Digital Commons Network^™

Reading Between The Lines: Exploring How Technical High School Teachers Navigate Race And Neurodiversity Through Literacy Practices, Genesis A. Ryant

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study employed a hybrid hermeneutic phenomenological design to explore how technical high school teachers experienced and interpreted literacy instruction for Black and Brown neurodivergent students. Grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit), the research examined how educators’ perceptions, instructional practices, and collaborative relationships shaped access, equity, and empowerment in career and technical education contexts. Data was collected from seven academic and trade teachers through semi-structured interviews, focus groups, lesson artifacts, and reflective journals. Analysis followed Peoples’ (2020) hermeneutic explication process and Saldaña’s (2021) multi-cycle coding methods, integrating in vivo, process, and axial coding …

First, But Not Alone: A Phenomenological Study Of Sibling Dynamics In First-Generation College Student Success, Alison Celaya

Theses and Dissertations

First-generation college students represent a significant and growing demographic within higher education, facing unique challenges in navigating their educational path. This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of first-generation college students (FGCS) by focusing on their relationships with siblings and their influence on academic success. Prior research has primarily focused on the disadvantages faced by FGCS compared to their counterparts in continuing-generation college students. At the same time, little attention has been given to the differences among FGCS between the first sibling to attend college and those who follow older siblings into higher education. This study aimed to address that …

Initial Phonemic Awareness Instruction With Printed Words Compared To Oral-Only Instruction: Segmenting, Blending, And Letter–Sound Learning, Jill R. Zablocki

Theses and Dissertations

Two methods of instruction for blending and segmenting eight vowel-consonant words were compared to examine whether instruction that referenced printed words was beneficial during the initial stages of phonemic awareness instruction. Preschool children included in the study (N = 30, M = 4.4 years) could not fully segment any of the words and did not know the sounds of more than four of the nine included letters (M = 1.0 letter sound). Children were randomly assigned to either instruction that mapped the segmented and blended sounds in spoken words to the letters in printed words or similar oral-only instruction that …

The Role A Teacher’S Level Of Phonemic Awareness And Phonics Knowledge Plays In The Implementation Of Sound Wall Instruction In Early Childhood Classrooms, Molly Murtagh

Theses and Dissertations

This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study examined the relationship between early elementary teachers’ knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics and their implementation of sound wall instruction. Although sound walls are increasingly used to support systematic and explicit phonics instruction, little is known about how teachers’ linguistic knowledge influences the fidelity and quality of their implementation. Grounded in Adult Learning Theory and the Simple View of Reading, this study explored how teacher knowledge translates into classroom practice. The quantitative portion of the study required teachers to complete a knowledge survey to assess phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge to identify participants at various …

A Qualitative Study On Teaching Strategies For Comprehension Of Ambiguous Language Among Adolescent English Language Learners, Gonzalo Grant Castro

Theses and Dissertations

Ambiguous language—words, phrases, or sentences with multiple meanings—often creates significant instructional challenges in English Language Development (ELD) classrooms. This qualitative case study, grounded in Vygotsky’s sociocognitive theory, investigates how four high school ELD teachers strategically employ scaffolding and social interactions to clarify such ambiguities. In this study, classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and detailed analyses of instructional artifacts served as key data sources. These methods provide a comprehensive picture of the classroom dynamics that shape teacher and student interactions, allowing for greater insight into the relationship between instructional strategies and the social context of learning. This study identifies critical elements that …

Exploring Academic Librarians Self-Perceived Teaching Attitudes And Practical Culturally Responsive Teaching (Crt) Strategies In Library Instruction, Jocelyn Castillo

Theses and Dissertations

As campuses continue to see an increase in students from various backgrounds, there is an interest in academic librarianship to explore the use of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) strategies in library instruction. Guided by self-perception theory, this quantitative study examined the relationship between the teaching attitudes of academic librarians and the years of teaching experience, and identified practical CRT strategies in library instruction particularly in undergraduate minority serving institutions in the United States. The teaching attitudes of academic librarians were measured using a modified version of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) capturing specific teaching tasks relevant to teaching …

Reading Comprehension For The English As A Second Language Learner: Oral Or Silent Reading Which Method Of Instruction Is More Effective?, Rosanne Ravo-Vernon

Theses and Dissertations

Educators have seen and will continue to see an influx of students in the classrooms who require English as a second language (ESL) instruction. The goal of this research will provide support for educators and administrators in preparing curriculum that focuses on the needs of these students. In pursuit of this aim, the researcher of this study sought to identify which method of reading instruction best suits English language learning (ELL) in the classroom. The research would identify components of both oral round robin and silent reading activities and then reading comprehension activities completed over the course of a two- …

Identifying At-Risk Readers: The Role Of Advanced Nonsense Word Fluency Probes In Early Literacy Screening, Lindsay K. Mcdermott

Theses and Dissertations

Early identification of reading difficulties is critical for improving literacy outcomes. Nonsense word fluency (NWF) assessments are widely used to evaluate early decoding skills, yet traditional consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) probes may not fully capture students’ decoding abilities. This study examines whether an advanced NWF probe incorporating consonant blends and digraphs better predicts oral reading fluency (ORF) than the traditional CVC-based probe. Using a correlational design, first-grade benchmark data will be analyzed to compare the predictive strength of correct letter sounds, whole words read, and blending status across both probes. Grounded in the Simple View of Reading and Kilpatrick’s Phonological-Core Deficit Hypothesis, …

‘Signature Gestures’: Anchoring The Black Diasporic Feminist Praxis In English Studies, Sonia Adams

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation study explores how the Black Diasporic Feminist Praxis (BDFP) serves as a methodology for theorizing, critiquing, and teaching literature by women writers of the Black Diaspora. In order to position the BDFP, I theorize ‘Blackness’ and ‘Indigeneity’ as modes of identity formation and the Black Diaspora (BD) as a fluid, inclusive racialized geographical space. Black Diasporic Feminism (BDF) is an epistemology that validates Black and Black Indigenous identity and life experiences across geography, race, gender, and class. I use the BDFP to examine how Black women writers from England, Australia, Canada, and the United States create a ‘Collage …

An Analysis Of The Impact Of Cognitive Writing Strategies On High School Writing Scores In A Suburban Tennessee District, Bethany A. Wilson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment revealed that only 27% of eighth and 12^th graders are proficient in writing. The federal No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Acts have put pressure on schools to demonstrate proficiency on reading and math tests, leaving minimal time for instruction in other subjects, including writing. In addition to the pressure of standardized testing, teachers also find themselves underprepared to teach writing and overwhelmed by the demands of large teaching loads. While researchers have reported benefits associated with cognitive writing strategies since the 1960s, instructional demands have prevented …

Film In Illiberal Times: Poland’S Public Memory And The European Union, Frances Tanzer

History

This article is about the recent transformation of two powerful, paradoxical, and inseparable narratives of progress that developed in the postwar period: aesthetic autonomy and Holocaust remembrance. As far-right and illiberal parties have gained power across Europe, they adapted these foundational narratives of the liberal-democratic West to assert their own legitimacy and to reimagine the cultural inclinations of the European Union. This article examines how this process has taken place in the reception of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest (2023) and Agnieszka Holland's Green Border (2023)—both international co-productions produced during the repressive eight-year reign of the Law and Justice Party …

Confessions Of A Beginning Dutch Learner, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

I have studied, taught about, and learned new languages throughout my lifespan. In fact, it has been the very core of my teaching career.  Now, I have the humbling experience of testing those truths against a new enterprise:  learning Dutch.  I spent last summer in the Netherlands, pursuing family roots and acquiring what Dutch I could.  I took no formal classes but did attend a free dropin class at the local library, where - believe me - I was the lowest learner in the lowest group! Here are some of my insights, from notes taken during that summer:

Teachers' Worldviews, Teachers' Identities, Ken Badley

Faculty Publications - College of Education

A basic question to ask about a teacher's worldview is whether or not he or she likes to be with students. Is a student's question at the teacher's desk an interruption of the teacher's work, or is it part of the teacher's work? A teacher's unspoken and spoken responses to such a question will reveal some parts of that teacher's worldview. For example, what subterranean currents regarding gender, skills, disabilities, and race affect a teacher's response to a particular student? Reflecting on worldviews in general and on one's own worldview-with all its classroom-related particulars-can help teachers understand better why they …

Redness As Fact And Sensibility In Mindanao’S Abaca Ikat Cloth, Cherubim Quizon

Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Publications

This paper proposes an approach to the color red as a central consideration in cloth making in the southern Philippines where thread is made from abaca (Musa textilis), a historically and economically significant plant in the banana family. It focuses on red dye derived from the root of the Morinda plant (Morinda citrifolia) and how it is utilized and theorized, both pragmatically and metaphorically, by indigenous women of Mindanao. Drawing on research that relies on ethnographic fieldwork and informed by early 20th century American museum collecting during a time of pacification, this paper frames a phenomenological query using mixed methods …

Visual Word Recognition And The Role Of Diacritics: Evidence From Arabic Vowelization., Maram Alharbi

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role of vowelization diacritics in Arabic visual word recognition and their contribution to early stages of lexical processing. Across writing systems, diacritical marks differ in their functional role and in whether they are part of letter identity, raising fundamental questions about how such features are encoded during word recognition. Arabic provides a particularly informative testing ground for these questions: vowelization diacritics in this language carry rich phonological information yet are systematically absent from the texts that skilled readers encounter daily. This interaction between the linguistic value of vowelization and its near-total omission in naturalistic reading positions …

Comparing The Evolution Of The Advanced Practice Nurse Role: Insights From Switzerland And Kenya, Carole Mackavey, Sara Kohler, Eunice Ndirangu, Rachel Kimani, Constance Shumba, Bernard Mutwiri, Colette Henderson, Anna Jones

School of Nursing & Midwifery, East Africa

The article explores the evolution of Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) roles in Switzerland and Kenya, highlighting their development, challenges, and influence on healthcare delivery. Despite notable differences in income levels and healthcare infrastructure, both countries are committed to strengthening primary care through the deployment of APNs. Switzerland uses APNs to address provider shortages and improve chronic disease management, whereas Kenya uses them to increase access in underserved areas. A comparative analysis explores how regulatory frameworks, educational models, scope of practice, and health system priorities influence the adoption of advanced practice nursing (APN). Switzerland’s established healthcare system supports the integration of …

Cultivating Trust, Communication, And Collaboration: A Relational Leadership Design For Intercultural Collaboration In Nouakchott, Mauritania, Elysse Audrey Burns

Doctor of Leadership

Foreign-led initiatives operating in Nouakchott, Mauritania, encounter challenges in collaborating effectively with local communities, hindering the growth of sustainable, locally driven leadership and contextually relevant initiatives. This doctoral project investigates how relational dynamics shape intercultural collaboration and responds through the development of a structured relational leadership certificate program grounded in the Mauritanian context.

Using documented discovery workshops and one-on-one interviews with Mauritanian and international practitioners, the research identified recurring concerns regarding decisionmaking authority, communication clarity, and the distribution of responsibility within foreignled initiatives. Participants described patterns in which expectations were inconsistently communicated, local voices were unevenly integrated into decisions, and …

Exploring The Feasibility And Acceptability Of The Calm Kitty Curriculum For Promoting Emotional Regulation In Preschoolers, Tabitha A. Irizarry

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This exploratory mixed-methods study examined the feasibility, acceptability, and perceived usefulness of the Calm Kitty Curriculum, a classroom-based emotional regulation program for preschool-aged children ages 3–5, delivered through a teacher-facing orientation. Emotional regulation in early childhood is an important foundation for school readiness, social competence, and later academic outcomes. Because children from historically marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by emotional dysregulation and exclusionary disciplinary practices, accessible and developmentally appropriate classroom-based supports are needed. This study represented an initial phase of curriculum development and focused on implementation readiness rather than child-level effectiveness. A secondary data analysis was conducted using previously collected, …

Originalism As Disruption, Susan D. Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article challenges the conventional understanding of originalism as a method that promotes unchanging constitutional meanings. Drawing on four and a half decades of experience since Attorney General Edwin Meese first championed originalism as a conservative project, this Article demonstrates that originalism has generally proven destabilizing rather than stabilizing to constitutional law. Landmark cases such as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, and Shelby County v. Holder show that the Supreme Court frequently deploys originalism when it seeks to upend settled constitutional doctrine, contradicting claims …

Cds 2100 : Phonetics And Phonological Development, Cds

Approved Course Proposals

No abstract provided.

Deepseek And The First Amendment: Assessing The Eighth Circuit And Missouri’S Legal Impact On Open-Source Ai, Alvin Hoi-Chun Hung

Missouri Law Review

The rise of open-source generative artificial intelligence (AI) models presents new challenges for First Amendment jurisprudence. Although computer code has been recognized as protected speech, the emergent nature of AI-generated outputs complicates the boundary between human expression and machine autonomy. This Article examines the constitutional and regulatory implications of compelled disclosures and content filtering, situating the analysis within the precedent of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and recent actions by the Missouri Attorney General targeting algorithmic opacity under consumer protection law. It further examines the limitations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in addressing liability for autonomous …

A Taxonomy-Driven Modular Defense Against Non-Canonical Language In Vision-Language-Action Models, Viraj Samson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have recently achieved strong performance across manipulation benchmarks, but these benchmarks rely on highly templated instructions on which the models are typically fine-tuned, leaving their behavior under realistic language-side perturbation unclear. It remains an open question whether the linguistic flexibility inherited from vision-language pretraining survives this fine-tuning, or whether the resulting policies become narrowly tuned to benchmark phrasing and brittle to the intent-preserving language variation that real users naturally produce. We address this gap with a systematic study of VLA robustness under non-canonical instructions, comprising three components: a structured taxonomy of intent-preserving variations spanning linguistic, orthographic, and …

Baking In The Disposition: The Wac/Wid World Through Translational Lenses, Joseph Franklin

Publications and Research

In a global perspective for WAC and other writing programs, the singular identifier of the nation still holds a dominance in articles, books, and conference presentations. But, how we understand relationships between different programs on the global writing studies map often demands a more nuanced unpacking than stable nation-markers can offer. Jonathan Hall (2023) calls us to take up “thinking with trans-” in WAC (p. 13). This chapter answers this call first by locating different pieces of global writing program scholarship along a spectrum from those that aim to establish a single, stable identity for a particular (often national) writing …

A Poor Man's Cup: Chicory Experimentation In Nebraska,1890-1900, Rebecca Hupp

Dissertations and Theses

“A Poor Man’s Cup” explores how Nebraskans actively confronted the problems of the late nineteenth-century through experimenting with new commodities. Prolonged severe drought, economic depression, and poor grain prices created a troublesome situation that grew in complexity as U.S. markets expanded globally and agriculture underwent professionalization. Some lay farmers, like Gabriel and Philomena Bazelman of Holt County, did not wait for new methods to find their way through the experiment station system and instead conducted trials themselves. Through piecing together the story of Nebraska chicory production with periodicals from the 1890s, experiment station bulletins, and Congressional reports, this thesis demonstrates …

Virginia Commonwealth University Courses (2026), Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Bulletins

Listing of courses for the 2026-2027 year.

The Disenchanted Grove: Postcolonial Modernity And The Decline Of Ri’I Bamboo Governance In Flores, Indonesia, Handoyo Handoyo, Puji Hastuti, Lukas Rumboko Wibowo, Budiyanto Dwi Prasetyo, Surati Surati, Kresno Agus Hendarto, Lila Juniyanti, Dewi Ratna Kurnia Sari, Desmiwati Desmiwati, Sanusi Sanusi, Ane Dwi Septina, Ramawati Ramawati

Forest and Society

This article explores the erosion of ri’i, a traditional ecological governance system practiced by the Ngadha people in Flores, Indonesia, in the face of modernization and postcolonial development. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with cultural elders, ritual practitioners, and local authorities, the study documents how ri’i—a ritual-based regulatory system for bamboo resource management—has been progressively dismantled through the combined pressures of technocratic governance, land commodification, and shifts toward individualism. Empirically, the main drivers identified are state land certification (including Sertifikat Hak Milik, SHM) and village modernization campaigns, which reconfigure communal tenure and everyday governance practices. Once embedded …

Gender, And Socioeconomic Status In School-Based Speech-Language Pathology Decision-Making For Adolescents With Traumatic Brain Injury: A Critically Appraised Topic, Geneva Renee Toledo

Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-

Purpose: Adolescents are at greater risk for traumatic brain injury (TBI), and TBI-related symptoms may contribute to disciplinary actions that increase their risk of entering the school-toconfinement pipeline. Given the disproportionate representation of racially marginalized male adolescents within this pipeline, this critically appraised topic (CAT) examined how race, gender, and socioeconomic status may influence school-based speech-language pathology (SLP) services and clinical decision-making following TBI. Method: A structured search of five electronic databases was conducted to identify studies examining speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs’) clinical decision-making and management of adolescents with TBI in relation to race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Relevant studies were …

Impact Of Social Media On Self Esteem And Body Image, Sunayana Sri Acharya Goribidnur Sudheendra

Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-

This study examined how idealized self-presentation on social media relates to self-esteem and body image in young adults, and whether body dissatisfaction, general distress, or symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress help explain that relationship. Ninety-eight undergraduate students from two universities completed an online survey measuring idealized online self-presentation (Presentation of Online Self Scale), self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale), body esteem (Body Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults), general distress (Distress Questionnaire-5), and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms (DASS-21). Contrary to expectations, greater idealized self-presentation was associated with higher, not lower, self-esteem. Idealized self-presentation was not significantly related to body esteem, …

Experiences Of Marginalization At The Intersection Of Race, Ethnicity, And Disability In Higher Education, Nora L. Portillo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Black and Latine college students with disabilities navigate higher education at the intersection of racism and ableism, yet their experiences remain underexamined. Autism and ADHD are particularly underrepresented in research and public discourse; moreover, unlike other disability categories in which students of color are overrepresented, Black and Latine children are less likely than white children to be accurately identified, and both disabilities are often framed around white prototypes. Guided by Disability Critical Race Theory, the present exploratory qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with ten undergraduates identifying as Black and/or Latine and with ADHD and/or on the autism spectrum attending a …

All She Ever Wanted Was The World: The Emergence Of Vocal Methodology, Pedagogy, And Opera Performance For Women In The Nineteenth Century, Emma Hawkinson

Dissertations and Theses

Important music methods books began to emerge in the 1750s with instrumental treatises for flute, piano, and violin. By the end of the nineteenth century, there was a multitude of treatises for a variety of instruments, including classical voice. This study investigates and analyzes the content of treatises from four individual women who performed, taught, and published vocal treatises in the nineteenth century: German Mathilde Marchesi (1821–1913), Italian Virginia Boccabadati (1828–1922), Spanish Matilde Esteban (1841–1915), and English American Clara Kathleen Rogers (1844–1931). These methods books are set in the historical context of the music industry before and during the nineteenth …