student-instructor interactions with the goal of diagnosing and developing learners’ abilities. As to the perezhivanie notion, Vygotsky (1994) argued for uncovering the particular prism through which the individual refracts (i.e., shapes) the influence of the environment, and how she “becomes aware of, interprets, and emotionally relates to a certain event” …

The Role Of Lived Experiences In Culturally Responsive School Leaders’ Administrations: A Phenomenological Case Study, Angela Dolezal

Dissertations

This phenomenological case study explored how the lived experiences of three self-identifiedculturally responsive high school leaders impacted the systemic decisions they made for their school and their students. The study also investigated how these lived experiences informed the leaders’ responses to their stakeholders’ reactions to the systemic decisions. The three school leaders participated in a three-part interview series to answer these three questions (1) What are the personal and educational life histories of three self-identified culturally responsive school leaders in a predominantly White school? (2) How do the life experiences described in the self-identified culturally responsive school leaders’ life histories …

An Ethics Of Doctrinal Emergence: Reading Newman With Augustine And Contemporary Information Theory, Jeffrey John Campbell

Dissertations

Jeffrey J. CampbellLoyola University Chicago AN ETHICS OF DOCTRINAL EMERGENCE: READING NEWMAN WITH AUGUSTINE AND CONTEMPORARY INFORMATION THEORY The aim of this essay is to begin the process of a reconfiguration of the theological category of doctrinal development and to integrate an “emergent doctrinal ethics of belief” as an inextricable dimension of this category. Most scholarly writing on doctrinal development has taken place in the wake of the Enlightenment with its focus on epistemology, and doctrine is conceived of as “referencing” a quasi-metaphysical “res.” I attempt to “update” the guiding metaphors of doctrinal development with the goal of moving discussions …

Harnessing The Power Of Interdisciplinary Research With Psychology-Informed Cyberbullying Detection Models, Deborah Hall, Yasin N. Silva, Brittany Wheeler, Lu Cheng, Katie Baumel

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Cyberbullying has become increasingly prevalent, particularly on social media. There has also been a steady rise in cyberbullying research across a range of disciplines. Much of the empirical work from computer science has focused on developing machine learning models for cyberbullying detection. Whereas machine learning cyberbullying detection models can be improved by drawing on psychological theories and perspectives, there is also tremendous potential for machine learning models to contribute to a better understanding of psychological aspects of cyberbullying. In this paper, we discuss how machine learning models can yield novel insights about the nature and defining characteristics of cyberbullying and …

Bias Mitigation For Toxicity Detection Via Sequential Decisions, Lu Cheng, Ahmadreza Mosallanezhad, Yasin N. Silva, Deborah Hall, Huan Liu

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Increased social media use has contributed to the greater prevalence of abusive, rude, and offensive textual comments. Machine learning models have been developed to detect toxic comments online, yet these models tend to show biases against users with marginalized or minority identities (e.g., females and African Americans). Established research in debiasing toxicity classifiers often (1) takes a static or batch approach, assuming that all information is available and then making a one-time decision; and (2) uses a generic strategy to mitigate different biases (e.g., gender and racial biases) that assumes the biases are independent of one another. However, in real …

Does Co-Speech Gesture Support Children’S Analogical Reasoning? An Investigation Into The Differential Effects Of Gesture On Learning, Amy Michelle Wilkinson

Dissertations

A well-established conceptualization of academic capitalism is rooted in the marriage of economic theory and critical social. Significantly, academic capitalism links economic dimensions with the political-ideological transformations of U.S. society associated with the fall of communism and the rise of neoliberalism. Academic capitalism is based on a recognition of the paradoxical nature of higher education and offers a lens through which to examine the ways in which institutions in the United States have come to prioritize learning for the labor market as a private good within the new global economy, while also becoming less beholden to the notion of learning …

The Developing Maternal-Infant Relationship: A Qualitative Longitudinal Study, Jane Peters

School of Nursing and Midwifery Theses

Aim The study aimed to explore maternal perceptions and the use of knowledge relating to their infant’s mental health over time using qualitative longitudinal research. Background There has been a growing interest in infant mental health over recent years. Much of this interest is directed through the lens of infant determinism, through knowledge regarding neurological development resulting in biological determinism. Research and policy in this field are directed toward individual parenting behaviours, usually focused on the mother. Despite this, there is little attention given to maternal perspectives of infant mental health, indicating that a more innovative approach to methodology is …

Systemic Challenges During Assessment Of Emerging Bilingual Students: Perspectives Of Speech Language Pathologists And School Psychologists, Courtney Smith

LMU Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the perspectives of speech language pathologists and school psychologists, to identify the systemic challenges they identified that negatively impact how emerging bilingual students are referred, assessed, and identified for special education. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with 6 speech language pathologists and 6 school psychologists (n=12) to explore these challenges and barriers, as well as to look at the systems of belief present on campuses, that impact this process. Using a systems thinking framework and detailed inductive analysis of the data many themes emerged related to barriers such as difficulty finding an interpreter and ensuring that …