Education Commons^™

Barriers To Hispanic Parent Involvement In A Rural School District, Josh T. Beattie

Theses and Dissertations

As the Hispanic student population continues to increase at a rapid rate, schools in the United States are tasked with closing the achievement gap between Hispanic students and their white counterparts. Federal education policy and researchers alike call for schools to increase the involvement of Hispanic parents in their children's education as one way to close the achievement gap. This study focused on the involvement activities and barriers to involvement among a group of Hispanic parents in a rural school district in the state of Idaho. This study uses a qualitative approach to gather and analyze information from parents of …

The Relationship Between Viewing Time And Sexual Attraction Ratings, Micah James Rees

Theses and Dissertations

The LOOK is an iPad-based application that measures sexual interest. It does this by recording the amount of time individuals take to view and rate the attractiveness of images of fully clothed people from differing age, gender, and racial demographics. Viewing-time measures, such as the LOOK, operate under the assumption that individuals view sexually attractive images longer than they view images that they deem unattractive or sexually non-preferred. Although there is research to show the efficacy of these kinds of tests, there is a lack of research supporting the assumption that viewing-time correlates strongly with reported ratings of sexual preferences. …

The Effects Of Distracting Background Audio On Spontaneous Speech, Kacy Nicole Chapman

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the changes that occur in spontaneous speech when speakers are distracted by background audio. Forty young adults answered open ended questions under five audio conditions (pink noise, movie dialogue, heated debate, classical music, and contemporary music) and a silent condition. Acoustic parameters assessed during the sessions included mean and variability of the fundamental frequency (F0), mean and variability of intensity, speaking time ratio, and disfluency ratio. It was hypothesized that there would be significant increases in the mean and variability of F0 as well as the mean and variability of intensity. There were statistically significant increases in …

The Effects Of Distracting Background Audio On Spontaneous Speech, Kacy Nicole Chapman

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the changes that occur in spontaneous speech when speakers are distracted by background audio. Forty young adults answered open ended questions under five audio conditions (pink noise, movie dialogue, heated debate, classical music, and contemporary music) and a silent condition. Acoustic parameters assessed during the sessions included mean and variability of the fundamental frequency (F0), mean and variability of intensity, speaking time ratio, and disfluency ratio. It was hypothesized that there would be significant increases in the mean and variability of F0 as well as the mean and variability of intensity. There were statistically significant increases in …

The Effects Of Distracting Background Audio On Spontaneous Speech, Kacy Nicole Chapman

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the changes that occur in spontaneous speech when speakers are distracted by background audio. Forty young adults answered open ended questions under five audio conditions (pink noise, movie dialogue, heated debate, classical music, and contemporary music) and a silent condition. Acoustic parameters assessed during the sessions included mean and variability of the fundamental frequency (F0), mean and variability of intensity, speaking time ratio, and disfluency ratio. It was hypothesized that there would be significant increases in the mean and variability of F0 as well as the mean and variability of intensity. There were statistically significant increases in …

Physical Education Teacher Education (Pete) Majors' Perceptions And Opinions Of Appropriate Instructional Practices: A Qualitative Approach, David C. Barney, Liana Davis

Faculty Publications

Physical education (PE) teachers are responsible for helping students learn in their classes. Unfortunately, many students have been exposed to games and activities that were inappropriate, thus negatively affecting their learning in PE class. Inappropriate instructional practices have been a common occurrence for many students. One group that can help curb the inclusion of inappropriate instructional practices are Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) majors. This study investigated PETE majors’ beliefs of certain instructional practices that have been implemented in PE games and activities. Many of the instructional practices were inappropriate. The PETE majors’ felt that dodge ball, relay games, and …

Book Review: Seeds Of Greatness By Denis Waitley, Jennifer Maynard

Marriott Student Review

Book review of Seeds of Greatness by Denis Waitley, personal anecdotes and summaries of research on the secrets to success in life and in the business world.

The Art Of Learning, Richard Rolapp

Marriott Student Review

No abstract provided.

Professional Development Among Brigham Young University Faculty, Elizabeth Ann Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a qualitative research study examining views of faculty at Brigham Young University regarding professional development at the university level. Subjects who participated in the study were selected based on being full-time, part-time, adjunct, tenured, and non-tenured professors at Brigham Young University. Instructors who work solely with online students were not included. The contacts also did not include student teachers, support staff, non-teaching faculty or graduate students.The key findings from the qualitative research study report that faculty differentiate between two categories of professional development, one concerned with teaching and other aspects of working at a university, and the …

Articulatory Kinematic Compensation For A Bite Block During Diphthong Production, Michelle Olson Richins

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the effects of bite blocks on articulatory kinematics when producing diphthongs /ɑɪ/ and /É‘ÊŠ/ within a phrase. Participants consisted of 20 young adults (10 males, 10 females) with no speech, language or hearing disorders. Participants produced the diphthongs in the carrier phrase Im an owl that hoots. A Northern Digital Instruments Wave electromagnetic articulograph measured the articulatory movements while the speaker produced the stimuli in two conditions (pre bite block insertion and post bite block insertion). Bilateral bite blocks were made using Express dental putty, which is a silicone impression material, in order to create a …

The Ability Of Children With Developmental Language Disorder (Dld) To Infer Emotions From Pictures: Where's The Breakdown?, Mary Rebekah Forbes

Theses and Dissertations

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often have difficulties with social and emotional learning, including emotion understanding and inferencing. Five children with DLD, ages 6;4 to 11;9, identified emotions depicted in pictured scenarios over a period of 10 weeks. Emotion categories included happy, sad, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Each child's responses were analyzed and plotted on a confusion matrix. In a few cases, children did not interpret the scenario accurately. Even when they interpreted the scenario accurately, all of the children misapplied, overgeneralized, or confused emotion labels in some cases. These errors represented limitations in social and emotional learning …

A Discourse Analysis Of Clinician-Child Interactions Within A Meaning-Based Phonological Intervention, Brittany Appleby Long

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study analyzed interactions between clinicians and a male child, aged 5 years 9 months old, with significant phonological as well as language deficits within a meaning-based phonological intervention implemented over a nine-month period. Play-based intervention strategies were presented in activities that varied in communicative complexity. The clinician, along with graduate-student assistants, frequently modeled and elicited target word productions as they interacted with the child in routines and scripted play contexts. Transcriptions of interactions were analyzed using a conversational analysis that explored engagement and participation, turn taking, and linguistic complexity of utterances produced in adjacent turns. The analyses illustrated …

A Social Communication Intervention To Facilitate Emotion Word Learning In School-Age Children With Developmental Language Disorders, Sara Elise Avila

Theses and Dissertations

Historically, social communication approaches to intervention for children with developmental language disorders (DLD) have been limited. However, several recent studies have shown that these interventions can produce positive changes in children with DLD. One weakness that children with DLD demonstrate is the production of words to express emotion. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of a story-based social communication intervention to increase the production of emotion words in three elementary school-age children diagnosed with DLD. Data were collected and analyzed in pre-treatment baseline sessions, throughout the intervention, and in post-treatment follow-up data for the seven target emotion word categories of happiness, …

Spanish For Lunch: Engaging Young Interpreters In Teacher Professional Development, Kevin Landon Johnstun

Theses and Dissertations

Across the United States, schools are largely segregated by race and ethnicity, resulting in schools that are densely Latino and teaching staff who are overwhelming monolingual English speakers, as most teachers are white women. This has created difficulty in home communication in these schools. Given the positive impacts of personal and frequent home communication, a greater capacity of teachers to communicate with parents may be an important asset in school improvement efforts. This study looks at ongoing design-based research efforts to engage bilingual students in helping their teachers become more capable of communicating in Spanish. Through online-delivered challenges, teachers and …

Exploring The Capacity Development Of Novice School Administrators: It's Not Only Where Capacity Sources Are Accessed But Also How, Aaron Ross Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Although many school districts provide inservice professional development to build the capacities of novice principals, some of these supports are proving inadequate in recruiting or retaining qualified leaders. Research on capacity development for novice principals is scarce, yields mixed results, and employs methodology which has invited participant response bias. Reflecting the school level, gender, and Title I experience of novice principals within a large school district in the mid-Western United States, a sample of 24 novice principals respond to semi-structured interview questions. Iterations of transcription coding, member-checking, and analysis yield findings that help school districts better understand the capacity development …

A Mixed Methods Study Of Special Education Families' Experiences At An Online Charter School, Delaina Cales Tonks

Theses and Dissertations

Student well-being (as opposed to an overemphasis on learning outcomes or technologies) should serve as the central component of a successful online model for students with disabilities. Historically, research on online schools for students with disabilities has focused on outcomes. One online charter schools growth of the students with disabilities population has outpaced the growth of the general education student population over the past eight years, which is an unusual trend that warrants additional scrutiny. Using anonymous parent and student surveys coupled with in-depth phenomenological interviews, this explanatory mixed-methods study investigates the reasons families of students with disabilities chose online …

Teaching Conversation Skills To Adults With Developmental Disabilities Using A Video-Based Intervention Package, Kaitlyn Rayne Osborne

Theses and Dissertations

Social skills deficits may hinder learning, terminate relationships, and impede employment. Individuals with autism and intellectual disability are often characterized with difficulties in social judgement, emotions, and interpersonal relationships, all of which can lead to disruptive and aggressive behaviors. Explicit instruction, video modeling, and video feedback are research-based practices that have been used to teach conversation skills to individuals, particularly children with developmental disabilities and social impairments. This study examined the effects of explicit instruction combined with video modeling and video feedback in teaching six adults ages 18-20 with autism and intellectual disability skills for initiating a conversation. A multiple …

Developmental Language Disorders And Reticence In Childhood, Aimee Diehl

Theses and Dissertations

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) struggle in a variety of social contexts. These children display different forms of social withdrawal, the most prevalent being shyness which is behaviorally manifested as reticence. The goal of the current study was to further explore the relationship between DLD and reticence in children using a revised set of items from the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS). A total of 220 children participated in the study. A univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if there were significant differences related to group, age, and gender on reticence. Findings revealed a significant difference …

Playable Cases As Authentic Practice In Online Classrooms, Kevin Scott Haws

Theses and Dissertations

Playable cases are a new type of mixed-reality serious game (SG), combining elements of alternative reality games (ARGs) and education simulations to offer an immersive, transmedia story. Participants advance the plot through interactive gameplay and characters with the goal of creating products and experiencing real-world business situations. This study investigates the effectiveness of the playable case Microcore as a tool specifically for online writing instruction (OWI). Fifty students in online sections of a technical communication course participated in Microcore, in which they responded to pre- and post-survey questions and prompts directed at their perceptions about writing, understanding of workplace communication, …

A Comparison Of Special Admit And General Admit College Football Athletes’ Academic Progress And Perceptions Of Academic Support Services, Nicole Realle Mccullough

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the academic progress of special admit football players compared to general admit football players at a private, Division I university in the western United States. Using mixed methods, the researcher quantitatively compared the two groups in terms of credits enrolled, credits attained, GPA and progress toward degree. The researcher also interviewed special admit football players to determine their perceptions of academic support service. Data answer the quantitative and qualitative study questions. Most notably, the researcher found that, while general admit football players had higher GPAs than the special admit athletes, the special admit athletes experienced the same …

How Does The Artist Teacher Successfully Negotiate Being Both Artist And Teacher?, Marie Withers

Theses and Dissertations

Around water coolers, faculty rooms, and classroom corners, art teachers discuss their concerns about maintaining a balance between making, teaching, and studying art. Research indicates there are advantages and disadvantages to commingling these activities, and about how these activities inform each other. The purpose of this study is to not only research what has been written, but also discover through interviews, using a narrative inquiry/case study approach, what living, breathing artist teachers are doing to that allows them to take advantage of the symbiotic nature of making, teaching, and studying art.

A Content Analysis Of Scientific Practices In A Fourth-Grade Commercial Literacy Program, Hailey A. Oswald

Theses and Dissertations

Increasing science literacy among all students is a longstanding goal of science education. The most recent national attempt to improve science education, and thereby increase science literacy, came in the form of the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards, which include 3 dimensions: scientific and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. The purpose of this content analysis was to examine the alignment between 4 of the scientific practices (Asking Questions; Constructing Explanations; Engaging in Argument from Evidence; and Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information) and a widely used commercial literacy program, Reading Wonders, with …

Exploring Fit For Nonlinear Structural Equation Models, Phillip Isaac Pfleger

Theses and Dissertations

Fit indices and fit measures commonly used to determine the accuracy and desirability of structural equation models are expected to be insensitive to nonlinearity in the data. This includes measures as ubiquitous as the CFI, TLI, RMSEA, SRMR, AIC, and BIC. Despite this, some software will report these measures when certain models are used. Consequently, some researchers may be led to use these fit measures without realizing the impropriety of the act. Alternative fit measures have been proposed, but these measures require further testing. As part of this thesis, a large simulation study was carried out to investigate alternative fit …

Self-Determination Theory And Student Emotional Engagement In Higher Education, Tarah Brittany Ikahihifo

Theses and Dissertations

Studies have shown that increased student engagement is correlated with improved learning outcomes and overall positive results for students. While engagement can be viewed as a precursor to other outcomes, it should also be examined as an outcome itself. To increase student engagement and improve the learning experience for students, we must understand which factors can facilitate engagement and how educators can positively affect these factors. This research explored the influence of three proposed facilitators of engagement: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Self-determination theory, a theory of motivation, posits that these are three innate psychological needs that must be fulfilled to …

Uncovering One Teacher's Knowledge Of Arts Integration For Developing English Learners' Reading Comprehension: A Self-Study, Tina Ralinn Mcculloch

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore what I, a general education classroom teacher, know about using arts integration to build English Learners (ELs) reading comprehension. As the primary researcher, I am a fifth-grade, general education teacher in an intermountain West, Title 1, urban school where the typical classroom contains over 50% EL students. The studys two other participants were Martha, the director of the universitys arts partnership, and Camilla, a fellow faculty member who integrates arts into her curriculum. This qualitative Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practice research methodology was utilized to uncover my knowledge of teaching …

Cross-Culture Research: Comparison Between Chinese And American Art Education, Ye Liang

Theses and Dissertations

Education systems in China and the United States are very different. Chinese educator Hong Wang compared the two education systems and came to a conclusion: Chinese education wins in the starting point, while American education wins in the end point (Cheng, 2014). Chinese students learn more things, take challenging courses, and do well in academic accomplishment. However, examination-oriented methods in the Chinese education system may kill students’ interest in learning. Even though Chinese students learned fast in the starting points, they failed in the terminal points as they lost their interest in learning (Chen, 2014). Many educators and scholars think …

Education For Civic Life, Daniel N. Robinson

Brigham Young University-Public School Partnership Occasional Papers

No abstract provided.

A Tesol Ma Introductory Course: A Course For New Tesol Ma Students At Brigham Young University, Paula Celina Cabrera Campos

TESOL MA Projects

Concerns at the beginning of a graduate program may or may not be met promptly enough to ensure students will all begin confidently. Not all graduate students understand what is expected of them at the beginning of their programs and where they can go to receive the necessary help. The Introductory TESOL MA Course has been designed to bridge this gap and support students in their desire to feel more prepared for this academic challenge. The three-module online course addresses the most common topics graduate students wish they had known at the beginning of their graduate experience. The course will …

A Decade Of Disability Depictions In Newbery Award Books, H. Grow, Sharon Black, K. Egan, Tina Taylor, K. Moss, Rachel L. Wadham, Mary Anne Prater

Faculty Publications

Newbery awards are conferred annually on books recognized as having made the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature; these books reach a wide audience, and their depictions of characters with disabilities can influence children's perceptions and attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. Eight Newbery Medal and Honor books chosen from 2010 to 2019 were identified as portraying 11 main or supporting characters with a disability. Six disabilities were represented: emotional disturbance, deafness, specific learning disability, speech/language impairment, orthopedic impairment, and traumatic brain injury. Applying the Rating Scale for Quality Characterizations of Individuals with Disabilities in Children’s Literature, we found most of …

Make Summer Great Again -- Do The Research Experience For Teachers (Ret) Program, Dan Broadbent

Faculty Publications

What is the RET Program?

• “Research Experience for Teachers”
• It is a National Science Foundation (NSF) program that…
• “supports the active involvement of K-12 teachers and community college faculty in research in order to bring knowledge and innovation into their classrooms.”
• So, research universities apply for a grant from the NSF and then set it up.
• Usually paired with REU