Digital Commons Network^™

The Predictive Validity Of Ielts And Vietnam High School Graduation Examination English Test : Evidence From English Majors, Tuan Anh Nguyen, Hung Viet Nguyen

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Pragmatic Competence And Transfer In Requests And Refusals : A Study Of Efl University Students In Southern Thailand, Uraiwan Rattanapan Noonkong, Usa Intharaksa

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Humanizing Education Through Subject-Centered Instruction: A Mixed Methods Case Study Of Engagement And Achievement In An Exploring Hip-Hop As Literature English Elective, Alicia Hyman-Peters

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how humanizing education through relationally-driven, subject-centered teaching affects student engagement, literacy, and achievement in an Exploring Hip-Hop as Literature English elective at a diverse high school in Northeast Florida. Drawing on Freire’s concept of humanization, Noddings’ Ethic of Care, Palmer’s focus on subject-centered learning, and the culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies of Ladson-Billings, Paris, and Alim, the research investigated how humanized education restores meaning and connection to learning. Using a Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods Design, data from thirty students were gathered through surveys, participation and assignment records, standardized assessments, interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations. Quantitative findings …

The Impact Of Censorship On Curriculum And Black Women Secondary English Language Arts Teachers In Florida, Crystal Parker

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the instructional, curricular, and school climate impacts of book censorship on Black women secondary English Language Arts teachers, exploring how they navigate and/or resist content restrictions. Using educational criticism and portraiture, this qualitative study captures the nuanced narratives of these educators. Grounded in Bourdieu’s Field Theory, along with Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Historically Responsive Literacy, Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors, and Cognitive Pluralism, the research addresses the following questions: How do Black women teachers describe the influence of recent book bans on their curriculum choices? In what ways do their identities shape their responses to censorship? Data …

Fostering Reading: Review Of A College Bridge Program For Deaf And Hard Of Hearing High School Students, Cara Wilmot

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This mixed-methods formative program evaluation examined the reading component of a summer College Bridge Program (CBP) designed for high school students who are deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh). Persistent disparities in reading outcomes among d/Dhh students have been linked to differences in language access, communication access, and opportunities to receive specialized instruction. Using the Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) evaluation model, this study evaluated how the CBP identified and addressed students' reading needs, implemented evidence-based instructional practices, and supported reading development through a three-week summer program.

Participants included 45 d/Dhh high school students from 12 southeastern states, as well …

Artem: Enhancing Large Language Model Agents With Spatial-Temporal Episodic Memory, Cassandra Hui Ming Tan, Budhitama Subagdja, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Current large language models (LLMs) exhibit significant deficiencies in episodic memory tasks including encoding, storing, and retrieving specific information from temporally dependent events over a long period of time. Recent approaches to handle memory tasks in LLMs, such as in-context learning, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and fine-tuning, may resolve the long-term retention issues, but are still inadequate to handle tasks requiring chronological awareness of the stored information. We introduce Agentic Retrieval with Temporal-Episodic Memory (ARTEM), a hybrid LLM-based agent architecture integrating LLMs with a self-organizing neural network named Spatial-Temporal Episodic Memory (STEM), designed to handle episodic memory tasks. Our approach employs …

Llamoco: Instruction Tuning Of Large Language Models For Optimization Code Generation, Zeyuan Ma, Yue-Jiao Gong, Hongshu Guo, Jiacheng Chen, Yining Ma, Zhiguang Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, combining the strength of large language models (LLMs) and Evolutionary Computation (EC) has shown promising results for addressing optimization problems. It typically involves either iterative next-step solution seeking or directly prompting LLMs to generate critical optimization codes. However, these methods often suffer from low computational efficiency, high sensitivity to prompt design, and a lack of domain-specific knowledge. We introduce LLaMoCo, the first instruction-tuning framework designed to adapt LLMs for solving optimization problems in a code-to-code manner. LLaMoCo features a comprehensive instruction set that includes code-style problem descriptions as input prompts and robust optimization codes from expert EC optimizers as …

Understanding Wage Theft: Beyond The Numbers Through Community Practice, Lived Experience, And Research, André Simões Da Silva, Lenita Reason, Cristina Araujo Brinkerhoff

Gastón Institute Publications

Wage theft is a widespread form of labor exploitation that disproportionately affects immigrant and other vulnerable workers. This report examines the scope and impact of wage theft in Massachusetts by analyzing case data from the Brazilian Worker Center (BWC) alongside wage and labor enforcement data from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office (AGO). The analysis demonstrates how wage theft affects immigrant workers across industries, with particularly high numbers of cases in construction, cleaning, and hospitality. The data also reveal significant gaps in the reporting and enforcement of wage violations, particularly among domestic workers, whose cases are likely substantially underrepresented in available …

Novice Teachers' Perceptions Of Clinical Experience And Their Preparedness To Teach In High-Need Urban Schools, Robin D. Renelus

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This hermeneutic phenomenological study examined novice teachers’ perceptions of how clinical experiences in a teacher preparation program prepared them to teach in high-need urban schools. The study included 12 novice teachers with three or fewer years of teaching experience who completed their clinical experience at the same university in Northeast Florida. Data were collected using Seidman’s (2019) three-interview approach, which explored participants’ backgrounds, day-to-day teaching experiences, and reflections on their sense of preparedness. Data were analyzed to develop textural descriptions of what participants experienced and structural descriptions of how those experiences were shaped (Moustakas, 1994).

Participants described clinical experiences as …

Llevándolas Con Calma: Latin American Migrant Worker Parenthood And Covid-19, Anthony J. Stronach

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

We have yet to fully understand what Latino migrant worker parents -a population invisible in many ways to much of society- have undergone since the onset and as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis. As such, grounded in the experiences and words of eleven migrants, this dissertation demonstrates (1) the shifting parameters of migrant parenthood during and after the pandemic, (2) how migrant working parents navigated such unprecedented times, and (3) their reflections as they looked back upon such experiences. These experiences include more than merely what happened to them; they encompass their thoughts, their emotions, their memories, their …

Initial Development Of Contextualized Social-Emotional Learning Assessment Tool For The Indonesian School, Nisrina Nurika Agustin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

As social-emotional learning (SEL) becomes increasingly integrated into the Indonesian national curriculum, a significant gap remains regarding culturally grounded tools to measure student progress. Current assessments often rely on Western-centric frameworks that prioritize individualistic traits over the collectivist values—such as communal harmony and the 5S tradition—prevalent in Indonesian schools. This study aimed to develop and provide initial item generation for a localized SEL assessment tool for primary school students (Grades 1–3). Utilizing a Deductive Qualitative Analysis (DQA) design, the research drew upon the CASEL framework for structural alignment while employing inductive methods to ensure cultural relevance. Data were collected through …

How Autistic Children Define Novel And Real Words, Henry James Tomiser

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Word knowledge is highly valuable to Autistic individuals, and although much research has characterized Autistic children’s vocabulary breadth (i.e., the number of lexical entries), less attention has been paid to vocabulary depth (i.e., the richness with which one understands a given word). In this exploratory post-hoc study, 11 Autistic children (one assigned female at birth) participated in novel and real word learning paradigms in which child-friendly referents were paired with CVCV word forms. Participants were then asked to provide open-ended definitions of the words. Definitions were parsed into meaningful subunits, or semantic features. Semantic features were coded by type of …

Exploring Factors Predicting Teachers’ Intentions To Use Digital Games In Saudi Elementary Schools, Thamarah M. Alqahtani

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Despite the potential benefits of integrating digital games in teaching and learning environments, little research has been carried out to understand the perception of elementary school teachers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) towards integrating digital games into the classroom. This study aims to understand Saudi elementary teachers’ intention of using the digital games in elementary school classrooms using Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model, and to provide crucial insights for the KSA’s Ministry of Education’s (MOE) administrators in developing evidence-based teacher training and effective school technology-integration policies. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used to assess Saudi …

Cultivating Positive Emotion Through Gratitude: A Mixed-Methods Study Of World Language Teachers, Allyson Magrath Power

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Teacher well-being is an increasingly urgent concern, particularly in shortage-area subjects such as World Languages. This study examined whether a structured gratitude intervention could support the well-being and resilience of World Language teachers. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, the study collected quantitative and qualitative data from participants who completed weekly gratitude journaling across four themes: Acknowledgment, Attention, Appreciation, and Action. Quantitative findings revealed a positive trend on the Gratitude Questionnaire, with results approaching statistical significance, suggesting a meaningful improvement in participants’ positive emotions. Qualitative analysis indicated increased emotional awareness, more intentional self-care practices, and greater reflection on supportive relationships in …

A Qualitative Case Study Exploring The Processes And Criteria For Presidential Leadership Selection In Three United States Higher Institutions Of Learning, Gabriel Kofi Boahen Nsiah

Dissertations

Background of the Problem

Today, research on U.S. higher education presidential search processes is limited, and existing literature characterizes these searches as reactive postures that are secretive, closed-door practices that have not adapted to the early signals of external seismic change. According to Quincy Martin (2021), “the world has evolved (p. 99).” Therein lies the problem. Quincy Martin insists, “Higher education has entered a period of upheaval, aided by new technologies, but hampered by political and cultural shifts. These are only amplified by modern, warp-speed information-sharing practices. All of this has exacerbated the consequences of scandals that threaten the stability …

Continental Violence And The "Oregon Question": George Frederick Ruxton And The Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest, Rory Orion Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper builds on recent efforts to depict Indigenous polities across North America in their international relations with European and Euro-American colonists and their centralized governments. It examines George Frederick Ruxton, a private English citizen and former army lieutenant, as he developed his response to the U.S.-British Oregon dispute while living in London in early 1846. He concluded that continental warfare was imminent and took overt steps to influence British policy, which he believed could halt U.S. expansion and definitively resolve the “Oregon Question.”

Values-Based Behavioral Frameworks As Contributors To Organizational Culture In Higher Education: A Literature Review, David J. Park Do

Papers

Colleges and universities almost universally publish statements of organizational values, yet a gap often persists between those stated values and the regularly observed behaviors. This review examines how that gap relates to culture in higher education institutions and specifically explores how translating values into observable behaviors contributes to organizational culture. This literature review used a structured, criteria-guided approach to source identification, selecting sources against three constructs: 1) institutional adoption of values-based behavioral frameworks, 2) organizational culture in higher-education settings, and 3) the perceptions through which organizational members perceive culture. The resulting corpus of 40 sources spans organizational culture scholarship, virtue …

¡Salud! Sacrificing The Sacred Sip: A Critical Analysis Of The Impact Of The Spiritual Conquest On Alcohol Traditions In Central México, Elizabeth Vilchis

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

By thoroughly investigating the available primary sources, this thesis will convey the importance of the Mesoamerican inebriating drink pulque in both the ethos and mythos of ancient Nahua society, examining how the ritual use of pulque became problematic in the eyes of the Spaniards, by investigating the cultural and ideological contradictions or double standards that enabled the tensions, struggles, and violence with which the Spanish colonial regime repressed the ritual use of pulque. This thesis compares the Nahua ethos and mythos of pulque to the Christian ethos and mythos of wine, highlighting the parallels perceived by Spaniards in Central México …

Nonbinary Gender Performance And Self-Identification In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Lillian R. Durr

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, a text informed by a rich Romantic era philosophical tradition, has produced an expansive contemporary body of transgender studies scholarship. Building on transgender literary studies of Frankenstein, my thesis analyzes the difference between the monster’s internalized self-perceived identity and their externally performed and perceived identity. I interpret the difference between the monster’s internal and external identity as an analogy through which to understand contemporary nonbinary experiences. The “performance” of gender that Judith Butler describes is a limited expression of an internal, inescapable, ontological experience of self-identification. The monster’s own social experience illustrates the …

Operationalizing Cyber-Routine Activities Theory For Senior Cybercrime Prevention: An Evaluation Of The Shield Training-The-Trainer Program, Kyung-Shick Choi, Insun Park, Mijin Kim, Ji Yae Bong

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

Older adults face growing risks of cyber-enabled fraud, yet scalable, evidence-based prevention programs remain limited. Guided by Cyber-Routine Activities Theory (Cyber-RAT), this study evaluates the pilot implementation of the Seniors Harnessing Internet Education for Lasting Defense (SHIELD) Training-the-Trainer program, designed to prepare law enforcement officers and community leaders to deliver cybercrime prevention education to older adults. A key innovation of SHIELD is its integration of interactive game-based simulations, which allow participants to practice verification, refusal, and reporting behaviors in realistic cybercrime scenarios. Following the December 2025 pilot session in Boston, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants from law enforcement, …

Vishing And Smishing Perpetrators And Their Victims In Nigerian Slums, Lateef J. Adeyemo, Tirimisiyu Y. Olabulo, Idenyi G. Peter

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

This study investigates the personal accounts of both perpetrators and victims to better understand the techniques and strategies used in vishing and smishing schemes. It adopts a qualitative cross-sectional design across three Lagos slums (Ajegunle, Amukoko, and Ijora-Badia), using snowball sampling to recruit 20 victims and 10 perpetrators for in-depth interviews. Findings reveal that perpetrators impersonate trusted entities using low-tech tools (pre-registered SIMs, bulk SMS apps) to exploit trust. Selective morality emerges among offenders, with some repaying known victims due to guilt while exploiting strangers, alongside a mentorship culture where experienced scammers train newcomers. Poverty and peer influence normalize the …

Cloud-Computing Costs And Financial Reporting: How Classification And Disclosure Choices Shape Comparability And Valuation, Salma Askar

Dissertations and Theses

Cloud computing has become a central component of firms’ information technology infrastructure, yet the accounting treatment and disclosure of cloud-related expenditures remain subject to managerial judgment under ASC 350-40. This thesis examines whether variation in cloud˗computing disclosures is associated with differences in firms’ information environments and reporting behavior. Using textual analysis of 10-K filings for U.S. public firms from 2004 to 2025, the study constructs measures of cloud-related disclosure volume, optimistic tone, and linguistic intensity. It examines their association with analyst forecast error, analyst forecast dispersion, financial statement comparability, and real earnings management. The results indicate that cloud disclosure characteristics …

"Art, Esthetics, Ideal": An Ethics For Literary Translators In The Age Of Translating Machines, Gabriel González Núñez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

The advent of effective machine translation has raised several issues for translators, including the question of how a human translator ought to translate in this age of translating machines. In this context of new ethical questions, the present essay argues that an answer may be found in Pedro Figari’s (1912) philosophical essay on esthetics. Following Figari, the current essay argues that literary translation is art, that as such it can produce an esthetic emotion on readers and that the purpose of such art and esthetics is an ideal in the form of the continuous betterment of the human condition.

An Imperative For Leadership & Institutional Transformation: Going Back To Code, Jonikka Charlton

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lens: Llm-Enabled Narrative Synthesis For Mental Health By Aligning Multimodal Sensing With Language Models, Wenxuan Xu

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Multimodal health sensing offers rich behavioral signals for assessing mental health, yet translating these numerical time-series measurements into natural language remains challenging. Current LLMs cannot natively ingest long-duration sensor streams, and paired sensor–text datasets are scarce. To address these challenges, we introduce LENS, a framework that aligns multimodal sensing data with language models to generate clinically grounded mental-health narratives. LENS first constructs a large-scale dataset by transforming Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) responses related to depression and anxiety symptoms into natural-language descriptions, yielding over 100,000 sensor–text QA pairs from 258 participants. To enable native time-series integration, we train a patch-level encoder …

Languages Of Marginalization: Educational Inequality And Identity Formation Among Rohingya Refugees In Bangladesh, Md Khalid Rahman

Sustainability and Social Justice

This research paper investigates how language-of-instruction policies shape educational inequality and identity formation among Rohingya refugee children living in protracted displacement in Cox’ Bazar, Bangladesh. Analyzed from a human right–based framework, the study examines whether existing educational policies align with international legal standards on the right to education, including the UDHR, ICESCR, Child Convention and SDG 4. While these frameworks guarantee non-discriminatory and inclusive access to education, the reality in Cox’s Bazar reveals a persistent gap between normative commitments and policy implementation. Moreover, the study explores how the exclusion of both the host language (Bangla) and the native Rohingya language …

Participation, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Faculty Publications

What does it take to participate in direct, naturally occurring social interaction? Conversation analytic (CA) studies reveal that “participation”—who participates, when, and how—is dynamic and locally, multimodally achieved by the people involved. Particularly in social situations when people are concurrently accessible to one another’s naked senses (Goffman, 1964), co-participation is enabled and performed through embodied and vocal resources including talk, gaze, facial displays, body orientation/posture, proximity, and gestures (e.g., M. H. Goodwin, 1999; C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin, 2005; Pillet-Shore, 2010; Sidnell, 2009). Using a multimodal CA lens, this chapter illuminates how “participation” is achieved in real-time, naturally occurring …

Navigating Critical Communication Pedagogy As International Graduate Teaching Assistants In The United States' Communication Classrooms, Janifar Nova

Research Papers

As U.S. universities continue to diversify, international graduate teaching assistants (iGTAs) play a central yet understudied role in communication classrooms. Guided by the framework of Critical Communication Pedagogy (CCP), this study examines how iGTAs interpret and embody critical pedagogical principles as they navigate linguistic, cultural, and institutional expectations. Using an interpretive approach, I held a focus group discussion with seven iGTAs to explore how participants’ identities, experiences, and emotions influence their teaching practices. Five main themes emerged, including (1) interpreting CCP through identity and positionality, (2) embodying CCP through collaboration and mutual learning, (3) negotiating ethical and shared uses of …

The Role Of International Student Office Directors In Facilitating The Transitional Adjustment Of International Students In U.S Higher Education, Agnes Afi Yigah

Masters Theses

This qualitative study explored how International Student Office Directors facilitate the transitional adjustment of international students in U.S. higher education institutions. Guided by Schlossberg’s Transition Theory (1981) and Schlossberg’s Mattering and Marginality Theory (1989), this study examined the challenges international students face, the support strategies implemented by International Student Office Directors, and the institutional factors influencing student adjustment and well-being. International students experience challenges related to housing and logistical adjustment, financial and immigration-related stressors, academic system adjustment and self-advocacy, and social integration and emotional adjustment. Proactive and holistic support approaches, including pre-arrival communication, orientation programs, academic support, emotional support, and …

Geospatial Disparities In Adolescent Mental Health Resources: School- And Community-Level Evidence From Travis County, Texas, Sharon V Munroe, Jingjing Gao, Gayla Ferguson, Muinat Abolore Idris, Eric C Jones

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Adolescents in the United States face growing mental health challenges, with nearly one in three high school students reporting poor mental health in the past 30 days. Schools increasingly serve as key access points for mental health care. However, geographic disparities in access to school-based mental health services remain underexplored.

Purpose: This study examines the spatial distribution of adolescent mental health resources in Travis County, Texas, and evaluates how school- and community-level factors are associated with the presence of on-site school social workers.

Methods: School locations, enrollment data, and the presence of on-site social workers were mapped and analyzed …