Geo-Bibliometric Mapping of French Geography: An Examination of Geography Dissertations Produced in France

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herubel, Jean-Pierre V. M.

2005-01-01

French geography dissertations for the years 1985-2002 were examined for their salient characteristics in terms of degree production, dissertation type, institutional affiliation, and geographical reach. These dissertations offer a rich base of research conducted in a country known for its innovative geographical research and tradition. Particular…

The Meaning of Relationships for Student Agency in Soka Education: Exploring the Lived Experiences and Application of Daisaku Ikeda's Value-Creating Philosophy through Narrative Inquiry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nagashima, Julie Takako

2016-01-01

This dissertation examines a pedagogy called Soka education that was founded in early 20th century Japan. Specifically, this dissertation offers an empirical and conceptual study that examines the application of Soka education in present day. After examining the historical and political context of Soka education, I explicate on Ikeda's (1928- )…

Graduate Students' Research Interest in Business Ethics: A Study of Dissertations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Piotrowski, Chris; Guyette, Roger W.

2014-01-01

Research on the nature of business ethics education during graduate-level training is somewhat limited. One approach in determining advanced students' research interest in the area is to examine the selection of "business ethics" topics for dissertation research. The current study addressed this issue by conducting a topical…

LIS Dissertation Titles and Abstracts (1930-2009): Where Have All the Librar* Gone?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finlay, Craig S.; Sugimoto, Cassidy R.; Li, Daifeng; Russell, Terrell G.

2012-01-01

This article examines the topicality of Library and Information Science (LIS) dissertations written between 1930 and 2009 at schools with American Library Association (ALA)--accredited university programs in North America. Dissertation titles and abstracts were examined for the presence of library-related keywords drawn from the core curricula of…

A Meta-Analysis of Dissertation Research on the Relationship between Professional Learning Community Implementation and Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Patrick, Susan McClendon

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis of dissertation research that examined the implementation of professional learning communities (PLCs) and student achievement in preK-12 schools. An exhaustive search for such unpublished studies was conducted using the following criteria: 1) the studies were available on dissertation…

The Phonology of Sonorants in Bavarian German

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Noelliste, Erin

2017-01-01

In this dissertation, I investigate the phonological behavior of Bavarian German liquids, nasals, and vowels. These sounds undergo various changes, depending on the context, and I examine these changes in terms of features, which are determined via a contrastive hierarchy. This dissertation departs from traditional studies on German dialects,…

Investigation of the History Education Researches in Turkey in Terms of Some Variables (Master's Theses and Dissertations Sample)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elban, Mehmet

2017-01-01

The purpose of this research study is to examine the master's theses and dissertations carried out about history education research in Turkey in terms of certain variables. The study is a qualitative research and it used documentary research design as a research method. The population of the research study is the master's theses and dissertations…

Citation Patterns of Engineering, Statistics, and Computer Science Researchers: An Internal and External Citation Analysis across Multiple Engineering Subfields

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelly, Madeline

2015-01-01

This study takes a multidimensional approach to citation analysis, examining citations in multiple subfields of engineering, from both scholarly journals and doctoral dissertations. The three major goals of the study are to determine whether there are differences between citations drawn from dissertations and those drawn from journal articles; to…

Antecedents and near-term consequences for interdisciplinary dissertators.

PubMed

Kniffin, Kevin M; Hanks, Andrew S

2017-01-01

Given the complexity of questions studied by academicians, institutions are increasingly encouraging interdisciplinary research to tackle these problems; however, neither the individual-level pathways leading to the pursuit of interdisciplinary research nor the resulting market outcomes have been closely examined. In this study, we focus attention on the individuals who complete interdisciplinary dissertations to ask "who are they and how do they fare after earning the PhD?" Since interdisciplinary research is known to be relatively risky among academics, we examine demographic variables that are known to be associated in other contexts with risk-taking before considering whether interdisciplinarians' outcomes are different upon graduating. First among our three main findings, students whose fathers earned a college degree demonstrated a 1.3% higher probability of pursuing interdisciplinary research. Second, the probability that non-citizens pursue interdisciplinary dissertation work is 4.6% higher when compared with US citizens. Third, individuals who complete an interdisciplinary dissertation tend to earn approximately 2% less in the year after graduation; however, mediation analyses show that the decision to become a postdoctoral researcher accounts for the apparent salary penalty. Our findings shed light on the antecedents and near-term consequences for individuals who complete interdisciplinary dissertations and contribute to broader policy debates concerning supports for academic career paths.

Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis of Doctoral Research: Research Trends in Distance Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Skinner, Jason Kirtland

2015-01-01

The study investigated research topics of doctoral dissertations that examined issues in distance learning from 2000-2014. Twelve reviews of research on distance learning, spanning from 1997-2015, were identified. It was found that only one of these reviews of research (Davies, Howell, & Petri, 2010) looked at doctoral dissertations. The…

Structure and Evolution of Scientific Collaboration Networks in a Modern Research Collaboratory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pepe, Alberto

2010-01-01

This dissertation is a study of scientific collaboration at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a modern, multi-disciplinary, distributed laboratory involved in sensor network research. By use of survey research and network analysis, this dissertation examines the collaborative ecology of CENS in terms of three networks of…

Sowing City Schools: Teachers and Garden Education in Havana and Philadelphia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bucher, Katie Ann

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines how pedagogies of sustainability are embedded in socio-cultural contexts and policy structures and driven by the localized actions of teachers. Through a comparative case study in two cities with extensive and varied school garden programs, Havana and Philadelphia, this dissertation analyzes the roles, understandings,…

Consociation as a Nominal Retention Strategy: A Qualitative Case Study of a Specific Charter School and University College Partnership Aimed at Scholastic Impetus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bailey, Jarvis

2017-01-01

This dissertation as an exploratory study examines the characteristics of the students of a charter school participating in a partnership with a university located in an improving low socioeconomic environment in the northeastern U.S., which has been dedicated to providing educational opportunities to the underserved. This dissertation also…

Lonely Days and Lonely Nights: Completing the Doctoral Dissertation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Germeroth, Darla

A study examined areas of the doctoral dissertation process that are often problematic for the Ph.D./Ed.D. candidate in the field of communication. Subjects, 250 randomly selected Speech Communication Association members holding a Ph.D. or an Ed.D. were surveyed. Of the 250 surveys mailed, 137 were returned, representing a 54.8% return rate.…

Information Use by PhD Students in Agriculture and Biology: A Dissertation Citation Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuruppu, Pali U.; Moore, Debra C.

2008-01-01

This article reports the findings of a study conducted to examine the types of information used by graduate students in the fields of biological and agricultural sciences at Iowa State University (ISU). The citations of doctoral dissertations submitted in nine agriculture and biological science subject fields (crop production and physiology;…

"Are you gonna publish that?" Peer-reviewed publication outcomes of doctoral dissertations in psychology.

PubMed

Evans, Spencer C; Amaro, Christina M; Herbert, Robyn; Blossom, Jennifer B; Roberts, Michael C

2018-01-01

If a doctoral dissertation represents an original investigation that makes a contribution to one's field, then dissertation research could, and arguably should, be disseminated into the scientific literature. However, the extent and nature of dissertation publication remains largely unknown within psychology. The present study investigated the peer-reviewed publication outcomes of psychology dissertation research in the United States. Additionally, we examined publication lag, scientific impact, and variations across subfields. To investigate these questions, we first drew a stratified random cohort sample of 910 psychology Ph.D. dissertations from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. Next, we conducted comprehensive literature searches for peer-reviewed journal articles derived from these dissertations published 0-7 years thereafter. Published dissertation articles were coded for their bibliographic details, citation rates, and journal impact metrics. Results showed that only one-quarter (25.6% [95% CI: 23.0, 28.4]) of dissertations were ultimately published in peer-reviewed journals, with significant variations across subfields (range: 10.1 to 59.4%). Rates of dissertation publication were lower in professional/applied subfields (e.g., clinical, counseling) compared to research/academic subfields (e.g., experimental, cognitive). When dissertations were published, however, they often appeared in influential journals (e.g., Thomson Reuters Impact Factor M = 2.84 [2.45, 3.23], 5-year Impact Factor M = 3.49 [3.07, 3.90]) and were cited numerous times (Web of Science citations per year M = 3.65 [2.88, 4.42]). Publication typically occurred within 2-3 years after the dissertation year. Overall, these results indicate that the large majority of Ph.D. dissertation research in psychology does not get disseminated into the peer-reviewed literature. The non-publication of dissertation research appears to be a systemic problem affecting both research and training in psychology. Efforts to improve the quality and "publishability" of doctoral dissertation research could benefit psychological science on multiple fronts.

"Are you gonna publish that?" Peer-reviewed publication outcomes of doctoral dissertations in psychology

PubMed Central

Amaro, Christina M.; Herbert, Robyn; Blossom, Jennifer B.; Roberts, Michael C.

2018-01-01

If a doctoral dissertation represents an original investigation that makes a contribution to one’s field, then dissertation research could, and arguably should, be disseminated into the scientific literature. However, the extent and nature of dissertation publication remains largely unknown within psychology. The present study investigated the peer-reviewed publication outcomes of psychology dissertation research in the United States. Additionally, we examined publication lag, scientific impact, and variations across subfields. To investigate these questions, we first drew a stratified random cohort sample of 910 psychology Ph.D. dissertations from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. Next, we conducted comprehensive literature searches for peer-reviewed journal articles derived from these dissertations published 0–7 years thereafter. Published dissertation articles were coded for their bibliographic details, citation rates, and journal impact metrics. Results showed that only one-quarter (25.6% [95% CI: 23.0, 28.4]) of dissertations were ultimately published in peer-reviewed journals, with significant variations across subfields (range: 10.1 to 59.4%). Rates of dissertation publication were lower in professional/applied subfields (e.g., clinical, counseling) compared to research/academic subfields (e.g., experimental, cognitive). When dissertations were published, however, they often appeared in influential journals (e.g., Thomson Reuters Impact Factor M = 2.84 [2.45, 3.23], 5-year Impact Factor M = 3.49 [3.07, 3.90]) and were cited numerous times (Web of Science citations per year M = 3.65 [2.88, 4.42]). Publication typically occurred within 2–3 years after the dissertation year. Overall, these results indicate that the large majority of Ph.D. dissertation research in psychology does not get disseminated into the peer-reviewed literature. The non-publication of dissertation research appears to be a systemic problem affecting both research and training in psychology. Efforts to improve the quality and “publishability” of doctoral dissertation research could benefit psychological science on multiple fronts. PMID:29444130

Integrating the Poor through e-Governance: A Case Study of the National e-Governance Plan in India

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dasgupta, Shib Shankar

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the adoption and implementation mechanism of the national e-Governance plan in the regional state of West Bengal in India. The questions that this dissertation seek to illuminate are (i) the various potentials and challenges in integrating the ordinary citizens in the implementation of the national e-Governance plan in…

Making Gender Matter: Knowledge Ecologies, Contested Research Objects, and the Trajectory of Women's and Gender Studies in American Universities, 1970-2010

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wood, Christine Virginia

2014-01-01

This dissertation examines the trajectory of research programs on women and gender in American universities between 1970 and 2010. The dissertation melds perspectives in the sociology of science with organizational analyses of the development of academic disciplines. The analysis forwards a new understanding of how local conditions in research…

Characteristics of Education Doctoral Dissertation References: An Inter-Institutional Analysis of Review of Literature Citations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beile, Penny M.; Boote, David N.; Killingsworth, Elizabeth K.

This study had two purposes: to examine the expertise of doctoral students in their use of the scholarly literature and to investigate the use of citation analysis as a tool for collection development. Analysis of 1,842 coded citations gleaned from 30 education dissertations awarded in 2000 from 3 institutions in the United States revealed that…

Winning the Popularity Contest: Researcher Preference When Selecting Resources for Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics Dissertations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dotson, Daniel S.; Franks, Tina P.

2015-01-01

More than 53,000 citations from 609 dissertations published at The Ohio State University between 1998-2012 representing four science disciplines--civil engineering, computer science, mathematics and physics--were examined to determine what, if any, preferences or trends exist. This case study seeks to identify whether or not researcher preferences…

The comparative importance of books: clinical psychology in the health sciences library.

PubMed Central

Wehmeyer, J M; Wehmeyer, S

1999-01-01

Clinical psychology has received little attention as a subject in health sciences library collections. This study seeks to demonstrate the relative importance of the monographic literature to clinical psychology through the examination of citations in graduate student theses and dissertations at the Fordham Health Sciences Library, Wright State University. Dissertations and theses were sampled randomly; citations were classified by format, counted, and subjected to statistical analysis. Books and book chapters together account for 35% of the citations in clinical psychology dissertations, 25% in nursing theses, and 8% in biomedical sciences theses and dissertations. Analysis of variance indicates that the citations in dissertations and theses in the three areas differ significantly (F = 162.2 with 2 and 253 degrees of freedom, P = 0.0001). Dissertations and theses in biomedical sciences and nursing theses both cite significantly more journals per book than the dissertations in clinical psychology. These results support the hypothesis that users of clinical psychology literature rely more heavily on books than many other users of a health sciences library. Problems with using citation analyses in a single subject to determine a serials to monographs ratio for a health sciences library are pointed out. PMID:10219478

Getting through School: A Study of How Students Select Their College Majors and Plan for the Future

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pittaoulis, Melissa

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the strategies that students use for navigating their way through college and the steps they take in preparation for college graduation. I wrote this dissertation because I wanted to understand how students go from being freshmen not long out of high school to young adults prepared (or not prepared) to enter the…

National and Global: A History of Scholars' Experiences with Research at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (1961-Present)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jamison, Amy J.

2010-01-01

In this dissertation, I draw on research carried out at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Tanzania in 2008 to examine Tanzanian academics' experience with research throughout the history of this institution. This dissertation is designed as an historical case study and investigates how economic and political changes in Tanzania's…

An examination of factors influencing the spatial distribution of foraging bats in pine stands in the southeastern United States.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Menzel, Michael, A., Jr.

Menzel, M.A. 2003. An examination of factors influencing the spatial distribution of foraging bats in pine stands in the Southeastern United States. Ph.D Dissertation. Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences at West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia. 336 pp. The general objective of this dissertation was to determine the effect of changes in forest structure on bat activity patterns in southern pine stands. Four sub studies are included in the dissertation: (1) An examination of the homerange size, habitat use and diet of four reproductively active male Rafinesque's big eared bats (Corynorhimus rafinesquii); (2) An examination of themore » diet of 5 reproductively active male Rafinesque's big eared bats; (3) A comparison of bat activity levels in the Coastal Plain of South Carolina among 5 vegetational community types: forested riparian areas, clearcuts, young pine plantations, mature plantations, and pine savannahs; (4) A summarization of information concerning the natural history of all bat species common in the SPR.« less

Gatecrashing the Oasis? A Joint Doctoral Dissertation Play

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gale, Ken; Speedy, Jane; Wyatt, Jonathan

2010-01-01

This article explores the institutional and individual struggles surrounding the submission for examination of a jointly authored doctoral dissertation at a U.K. civic university. Two of the article's authors (Gale and Wyatt) were the dissertation's authors, and Speedy, the article's third author, is their supervisor. Joint doctoral dissertations…

Thesis survey results in the field of nursing regarding the use of complementary and alternative medical treatments in Turkey.

PubMed

Arslan, Gulsah Gurol; Denat, Yildiz; Dikmen, Yurdanur

2017-09-01

This descriptive literature review was planned to identify the prevalence of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) usage, frequency of usage, types/fields of use in master's theses and PhD dissertations based on the CAM methods, which are commonly used in nursing practice in Turkey. Data was collected in Turkey from February to March 2014 through a review of the National Thesis Centre (NTC) Archives at the Chairmanship of the Council of Higher Education and by obtaining the nursing theses/dissertations on CAM done between 1996 and 2013. Data were analysed by distribution of frequencies and percentages for publication year, number in sampling, method, case group, CAM type, and purpose of use/effectiveness. A total of 88 theses/dissertations were located. It was found that a majority of the theses/dissertations investigated were interventional. Investigation of the purpose of CAM use in theses/dissertations showed that the studies examined the effects of CAM on symptom control.

Research ethics in dissertations: ethical issues and complexity of reasoning.

PubMed

Kjellström, S; Ross, S N; Fridlund, B

2010-07-01

Conducting ethically sound research is a fundamental principle of scientific inquiry. Recent research has indicated that ethical concerns are insufficiently dealt with in dissertations. To examine which research ethical topics were addressed and how these were presented in terms of complexity of reasoning in Swedish nurses' dissertations. Analyses of ethical content and complexity of ethical reasoning were performed on 64 Swedish nurses' PhD dissertations dated 2007. A total of seven ethical topics were identified: ethical approval (94% of the dissertations), information and informed consent (86%), confidentiality (67%), ethical aspects of methods (61%), use of ethical principles and regulations (39%), rationale for the study (20%) and fair participant selection (14%). Four of those of topics were most frequently addressed: the majority of dissertations (72%) included 3-5 issues. While many ethical concerns, by their nature, involve systematic concepts or metasystematic principles, ethical reasoning scored predominantly at lesser levels of complexity: abstract (6% of the dissertations), formal (84%) and systematic (10%). Research ethics are inadequately covered in most dissertations by nurses in Sweden. Important ethical concerns are missing, and the complexity of reasoning on ethical principles, motives and implications is insufficient. This is partly due to traditions and norms that discount ethical concerns but is probably also a reflection of the ability of PhD students and supervisors to handle complexity in general. It is suggested that the importance of ethical considerations should be emphasised in graduate and post-graduate studies and that individuals with capacity to deal with systematic and metasystematic concepts are recruited to senior research positions.

Research Trends in Turkish Distance Education: A Content Analysis of Dissertations, 1986-2014

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bozkurt, Aras; Kumtepe, Evrim Genc; Kumtepe, Alper Tolga; Aydin, Irem Erdem; Bozkaya, Müjgan; Aydin, Cengiz Hakan

2015-01-01

This paper presents a content analytic approach on doctoral dissertations in the field of distance education in Turkish Higher Education context from the years of 1986 through 2014. A total of 61 dissertations were examined to explore keywords, academic discipline, research areas, theoretical/conceptual frameworks, research designs, research…

Mandatory Open Access Publishing for Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Ethics and Enthusiasm

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hawkins, Ann R.; Kimball, Miles A.; Ives, Maura

2013-01-01

This article argues against policies that require students to submit theses and dissertations to electronic institutional repositories. The article counters a variety of arguments often used to justify this practice. In addition, the article reports on the results of an examination of electronic thesis and dissertation policies at more than 150…

Effects of the Physical Environment on Social Support and the Stress Response

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-02-04

ON SOCIAL SUPPORT AND THE STRESS RESPONSE by Raymond Fleming Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the department of Medical Psychology ...violations. 3/~~~-1:1~ Department of Med c I Psychology Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences i i ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation...Andrew Baum, Ph.D., Department of Medical Psychology This study examined the effects of architectural arrangement on social support and the stress

Regulation No. 25 on the Procedure for Awarding Academic Degrees and Academic Ranks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soviet Education, 1977

1977-01-01

Examines efforts to reorganize professional certification of persons engaged in scientific and scholarly activities in the Soviet Union. Regulations ratified by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1976 deal with creating special councils to examine dissertations, and drafting standards of dissertation originality and relevance.…

An Examination of First-to Second-Year Persistence of First-Generation College Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guyer, Kimberly Denise

2013-01-01

This dissertation uses a mixed-methods design to examine persistence into the second year by students' parental education level. The institution selected for this dissertation is Temple University, a large, urban, public university in the Northeast. Using Tinto's (1993) model of student departure as a conceptual framework, the quantitative…

An Examination of a University Success Coaching Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blankenship, Marlin

2017-01-01

This dissertation builds upon previous coaching research by providing a deep examination of a university success coaching program that uses an International Coach Federation (ICF) coaching framework. The dissertation seeks to identify how ICF coaching compares to the findings of previous research, what training is required to be an ICF coach at a…

Successful Student Goal Completion: A Community College Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cady, Sara C.

2013-01-01

Research studies have shown that one half of all students who begin college fail to realize their goals. This case study of one community college provided a comprehensive examination of best practices developed over several years through strategic enrollment planning. Additionally, this dissertation examined the decision-making processes that…

Analysis of Citations to Books in Chemistry PhD Dissertations in an Era of Transition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flaxbart, David

2018-01-01

A citation analysis of chemistry PhD dissertations at the University of Texas at Austin yielded data on how often graduate students cite books in their bibliographies, and on the characteristics of the books cited, in terms of age and local ownership. The analysis examined samples of dissertations selected from five discrete years--1988, 2006,…

Examining the Effects of Contextual Factors on Students' Educational Outcomes: A Special Focus on Community Colleges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mercado, Micaela

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the college experience of traditional-age community college students. The objectives of this dissertation are threefold. To explain early exits from higher education, the first manuscript integrates Tinto's interactionalist theory and Coleman's theory of social capital to describe the mechanisms through which…

A Delicate Balance: An Examination of Lehigh University's Athletic Culture and Athletic Extra-Curriculum, 1866-1998

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Courtney Michelle

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the history of Lehigh University's athletic culture and extra-curriculum from 1866 to 1998 and argues that both of those institutions served as the basis for identity within the undergraduate student body. Additionally, this dissertation argues that the athletic culture and extra-curriculum established Lehigh's identity…

Two Studies Examining Subconscious Cognitive Processing in Collaboration Technology Usage

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wells, Taylor Michael

2012-01-01

In this dissertation, I investigate how the usage of collaboration technologies consciously and subconsciously affects both communicators and how they communicate. I present two related studies examining different facets of how the use of collaboration technologies such as email and voicemail influence affective processing in the communicator and…

A Case Study of the Impact of PBIS at Smith Elementary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Halliburton, Amber

2015-01-01

This dissertation was designed to examine and assess the impact of a Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) program on student behaviors, academic environment, and the total school environment. The study examined and assessed the impact of PBIS on student suspensions, student attendance, and student interactions. Additionally, this…

Essays on Technology-Enabled Platforms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koh, Tat Koon

2012-01-01

This dissertation consists of three studies that examine dynamics on Business-to-Business (B2B) exchanges and crowd-based design contest platforms. In the first study, we examine trust formation and development in global buyer-supplier relationships. Trust affects all business relationships, especially global B2B transactions due to the distances…

Drama and Oral Interpretation: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through June 1978 (Vol. 38 Nos. 7 through 12).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 16 titles deal with the following topics: an examination of inexperienced actors performing the plays of William Shakespeare; an investigation of the philosophies and practices of a summer theatre producer and manager; the…

Pedagogy for Latino/a Newcomer Students: A Study of Four Secondary Social Studies Teachers in New York City Urban Newcomer Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Ashley M.

2013-01-01

This dissertation study examined how teachers in four newcomer schools conceptualized and implemented social studies education for newcomer Latino/a youth. I designed this multi-site, collective case study to examine the perspectives and decision making of four social studies teachers' enacted pedagogy for Latino/a newcomer students. I…

Continuing review of ethics in clinical trials: a surveillance study in Iran

PubMed Central

Mohamadi, Amin; Asghari, Fariba; Rashidian, Arash

2014-01-01

In recent years, notable measures have been taken to protect the rights of participants in biomedical research in Iran. The present study examines possible trends in adherence to ethical codes regarding informed consent after the development of the National Code of Ethics in Biomedical Research (NCEBR) and establishment of research ethics committees. In this retrospective study, 126 dissertations from Tehran University of Medical Sciences were evaluated for adherence to ethical codes. These dissertations were all in clinical trial design and had been presented in the years 1999 and 2009, that is, precisely before and after the development of the NCEBR. A checklist was developed to evaluate the ethical issues associated with informed consent. A single investigator retrieved and evaluated the consent forms from the dissertations. Borderline cases were discussed with other investigators to reach a consensus decision. Based on the checklist, the Standardized Ethical Score (SES) was calculated for each consent form. The mean SES and the rate of consent form attachment were compared between the two years. In total, 70 dissertations had reported obtaining informed consent from study participants, whereas consent forms were attached in only 22 dissertations (17.50%). The percentage of dissertations with the consent form attached increased over time from 12.2% in 1999 to 20.8% in 2009 (P > 0.05), but the majority still did not include a consent form. Moreover, the mean SES of consent forms was significantly higher in 1999 (0.746) than in 2009 (0.428), highlighting the need for more training of researchers and improved surveillance by the ethics committees. A great amount of effort is still needed to make the consent process more ethical, especially for dissertations as a less visible part of academic research. As for students, more systematic training focused on research ethics should be implemented prior to thesis submission. PMID:26587202

An Examination of Reliability and Validity Claims of a Foreign Language Proficiency Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mircea-Pines, Walter J.

2009-01-01

This dissertation study examined the reliability and validity claims of a modified version of the Spanish Modern Language Association Foreign Language Proficiency Test for Teachers and Advanced Students administered at George Mason University (GMU). The study used the 1999 computerized GMU version that was administered to 277 test-takers via…

Beyond Behaviors, Needs, and Seeking: A Qualitative Investigation of Information Practices among Individuals with LGBTQ+ Identities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kitzie, Vanessa Lynn

2017-01-01

This dissertation examines the information practices of individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ+). It responds to two significant problems in current Library and Information Science (LIS) studies examining these populations. First, there exist a paucity of research studying how these individuals act…

Future Time Perspective, Socio-Emotional Regulation, and Diurnal Cortisol Patterns in Post-Secondary Engineering Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheng, Katherine C.

2017-01-01

Built upon Control Value Theory, this dissertation consists of two studies that examine university students' future-oriented motivation, socio-emotional regulation, and diurnal cortisol patterns in understanding students' well-being in the academic-context. Study 1 examined the roles that Learning-related Hopelessness and Future Time Perspective…

A Study of the Factors Influencing Parental Choice of a Charter School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ekanem, Imaobong Columba

2013-01-01

The study discussed in this dissertation identified and examined the factors that influence parent charter school choice. The study was conducted for a rural K-8 charter school in Delaware. The survey instrument used was a parent questionnaire which contained questions that examined the reasons for parent charter school choice, the features of…

Toward practical terahertz time-domain spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brigada, David J.

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy is a promising technology for the identification of explosive and pharmaceutical substances in adverse conditions. It interacts strongly with intermolecular vibrational and rotational modes. Terahertz also passes through many common dielectric covering materials, allowing for the identification of substances in envelopes, wrapped in opaque plastic, or otherwise hidden. However, there are several challenges preventing the adoption of terahertz spectroscopy outside the laboratory. This dissertation examines the problems preventing widespread adoption of terahertz technology and attempts to resolve them. In order to use terahertz spectroscopy to identify substances, a spectrum measured of the target sample must be compared to the spectra of various known standard samples. This dissertation examines various methods that can be employed throughout the entire process of acquiring and transforming terahertz waveforms to improve the accuracy of these comparisons. The concepts developed in this dissertation directly apply to terahertz spectroscopy, but also carry implications for other spectroscopy methods, from Raman to mass spectrometry. For example, these techniques could help to lower the rate of false positives at airport security checkpoints. This dissertation also examines the implementation of several of these methods as a way to realize a fully self-contained, handheld, battery-operated terahertz spectrometer. This device also employs techniques to allow minimally-trained operators use terahertz to detect different substances of interest. It functions as a proof-of-concept of the true benefits of the improvements that have been developed in this dissertation.

The Assimilation of Beginning Teachers into an Established School Improvement Project: A Qualitative Case Study Examining Formats of Job-Embedded Professional Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fuller, Lynn A.

2016-01-01

This dissertation examined formats of job-embedded professional development that were experienced by beginning teachers at a high-poverty, high-mobility elementary school in the third year of a School Improvement Grant. A qualitative case study was conducted to examine formats of job-embedded professional development that were most useful to help…

Cyber-Surveillance: A Case Study in Policy and Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Richard S. Y.

2010-01-01

The dissertation examines the historical development of surveillance, electronic surveillance, and cyber-surveillance from colonial times in the United States to the present. It presents the surveillance laws, technologies and policies as a balance between national security and privacy. To examine more recent developments, the dissertation…

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in Arabic Translations: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abdulmalik, Mariam

2016-01-01

This dissertation examines "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in Arabic Translations, and how translators transformed this masterpiece into Arabic. By examining "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," I adopt the "Translation as Problem and Solution Approach" to investigate translation issues at three levels of…

Lessons from the Tennessee Valley Authority

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kitchens, Carl Thomas

This dissertation is a program evaluation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) the largest publicly owned utility in the United States. The first essay in this dissertation examines the TVA's use of eminent domain in order to acquire property for the construction of reservoirs. It develops a new model of asymmetric information and then tests the model predictions using property level data from TVA property purchases in the 1930's. The second essay of this dissertation examines the unintended consequences of reservoir development my examining changes in the malaria rate associated with TVA reservoirs. Using panel data methods, I find that the presence of a TVA reservoir leads to large increases in the malaria mortality and morbidity rate, which cost up to 30 percent of TVA federal appropriations. The final essay in this dissertation examines the impact of TVA electrification programs on economic growth. It combines archival and panel data methods to show that contrary to the historical account, TVA electric rates did not differ substantially from the rates charged by private utilities, and secondly, shows that counties that had electricity contracts with the TVA did not have differential economic growth rates for a variety of economic outcomes. In order to control for selection into contracts, I adopt an instrumental variables strategy based on the cost of electric service.

Minority Status and Privilege in the Academy: The Importance of Race, Gender, and Socialization Practices for Undergraduates, Graduate Students and Faculty

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rios, Desdamona

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines socialization practices in the academy in three separate studies. The first study considers the general absence of women in mainstream undergraduate curriculum and examines the influence of introducing women exemplars into an undergraduate political psychology course that is not identified as "Women's Studies." The…

Argumentation as a Lens to Examine Student Discourse in Peer-Led Guided Inquiry for College General Chemistry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kulatunga, Ushiri Kumarihamy

2013-01-01

This dissertation work entails three related studies on the investigation of Peer-Led Guided Inquiry student discourse in a General Chemistry I course through argumentation. The first study, "Argumentation and participation patterns in general chemistry peer-led sessions," is focused on examining arguments and participation patterns in…

Family Literacy and Digital Literacies: A Redefined Approach to Examining Social Practices of an African-American Family

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Tisha Y.

2009-01-01

This dissertation examines the digital literacy practices of an urban African-American family. Using an ethnographic case study approach (Stake, 2000), this qualitative study explores the multiple ways a mother (Larnee) and son (Gerard) interacted with digital literacies in the home. Situated within the framework of sociocultural traditions from…

Examining Hometown Environments and University Experiences: A Qualitative Study of Gay Latino College Students' Identity Challenges at Two Predominantly White Institutions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pena-Talamantes, Abraham E.

2017-01-01

Using grounded theory methodology to analyze in-depth interviews, participant-taken photographs, and written reflections, this dissertation examines the hometown environments and university experiences of twenty-five gay Latino-identifying college students enrolled at predominantly white institutions in two separate US locations. This study finds…

Can You Teach in a Normal Way? Examining Chinese and US Curricula's Approach to Teaching Fraction Divisions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Feil, YingYing Crystal

2010-01-01

This dissertation presents two studies designed to examine the topic of fraction division in selected Chinese and US curricula. By comparing the structure and content of the Chinese and "Everyday Mathematics" textbooks and teacher's guides, Study 1 revealed many different features presented in the selected curricula. Major differences…

Innovating Everything: Examining Teacher Learning of Unfamiliar Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goff, Maria Hernandez

2017-01-01

This dissertation explored how a teacher learned to teach with and about unfamiliar (to her) media texts in her high school English classroom. This study also examined my role as the researcher/mentor in the teacher's learning and development process. Through situated learning theories (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and discourse through identities…

Verb-Final Typology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ogihara, Saeko

2010-01-01

This dissertation is a typological study of verb-final languages, the purpose of which is to examine various grammatical phenomena in verb-final languages to discover whether there are correlations between the final position of the verb and other aspects of grammar. It examines how finality of the verb interacts with argument coding in simple…

Mentoring and Professional Identity Development for African American Female Doctoral Students: An Exploratory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curry, Nettavia Doreen

2011-01-01

This dissertation examines the impact mentoring relationships, between African American women doctoral students and faculty members, has on the students' professional identity development. Of particular interest is an examination of whether matched mentoring relationships between African American women doctoral students and African American female…

Municipal Broadband in Wilson, North Carolina: A Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Boyle, Timothy

2012-01-01

Relatively little empirical attention has been paid to the political economy of publicly-retailed fiber-optic broadband internet service. To address this gap in the literature, this dissertation examines the history, dynamics and trends in the municipal broadband movement. In specific, Wilson, North Carolina's Greenlight service is examined in…

Immigrant Parent Involvement in U.S. Schools: Current Practices and Future Possibilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aleixo, Marina Bandeira

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines how parent involvement expectations are communicated and enacted in interactions at one small urban high school. Through detailed descriptions of school interactions between supporting staff and immigrant parents, this study examines how parent involvement expectations are understood and perceived. Although scholarly…

An Analysis of the Relationship between Professional Development, School Leadership, Technology Infrastructure, and Technology Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mishnick, Nicole

2017-01-01

This dissertation study investigates the relationship between professional development, school leadership, technology infrastructure and technology use. Three research questions were developed. The first examines the relationship between professional development and technology use, the second examines the relationship between school leadership and…

Disciplinary Articulation in Rhetoric and Composition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Babb, Jacob Sebastian

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines how nomenclature and the act of naming shapes disciplinary identities for scholars and teachers of rhetoric and composition. The discipline is named differently by many of its members, sometimes called "composition studies," "writing studies," "composition and rhetoric," "rhetorical…

Three Essays on Bureaucracy at American Research Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taggart, Gabel

2017-01-01

The three essays in this dissertation each examine how aspects of contemporary administrative structure within American research universities affect faculty outcomes. Specific aspects of administrative structure tested in this dissertation include the introduction of new administrative roles, administrative intensity (i.e., relative size of…

Analysis of the publishing rate and the number of citations of general surgery dissertations

PubMed Central

Mayir, Burhan; Bilecik, Tuna; Çakır, Tuğrul; Doğan, Uğur; Gündüz, Umut Rıza; Aslaner, Arif; Oruç, Mehmet Tahir

2017-01-01

Objective A dissertation is a scientific document. However, if it is not published in a scientific journal, it will gain access to only a limited audience and thus will be unable to achieve its objective. Nevertheless, the rate of publishing in journals is not high among dissertations. In this study, we aimed to investigate the publishing rates of general surgery dissertations in journals and the total number of citations. Material and Methods All medical dissertations that have been prepared at general surgery departments of university hospitals and presented between the years 2006 and 2008 were analyzed. The authors checked whether the dissertations were published in a journal or not, by searching the dissertation in 4 different resources with the name of their authors. Results Two hundred and thirty-two dissertations were included. Half of those dissertations were experimental animal studies. Seventy dissertations were published in various journals. Fifty one (22%) of these were published in Science Citation Index Expanded journals, while 19 (8.1%) of them were published in Turkish non-Science Citation Index Expanded journals. There was no significant difference in terms of publishing rates between study types. The number of annual citations per article was 1.1. The writer of the dissertation was the first author in 35 (68,6%) articles. Conclusion The publishing rates of dissertations in general surgery is low, with only 22% being published in Science Citation Index Expanded journals. The citation rate was also detected to be low in our study. Consequently, a dissertation should be considered as a scientific research study and planned as such, not as obligatory assignments. The publishing rates of dissertations should be increased, and authors should be led and encouraged to publish their dissertations. PMID:28740947

Designing Citizens in Transnational India

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Irani, Lilly Christine

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the politics of design practice in urban India through an ethnography of a Delhi-based design and innovation studio. The dissertation focuses on the ideological continuities between the profession of design and middle class Indian citizenship post-liberalization, twinning arts of governance through the shaping of the…

Final Draft Feedback in First-Year Composition: A Case Study of Non-Native English Speaking Students in North America

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nash, J. Gail

2012-01-01

Scope and Methods: This dissertation examines final draft feedback in a semester long first-year composition class consisting of both native and non-native speakers of English (NES & NNES) attending university. In addition to examining the teacher's commentary on final drafts and the students' responses to it, this study investigated effects…

Understanding a Successful Implementation of Organizational Social Media: A Multi-Site Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lahman, Caroline D.

2017-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the successful implementation of social media strategies in multiple organizations. Examining the factors an organization used to implement social media can provide the understanding of the benefits and risks associated with this technology. Some businesses are considered successful using social…

Rural Schools and Communities: How Globalization Influences Rural School and Community Collaboration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler, Thomas

2008-01-01

This study examined how a rural school district and the communities in which the district belonged collaborated on a community development initiative. This dissertation examined the opportunities and constraints rural communities are facing and the role that a rural school system could play in increasing social and economic sustainability of rural…

Craft and Job Satisfaction: North Carolina Library and Information Science Graduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morgan, Chad Henderson

2014-01-01

This dissertation examines the sources of job satisfaction among 1,833 library and information science (LIS) master's program graduates in North Carolina from 1964-2009. Only respondents who identified themselves as librarians were included in the analysis. The study first examined the effects of traditional work-related variables such as income,…

Processing Coordinated Verb Phrases: The Relevance of Lexical-Semantic, Conceptual, and Contextual Information towards Establishing Verbal Parallelism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tutunjian, Damon A.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the influence of lexical-semantic representations, conceptual similarity, and contextual fit on the processing of coordinated verb phrases. The study integrates information gleaned from current linguistic theory with current psycholinguistic approaches to examining the processing of coordinated verb phrases. It has…

Endorsement of Growth Factors and Its Relation to Stage of Group Development in Experiential Groups

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kiweewa, John M.

2010-01-01

This dissertation utilized critical incidents methodology to examine participants' endorsement of twelve primary growth factors during a Master's level group counseling class. Additionally, the study examined whether some factors are more salient than others at each stage of development (i.e., forming, storming, norming, performing) as defined by…

Analysis of Metadiscourse Markers in Academic Written Discourse Produced by Turkish Researchers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duruk, Eda

2017-01-01

This study aims at examining the frequency of interpersonal metadiscourse markers in academic written discourse and investigating the way Turkish writers use interpersonal metadiscourse, namely in MA dissertations from one major academic field; English language teaching (ELT). A corpus based research is applied by examining a total of 20…

Critical Digital Literacies: Following Feminist Composition Theories into Twenty-First Century Contact Zones

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blackburn, Jessica B.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines how the interests of feminist composition theory, digital media, and new literacies studies intersect within the research context of the first-year writing classroom. Specifically, this project examines what happens to the "contact zone" (Pratt 1991; Bizzell 1994) of first-year composition when we introduce digital…

Examining Teacher Framing, Student Reasoning, and Student Agency in School-Based Citizen Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harris, Emily Mae

2017-01-01

This dissertation presents three interrelated studies examining opportunities for student learning through contributory citizen science (CS), where students collect and contribute data to help generate new scientific knowledge. I draw on sociocultural perspectives of learning to analyze three cases where teachers integrated CS into school science,…

Towards a Theory for the Study of Responsible Business Practices in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eaton, Sarah Elaine

2008-01-01

This paper explores the difficulties of finding an appropriate theoretical framework for a doctoral dissertation examining revenue-generating language programs at post-secondary institutions. It briefly examines the history of language programs in higher education in the developed English-speaking world and the current situation of many…

Academic Rigor or Academic Rigor Mortis? Supervising Dissertations Is Serious Business

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Robin Redmon

2017-01-01

This reflection considers the importance of and responsibility to graduate research supervision through an examination of a published dissertation that has had significant influence on the country's current immigration debate. The author exhorts both graduate students and adult education faculty to insist on clearly stated theoretical and…

Moral Values in Contemporary Literature: A Teaching Dissertation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aikins, Mary Patricia Truxler

This dissertation dealt with the preparation, design, teaching, and evaluation of a course in moral values in contemporary literature. Through lectures, group discussions, and multi-media presentations the course examined the possibility of using the moral approach to literary criticism as a form of analysis for contemporary literature. The course…

Tone Gestures and Constraint Interaction in Sierra Juarez Zapotec

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tejada, Laura

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines floating tones and tone gesture deactivation in Sierra Juarez Zapotec (SJZ), and provides an Optimality Theoretic account of tonal spreading and placement using insights from Articulatory Phonology. While the data portion of the dissertation is drawn from SJZ, the approach has broader implications for theories of tonal…

Completing the Dissertation: It's Not Only about Academics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dominguez, Ramon

2006-01-01

The culminating project in completing a doctorate in education is the preparation and final defense of the dissertation. Specifically in educational administration and leadership, the student will have exerted hours of energy participating in course work, internships as well as in written and oral comprehensive examinations. By the time a student…

Effects of Teacher Educational Background and Experience on Student Achievement in the Early Grades

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leak, James Alexander

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the relationship between teacher educational background, teacher experience, and student achievement in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. The first essay of this dissertation, "Effects of Teacher Degree Level, Coursework, and Certification on Student Achievement in Math and Reading in Kindergarten,"…

Decolonizing Education: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Post-Secondary Humanities Textbooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harper, Kimberly C.

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines nine post-secondary humanities textbooks published between 2001 and 2011 using an approach that includes both qualitative and quantitative methodology to analyze the written and visual content of humanities textbooks. This dissertation engages in current debates that address bias in humanities textbooks and contributes…

An Examination of an Information Security Framework Implementation Based on Agile Values to Achieve Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Security Rule Compliance in an Academic Medical Center: The Thomas Jefferson University Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reis, David W.

2012-01-01

Agile project management is most often examined in relation to software development, while information security frameworks are often examined with respect to certain risk management capabilities rather than in terms of successful implementation approaches. This dissertation extended the study of both Agile project management and information…

Optimal input shaping for Fisher identifiability of control-oriented lithium-ion battery models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rothenberger, Michael J.

This dissertation examines the fundamental challenge of optimally shaping input trajectories to maximize parameter identifiability of control-oriented lithium-ion battery models. Identifiability is a property from information theory that determines the solvability of parameter estimation for mathematical models using input-output measurements. This dissertation creates a framework that exploits the Fisher information metric to quantify the level of battery parameter identifiability, optimizes this metric through input shaping, and facilitates faster and more accurate estimation. The popularity of lithium-ion batteries is growing significantly in the energy storage domain, especially for stationary and transportation applications. While these cells have excellent power and energy densities, they are plagued with safety and lifespan concerns. These concerns are often resolved in the industry through conservative current and voltage operating limits, which reduce the overall performance and still lack robustness in detecting catastrophic failure modes. New advances in automotive battery management systems mitigate these challenges through the incorporation of model-based control to increase performance, safety, and lifespan. To achieve these goals, model-based control requires accurate parameterization of the battery model. While many groups in the literature study a variety of methods to perform battery parameter estimation, a fundamental issue of poor parameter identifiability remains apparent for lithium-ion battery models. This fundamental challenge of battery identifiability is studied extensively in the literature, and some groups are even approaching the problem of improving the ability to estimate the model parameters. The first approach is to add additional sensors to the battery to gain more information that is used for estimation. The other main approach is to shape the input trajectories to increase the amount of information that can be gained from input-output measurements, and is the approach used in this dissertation. Research in the literature studies optimal current input shaping for high-order electrochemical battery models and focuses on offline laboratory cycling. While this body of research highlights improvements in identifiability through optimal input shaping, each optimal input is a function of nominal parameters, which creates a tautology. The parameter values must be known a priori to determine the optimal input for maximizing estimation speed and accuracy. The system identification literature presents multiple studies containing methods that avoid the challenges of this tautology, but these methods are absent from the battery parameter estimation domain. The gaps in the above literature are addressed in this dissertation through the following five novel and unique contributions. First, this dissertation optimizes the parameter identifiability of a thermal battery model, which Sergio Mendoza experimentally validates through a close collaboration with this dissertation's author. Second, this dissertation extends input-shaping optimization to a linear and nonlinear equivalent-circuit battery model and illustrates the substantial improvements in Fisher identifiability for a periodic optimal signal when compared against automotive benchmark cycles. Third, this dissertation presents an experimental validation study of the simulation work in the previous contribution. The estimation study shows that the automotive benchmark cycles either converge slower than the optimized cycle, or not at all for certain parameters. Fourth, this dissertation examines how automotive battery packs with additional power electronic components that dynamically route current to individual cells/modules can be used for parameter identifiability optimization. While the user and vehicle supervisory controller dictate the current demand for these packs, the optimized internal allocation of current still improves identifiability. Finally, this dissertation presents a robust Bayesian sequential input shaping optimization study to maximize the conditional Fisher information of the battery model parameters without prior knowledge of the nominal parameter set. This iterative algorithm only requires knowledge of the prior parameter distributions to converge to the optimal input trajectory.

How sustainable is Japan's foreign aid policy? An analysis of Japan's official development assistance and funding for energy sector projects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yamaguchi, Hideka

Japan has adopted a sustainable development strategy since the late 1980s in the effort to address social and environmental damages caused by past Japan-funded projects in partner nations. Even after about a decade and a half of the policy implementation, however, there are few reports which critically examine effects of the adoption of the idea of sustainable development. This dissertation evaluates Japan's foreign aid policy to determine the extent to which new revisions of aid policy have improved the environmental sustainability of the policy. This dissertation reviews the mainstream idea of sustainable development (also known as the sustainable development paradigm in this dissertation) to reveal the nature of the idea of sustainable development that Japan's foreign aid policy depends on. A literature review of two development discourses---modernization theory and ecological modernization theory---and three types of critiques against the sustainable development paradigm---focused on adverse impacts of modern science, globalization, and environmental overuse---reveals core logics of and problems with the sustainable development paradigm. Japan's foreign aid policy impacts on energy sector development in recipient countries is examined by means of a quantitative analysis and a qualitative analysis. Specifically, it examines the effect of Japan's ODA program over fifteen years that proposed to facilitate sustainable development in developing countries. Special emphasis is given to investigation of ODA disbursements in the energy sector and detailed case studies of several individual energy projects are performed. The dissertation discovers that the sustainable development paradigm guiding Japan's ODA has little capacity to accomplish its goals to bring about social and ecological improvement in developing countries. This dissertation finds three fundamental weaknesses in Japanese ODA policy on energy sector development as well as the sustainable development paradigm; first, the heavy reliance on modern science leads to a failure to use local knowledge and practices which can be more sustainable to sustainability; second, the acceptance of the international capitalist system as the basis for project implementation results in little or no long-term sustainability commitment; and third, the compatibility of economic growth with environmental sustainability, which appears unlikely in the context of global economic inequality. As an alternative, this dissertation suggests several policies for promoting energy systems for rural sustainable development in the Global South.

A Meta-Analysis of Acculturation/Enculturation and Mental Health

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yoon, Eunju; Chang, Chih-Ting; Kim, Soyeon; Clawson, Angela; Cleary, Sarah Elizabeth; Hansen, Meghan; Bruner, John P.; Chan, Theresa K.; Gomes, Alexandrina M.

2013-01-01

This meta-analytic study examined the relationship among the constructs of acculturation, enculturation, and acculturation strategies (i.e., integration, assimilation, separation, marginalization), and mental health. Data from 325 studies (163 journal articles and 162 dissertation studies) were analyzed using a random-effects model, across a broad…

Kant's disputation of 1770: the dissertation and the communication of knowledge in early modern Europe.

PubMed

Chang, Kevin

2007-06-01

Kant's disputation of 1770 at his inauguration as the metaphysics professor at Königsberg is a good example of the nature of the early modern dissertation and its use as a means of communicating knowledge. The public disputation played an important part in the teaching, examination, publication and ceremonial life of the medieval university. Originally prepared as a text for the public disputation, the dissertation communicated the teachings of individual scholars and institutions and was used by eminent early modern scholars to introduce their ideas and findings. Kant's use of his 1770 disputation also reveals the different channels of communication, both private and public, that paid close attention to knowledge published in dissertations.

Preservice Teacher Talk Surrounding Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Engebretson, Kathryn Ellerhoff

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the discourses around gender present among a cohort of preservice secondary social studies teachers (n = 25) and how gender discourses manifested throughout their preparatory year with particular interest paid to their thoughts about curricula, schools, and students. Using ethnographic study design, the author presents…

Software Development Management: Empirical and Analytical Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kang, Keumseok

2011-01-01

Managing software development is a very complex activity because it must deal with people, organizations, technologies, and business processes. My dissertation consists of three studies that examine software development management from various perspectives. The first study empirically investigates the impacts of prior experience with similar…

Promoting High Quality Teacher-Child Interactions: Examining the Role of Teachers' Depression, Perceptions of Children's Peer Relationships, and Contextual Factors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Granger, Kristen

2017-01-01

The overall goal of this dissertation was to examine teacher characteristics, teachers' beliefs, and contextual factors that may motivate teachers' decisions to engage in high quality teacher-child interactions. I use two complementary studies to meet this goal. These two studies provide insight into several aspects of early childhood teachers'…

A Comparison of General and Special Education High School Students in Transition: The Impact of Social Support on Student Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jensen, Mira A.

2011-01-01

This dissertation study examined the differences between students in general education and in special education in their perceptions of the types of support they need from different sources during the transitions at the beginning and end of high school. Specifically, this study examined the role of social support in students' behavioral and…

[Trends of doctoral dissertations in nursing science: focused on studies submitted since 2000].

PubMed

Shin, Hyunsook; Sung, Kyung-Mi; Jeong, Seok Hee; Kim, Dae-Ran

2008-02-01

The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of doctoral dissertations in nursing science submitted since 2000. Three-hundred and five dissertations of six schools of nursing published from 2000 to 2006 in Korea were analyzed with the categories of philosophy, method, body of knowledge, research design, and nursing domain. In philosophy, 82% of all dissertations were identified as scientific realism, 15% were relativism, and 3% were practicism. Two-hundred and fifty dissertations (82%) were divided into a quantitative methodology and 55 dissertations (18%) were qualitative methodology. Specifically, 45% were experimental, 23% methodological, 13% survey and 17% qualitative designed researches. Prescriptive knowledge was created in 47% of dissertations, explanatory knowledge in 29%, and descriptive knowledge in 24%. Over 50% of all research was studied with a community-based population. In the nursing domain, dissertations of the practice domain were highest (48.2%). Dissertations since 2000 were markedly different from the characteristics of the previous studies (1982-1999) in the increase of situation-related, prescriptive and community-based population studies. A picture of current nursing science identified in this study may provide a future guideline for the doctoral education for nursing.

An Exploration of Changing Dissertation Requirements and Library Services to Support Them

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fong, Bonnie L.

2017-01-01

To more fully support PhD students, librarians must be mindful of and responsive to changing dissertation requirements. Based on input obtained through an online questionnaire from directors of chemistry, political science, and English doctoral programs and from details on department websites, this paper examines what alternate forms of…

Contribution to and Use of Online Knowledge Repositories: The Role of Governance Mechanisms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kayhan, Varol O.

2010-01-01

Drawing upon the concept of governance, this dissertation refers to the two most commonly employed mechanisms that ensure high quality knowledge in electronic repositories as expert-governance and community-governance. In three related but distinct essays, the dissertation examines the governance concept, and investigates contributing knowledge to…

The Value of the Commonwealth: An Ecocritical History of Robinson Forest

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gough, David Barrett

2013-01-01

This dissertation provides an ecocritical history of Robinson Forest, a southern Appalachian forest owned by the University of Kentucky. The objective of this dissertation is to examine the literary, environmental, and cultural history of Robinson Forest from its geologic formation to the present, paying particular attention to the production of…

Markedness in the Perception of L2 English Consonant Clusters

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

AlMahmoud, Mahmoud S.

2011-01-01

The central goal of this dissertation is to explore the relative perceptibility of vowel epenthesis in English onset clusters by second language learners whose native language is averse to onset clusters. The dissertation examines how audible vowel epenthesis in different onset clusters is, whether this perceptibility varies from one cluster to…

Types, Subjects, and Purposes of K-12 Online Learning Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borup, Jered

2013-01-01

Although K-12 online learning has experienced exceptional growth, research in the area has lagged behind. This dissertation addressed this gap in the literature using a multiple article dissertation format. The first article used survey data from two online English courses at the Open High School of Utah (OHSU) to examine students' reported…

Factors Influencing BI Data Collection Strategies: An Empirical Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramakrishnan, Thiagarajan

2010-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the external factors that influence an organizations' business intelligence (BI) data collection strategy when mediated by BI attributes. In this dissertation, data warehousing strategies are used as the basis on which to frame the exploration of BI data collection strategies. The attributes include…

Trends in Doctoral Research on English Language Teaching in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Özmen, Kemal Sinan; Cephe, Pasa Tevfik; Kinik, Betül

2016-01-01

This review examines the doctoral research in Turkey completed between 2010 and 2014 in the area of English language teaching and learning. All of the dissertations (N = 137) indexed in the National Theses Database have been included in order to analyze dissertations' subject areas, research paradigms/techniques, and research contexts as well as…

Seven Consciousness-Expanding Techniques and Their Relevance to Actor Training.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Feldshuh, David Mark

This dissertation explores techniques that assist actors in getting their minds and bodies out of the way through consciousness-expanding. The techniques examined here attempt to promote a permeability, a childlike quality of presence, and are largely drawn from Eastern philosophies. Part one of this dissertation discusses structural integration,…

Battle of the Brains: Election-Night Forecasting at the Dawn of the Computer Age

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chinoy, Ira

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines journalists' early encounters with computers as tools for news reporting, focusing on election-night forecasting in 1952. Although election night 1952 is frequently mentioned in histories of computing and journalism as a quirky but seminal episode, it has received little scholarly attention. This dissertation asks how…

Markets Hidden on Thoroughfares: The Social Construction of Economic Informality/Illegality in Beijing's Zhongguancun, China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Ho-Jun

2009-01-01

This dissertation deals with the tense relation between the visibility of unauthorized economic practices and the invisibility of law in Zhongguancun (ZGC) Beijing, a Chinese information technology (IT) industry center dubbed "China's Silicon Valley." This dissertation ethnographically examines the double process of extra-legal/illegal…

Dissertation Research in Counseling Psychology: Topics, Methods, and Qualitative Training.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kopala, Mary; And Others

Findings from a survey that examined the vast scope of research training in counseling psychology programs and topical areas that are addressed in dissertation research are presented in this paper. The questionnaire included both open- and closed-ended questions and were completed by 166 recent graduates of doctoral programs in counseling…

I Alumnus: Understanding Early Alumni Identity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pung, Barnaby

2013-01-01

This dissertation sought to provide a better understanding of early alumnus identity at a public Midwestern university. Unlike a majority of alumni studies, this study used a qualitative case study methodology to examine alumni identity among participants through the use of personal interviews. Participants were 10-11 years post graduation from…

Career Development for a Changing Society: The Enrichment Triad Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Jessica R.

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the relationship between a particular method of teaching and learning about careers, and the development of wisdom in young adolescents. By conducting a case study of a specific classroom experience, I examine the ways in which students make meaning of their own career development as well as meaning of the course itself.…

Improving Hospital Quality and Patient Safety an Examination of Organizational Culture and Information Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gardner, John Wallace

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the effects of safety culture, including operational climate and practices, as well as the adoption and use of information systems for delivering high quality healthcare and improved patient experience. Chapter 2 studies the influence of both general and outcome-specific hospital climate and quality practices on process…

Teacher Incentive Pay Programs: Characteristics and Association with Instructional Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liang, Guodong

2011-01-01

This dissertation research examined the characteristics of teacher incentive pay programs in the state of Missouri and across the nation in the United States. The purposes of this study were (a) to examine the characteristics of districts that offered performance-related pay (PRP) programs and teachers who received PRP awards in 2007 using the…

The Relationship between Principal Support and Teacher Retention in Hard to Staff Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hughes, Amy L.

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the relationship between principal support and retention of teachers in hard to staff schools. The purpose of this study was to, (a) to determine the relationship between teacher retention and principal support, (b) to examine the perception of support between teachers and principals and how these perceptions affect…

The Role of Chapel Programs at Selected Christian Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, Allan D.

2013-01-01

Although chapel programs have been a part of higher education in America for over two centuries, little is written at the dissertation level on the nature and role of chapel. This qualitative collective case study examines the nature and role of chapel at four Christian universities. The research examines the threefold question of how do chapel…

An Examination of School Factors Which Support and Limit Efficiency in Rural Special Education Resource Room Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fankhauser, Jeff

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the school factors which support and limit efficacy in rural special education resource room teachers. To explore these factors, a qualitative case study involving interviews, observations, and data analysis was conducted during the spring of 2010. Data collection included interviews and observations of the teachers,…

Art Education and Disability Studies Perspectives on Mental Illness Discourses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Derby, John K.

2009-01-01

This dissertation critically examines mental illness discourses through the intersecting disciplinary lenses of art education and disability studies. Research from multiple disciplines is compared and theorized to uncover the ways in which discourses, or language systems, have oppressively constructed and represented "mental illness." To establish…

Paul's gospel and the rhetoric of apostolic rejection: A study of Galatians 1:15--17, 1 Corinthians 15:8, F. C. Baur, and the origins of Paul's Gentile mission

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mitchell, Matthew Wesley

This dissertation proposes a new understanding of Paul's Gentile mission and its relationship to his so-called "conversion." This dissertation examines the origins of Paul's mission to the Gentiles, and locates it in his claims to have been personally commissioned to undertake such a mission by Jesus. Specifically, I argue that it is the rejection of Paul's claim to be an apostle, a claim founded upon his "conversion" experience, that precipitates his mission to the Gentiles. In arguing this view, I draw upon Ferdinand Christian Baur's nineteenth century theories concerning both the unreliability of Acts as a historical source, and his proposal of a clear division between Paul and the other apostles. In establishing the methodological and theoretical framework of the dissertation, I discuss the "New Perspective on Paul" that has dominated New Testament scholarship over the past thirty years. My study is also informed methodologically by the growing interest in rhetorical criticism among biblical scholars, although the emphasis of this dissertation bears more of a resemblance to the approach of the New Rhetoric than the categories of classical, Greco-Roman rhetoric. The textual component of this work falls into two stages. The first contains a full examination of Paul's "conversion passages" in Galatians 1:15--17 and 1 Corinthians 15:8, attempting to situate these seemingly unusual self-descriptions in their cultural contexts. The second involves an examination of F. C. Baur's presentation of Paul, and the reception of Baur's views among biblical scholars throughout the years following his scholarly activity. This dissertation makes two claims, each of which can stand on its own as an important contribution to scholarship. My first claim is that components of Baur's work support my proposal concerning Paul's Gentile mission and his experience of apostolic rejection, and that this proposal has much to commend it as an explanation of a perennial scholarly puzzle. My second claim is methodological, as I demonstrate that scholarly writings about Paul and his modern interpreters are themselves exercises in argumentation, and thus are not to be accepted uncritically, or without close attention to the rhetorical practices they utilize.

Social Studies Teachers Who Teach toward Social Justice: An Examination of Life Histories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Good, Robert A.

2010-01-01

This dissertation reports on a qualitative investigation of two research questions: What experiences lead secondary social studies teachers to become passionate and committed to teaching toward social justice? How do these teachers conceptualize and practice teaching toward social justice in the social studies? The study, which employed a life…

The German medical dissertation--time to change?

PubMed

Diez, C; Arkenau, C; Meyer-Wentrup, F

2000-08-01

German medical students must conduct a research project and write a dissertation in order to receive the title "Doctor." However, the dissertation is not required to graduate, enter a residency, or practice medicine. About 90% of practicing physicians hold the title "Doctor"; a career in academic medicine almost always requires it. Although no convincing evidence supports the usefulness of the dissertation, many regard its completion as important to maintaining a high level of scientific competence and patient care. In recent years, the number of successfully completed dissertations has declined. Lack of time during medical school, the perceived irrelevance of the dissertation to medical practice, and the poor design of many projects may be at least part of the problem. There is also increasing evidence that conducting research frequently delays graduation and may affect clinical skills because students working on projects attend fewer classes, ward rounds, and clinical tutorials and do not spent sufficient time preparing for examinations. The scientific value of students' research has also been criticized; critics point out that students do not have enough time or experience to critically analyze methods and data, and they often are not properly supervised. European unification will probably lead to standardized requirements for medical education and research. The authors hope this will eliminate the dissertation requirement in Germany.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Clark, T.H.

The proliferation of surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) and weapons of mass destruction has become one of the more serious security threats to post-Cold War peace. This dissertation examines the history of proliferation within the Middle East by focusing primarily on three trend-setting countries: Israel, Syria and Iran. Building on the theoretical framework established by Lewis A. Dunn and Herman Kahn, this dissertation examines why and how Israel, Syria and Iran have procured SSMs and weapons of mass destruction. The author also includes an analysis of tactical missile defenses and their impact on proliferation trends. The final section investigates the numerous armsmore » control treaties and supplier cartels designed to halt or slow the pace of unconventional weapons proliferation. In many instances, Iraq serves as the primary example of how well-intentioned nonproliferation efforts have fallen short. This dissertation reveals some of the major flaws in these regimes while proposing necessary improvements if nonproliferation efforts are to succeed. In conclusion, this dissertation returns to the expanded Dunn-Kahn nuclear proliferation model. By categorizing the various reasons as to why countries choose to procure unconventional weapons, a more successful nonproliferation policy can be constructed. However, this dissertation warns that without political solutions to long-term disputes in the region, western-imposed nonproliferation regimes will fail. Thus, nonproliferation policies must be accompanied or preceded by a vigorous diplomatic and political effort to solve seemingly intractable differences.« less

Promoting Prosocial Behaviors to Prevent Dating Violence among College Students: Evaluation of a Bystander Intervention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borsky, Amanda E.

2014-01-01

The objective of this dissertation was to evaluate a bystander behavior program at the Jefferson College of Health Sciences (JCHS) in Roanoke, Virginia. Specifically, this dissertation examined the: (1) preliminary measurement properties of a newly developed bystander behavior intention scale; (2) impact of the bystander intervention at JCHS; and…

Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors among Emerging Adults in College

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abshire, Demetrius Alexander

2014-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine factors associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk among emerging adults in college aged 18-25 years. CVD risks that develop during this period often persist into adulthood making it an ideal time to target CVD prevention. The specific aims of this dissertation were to 1) explore perceptions…

(Im)migrant Voices: An Ethnographic Inquiry into Contemporary (Im)migrant Issues Faced by (Im)migrant University Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cantu, Elizabeth A.

2016-01-01

This dissertation examines contemporary issues that 18 (im)migrant university students faced during a time of highly militarized U.S.-Mexico border relations while living in Arizona during the time of this dissertation research. Utilizing critical race theory and public sphere theory as theoretical frameworks, the project addresses several related…

Agreement at the Boundaries: Synchronic and Diachronic Approaches to phi-Agreement in the Left Periphery

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Courtney, Sarah Gray

2017-01-01

This dissertation examines complementizer agreement (CA) phenomena in which phi-features appear on a complementizer, clause-linking marker, or otherwise, syntactically speaking, at the C[superscript 0] position. This dissertation will argue that CA is in fact a straightforward output of the syntax module under standard Minimalist assumptions, and…

Graduate Students "Show Their Work": Metalanguage in Dissertation Methodology Sections

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pantelides, Kate L.

2017-01-01

To address graduate writing pedagogy in technical communication, this article reports on a study of 14 award-winning dissertations in the field. By treating dissertations as cultural artifacts constitutive of the educational contexts in which they are authored, this study reads dissertation methodology sections as research narratives to understand…

Disenchantment to Disillusion: Stakeholder Opinions on School Desegregation in Greensboro, North Carolina

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oatsvall, Sarah M.

2013-01-01

Amid the current resegregation of the nation's schools this dissertation extends previous research regarding the impact, success, and failure of desegregation efforts following "Brown v. Board of Education." This study broadly examines individual opinions on school desegregation over the last forty years. Thus, the current study presents…

The communicative construction of safety in wildland firefighting (Proceedings)

Treesearch

Jody Jahn

2012-01-01

This dissertation project used a two-study mixed methods approach, examining the communicative accomplishment of safety from two perspectives: high reliability organizing (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld 1999), and safety climate (Zohar 1980). In Study One, 27 firefighters from two functionally similar wildland firefighting crews were interviewed about their crew-...

School-Based Peer Mentoring in High School: A Program Evaluation Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cooper, Felicia Cecile

2017-01-01

The dissertation is an initial investigation of a peer mentoring program in a suburban high school in the southeastern United States. Additionally, the Peer Mentoring Program (PMP) study examined whether the Program improves academic performance and attendance, and decreases referrals. Utilizing an experimental design, a Participant and a…

Elementary Teacher Use of Formative Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cotton, Donna McLamb

2013-01-01

This dissertation was designed to examine elementary teacher use of formative assessment and the impact formative assessment may have on student achievement as measured by benchmark assessments. The study was conducted in a school district in northwestern North Carolina. The teachers in this study have had NCFALCON training in the use of formative…

"When You're in a Different Country, Things Are More Apparent": Gender and Study Abroad in Mexico

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McGivern, Martha B.

2013-01-01

This dissertation bridges the divide between comparative education and international education literature by examining student experiences in study abroad programs to make theoretical arguments about the role of culture in "doing" and "undoing" gender. The "undoing gender" framework in comparative education literature…

The Demographics of Corporal Punishment in Texas

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phillips, Stephanie

2012-01-01

This dissertation examined the student discipline policies of 1,025 Texas school districts, as well as data from the Texas Education Agency's Academic Excellence Indicator System in order to identify demographic patterns regarding corporal punishment policies in Texas schools. The study also studied the relationship between a district's corporal…

Processing Relative Clauses in First and Second Language: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kashiwagi, Akiko

2011-01-01

This dissertation investigates processing of English and Japanese relative clause (RC) sentences by native speakers and second/foreign language (L2) learners. Particularly, the relationship between the sentence processing and individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity was examined. The main question addressed in this study is whether…

Exploring Novice Teachers' Cognitive Processes Using Digital Video Technology: A Qualitative Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun-Ongerth, Yuelu

2012-01-01

This dissertation describes a qualitative case study that investigated novice teachers' video-aided reflection on their own teaching. To date, most studies that have investigated novice teachers' video-aided reflective practice have focused on examining novice teachers' levels of reflective writing rather than the cognitive…

Three Studies of Service-Learning as an Approach to Movement Integration in Elementary Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Michael, Robert D., Jr.

2017-01-01

This dissertation consists of three studies that examine service-learning (SL) as an approach to incorporating movement integration (MI) in elementary classrooms as part of a comprehensive school physical activity program (CSPAP). All three studies attempt to advance the knowledge base about using partnership approaches to supporting school based…

Student Perceptions of the Impact of Participation in Community College Mental Health Counseling on Retention, Graduation, and Transfer

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Quin, Matt Jordan

2017-01-01

This dissertation examined community college transfer students' perceptions of how mental health concerns interfere with academics, the ability to stay in school, graduate, and transfer to a 4-year university. The study also examined if community college transfer students perceive that mental health counseling improves their ability to stay in…

Ready to Lead? An Examination of the Alignment of California Preservice School Leaders' Fieldwork Experiences with State Leadership Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stringfellow, Sandie

2016-01-01

This study explored how three preservice school leaders (PSLs) in California spent their time during their fieldwork for their school-leader-preparation programs and if they were gaining experience in all of the California Professional Standards for Education Leaders (CPSEL). Specifically, my dissertation examined the use of a daily log (Project…

Studies in the History and Geography of California Languages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haynie, Hannah Jane

2012-01-01

This dissertation uses quantitative and geographic analysis techniques to examine the historical and geographical processes that have shaped California's linguistic diversity. Many questions in California historical linguistics have received diminishing attention in recent years, remaining unanswered despite their continued relevance. The studies…

7 CFR 3402.6 - Overview of the special international study and/or thesis/dissertation research travel allowance.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... thesis/dissertation research travel allowance. 3402.6 Section 3402.6 Agriculture Regulations of the... Overview of the special international study and/or thesis/dissertation research travel allowance. (a) For.../dissertation research travel allowance, the Project Director must apply to HEP for a supplemental grant in...

7 CFR 3402.6 - Overview of the special international study and/or thesis/dissertation research travel allowance.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... thesis/dissertation research travel allowance. 3402.6 Section 3402.6 Agriculture Regulations of the... Overview of the special international study and/or thesis/dissertation research travel allowance. (a) For.../dissertation research travel allowance, the Project Director must apply to HEP for a supplemental grant in...

Making a Case for Using Visual Inquiry Discussion in Preparing Elementary Social Studies Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Cathy M.

2013-01-01

This dissertation research examines a teacher educator's instructional practices and preservice teachers' learning in two elementary social studies methods courses. As self-study, it focuses on learning to teach preservice teachers how to select and use visual images to teacher history and social studies. The research uses the Grossman Framework…

Three Essays on Education Policy: Empirical Analyses of the Challenges and Opportunities with For-Profit Colleges, Military Enlistment and Immigration. PRGS Dissertation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Malchiodi, Alessandro

2014-01-01

This dissertation comprises three essays that empirically examine the educational outcomes of for-profit college students, military enlistees and immigrant youth. All of these are groups of "non-average" students that, in different contexts, pose challenges to the traditional provision of education. Therefore, their outcomes need to be…

To Belief or Not Belief: Shifting the Pedagogical Focus from Beliefs to Behaviors. An Analysis of Community College Faculty Pedagogical Beliefs, Perceptions, and Instructional Behaviors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

James, Robin

2016-01-01

This dissertation examines the pedagogical beliefs and instructional practices of community college faculty members. The dissertation uses a qualitative interpretive inquiry approach to explore the contextual understanding of pedagogy and teaching of community college. Drawing from the theoretical framework of pedagogy, teaching and beliefs, this…

"It's Just a Disability" or Is It?: Stigma, Psychological Needs, and Educational Outcomes in African American Adolescents with Learning-Related Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kizzie, Karmen Tamika

2009-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation project was to examine the extent to which the special education context, riddled with labeling and teasing, affected the motivation, academic self-concept, grades, and academic achievement of African American adolescents with learning-related disabilities. This dissertation research is situated within two…

Engineering Knowledge and Student Development: An Institutional and Pedagogical Critique of Engineering Education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tang, Xiaofeng

Educators have recommended the integration of engineering and the liberal arts as a promising educational model to prepare young engineers for global economic, environmental, sociotechnical, and ethical challenges. Drawing upon philosophy of technology, engineering studies, and educational psychology, this dissertation examines diverse visions and strategies for integrating engineering and liberal education and explores their impacts on students' intellectual and moral development. Based on archival research, interviews, and participant observation, the dissertation presents in-depth case studies of three educational initiatives that seek to blend engineering with the humanities, social sciences, and arts: Harvey Mudd College, the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, and the Programs in Design and Innovation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The research finds that learning engineering in a liberal arts context increases students' sense of "owning" their education and contributes to their communication, teamwork, and other non-technical professional skills. In addition, opportunities for extensive liberal arts learning in the three cases encourage some students to pursue alternative, less technocentric approaches to engineering. Nevertheless, the case studies suggest that the epistemological differences between the engineering and liberal arts instructors help maintain a technical/social dualism among most students. Furthermore, the dissertation argues a "hidden curriculum," which reinforces the dominant ideology in the engineering profession, persists in the integrated programs and prevents the students from reflecting on the broad social context of engineering and critically examining the assumptions upheld in the engineering profession.

Analyzing the Dissertations about Differentiated Instruction in Terms of Their Contents in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karip, Fatih

2016-01-01

This study aims to analyze the dissertations about differentiated instruction in terms of their contents in Turkey. The data of the study was collected from Council of Higher Education National Thesis Center database. The dissertations were searched without any year limitation. As a result of searching, 19 dissertations were found. The data…

Examining the Mismatch between the Training and Assessment of Band and Orchestra Conductors in Michigan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Becher, Eric A.

2011-01-01

The dissertation builds on the research literature studying conductor training and the musical attributes requisite for adequate conducting skill and musical performance. The study also provides evidence that effective tools for evaluation of band and orchestra conductors are prevalent throughout the music education literature. Public school…

Subversion and Critical Distance: Black Speculative Fiction, White Pre-Service Teachers, and Anti-Racist Pedagogy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roue, Bevin

2016-01-01

This dissertation examines representations of black lives in adolescent speculative fiction and explores what the genre offers to anti-racist teacher education. Situating my study at the intersections of literacy education and children's literature studies, I interrogate assumptions surrounding genre conventions adopted in multicultural education.…

A Tale of Two Principals: The Complexity of Fostering and Achieving Organizational Improvement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martinez-Kellar, Frances Jacqueline

2012-01-01

This dissertation served as a pilot study that tested a set of ideas drawn from the existing literature grounded in organizational learning theory, leadership theory, sociocultural theory, and the social and psychological constructs demonstrating leader behavior and capacity. The study examined the intersection within four individual components of…

A Study of the Leadership Practices of South Carolina Superintendents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Redish, Carlotta D.

2010-01-01

This dissertation is a report of a mixed method study that examines the leadership practices of black and white public school superintendents in the state of South Carolina. The researcher explored any self-perceived leadership practice differences, if existent, between black and white superintendents and, if so, were the race of the…

Exploring How School Intra-Organizational Mechanisms Mediate the Effects of External Interventions on Improving Teaching and Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sun, Min

2011-01-01

This dissertation collects three independent but interrelated studies exploring how school intra-organizational mechanism may mediate the impact of external interventions on improving teaching and learning. This first study examines how high-quality professional development (PD) can promote the diffusion of effective teaching strategies among…

A Study of Middle School Principal Behaviors and Their Impact on Teacher Retention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Todd

2011-01-01

This dissertation was designed to investigate the causes behind teacher turnover and the connection between principal behavior, teacher working conditions, and rates of teacher turnover. In particular, this study examined behaviors that teachers in three North Carolina middle schools felt their principals displayed that helped encourage them to…

Tracking Trends: Students' Information Use in the Social Sciences and Humanities, 1995-2008

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smyth, Joanne B.

2011-01-01

This study uses citation analysis to examine students' dissertations and theses in history, psychology, and education, noting changes in research practices since the introduction of electronic journals and other online sources. Some findings challenge earlier studies, showing that students are making greater use of journal backfiles and that this…

The Effect of Teachers' Social Networks on Teaching Practices and Class Composition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Chong Min

2011-01-01

Central to this dissertation was an examination of the role teachers' social networks play in schools as living organizations through three studies. The first study investigated the impact of teachers' social networks on teaching practices. Recent evidence suggests that teachers' social networks have a significant effect on teachers' norms,…

Leadership and Emotional Intelligence: A Phenomenological Study on Developmental Experiences of Effective Federal Government Leaders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rude, David A.

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the experiences of effective Federal Government leaders in developing their emotional intelligence (EI). Using a conceptual framework of adult learning, leadership, and leader development, this study focused on experiential and situated learning to discern how EI develops. The researcher in the context of this…

Framing Innovation: The Role of Distributed Leadership in Gaining Acceptance of Large-Scale Technology Initiatives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Turner, Henry J.

2014-01-01

This dissertation of practice utilized a multiple case-study approach to examine distributed leadership within five school districts that were attempting to gain acceptance of a large-scale 1:1 technology initiative. Using frame theory and distributed leadership theory as theoretical frameworks, this study interviewed each district's…

Supporting Generative Thinking about Number Lines, the Cartesian Plane, and Graphs of Linear Functions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Earnest, Darrell Steven

2012-01-01

This dissertation explores fifth and eighth grade students' interpretations of three kinds of mathematical representations: number lines, the Cartesian plane, and graphs of linear functions. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, I administered the paper-and-pencil Linear Representations Assessment (LRA) to examine students'…

Technical and Vocational Education in China: The Characteristics of Participants and Their Labor Market Returns

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Anyi

2017-01-01

This dissertation study focuses on upper secondary technical and vocational education (TVE) in China. It empirically examines the characteristics of TVE participants and the labor market impacts of participating in upper secondary TVE relative to attending general high schools. Using nationally representative datasets from China, this study has…

Understanding the College Choice Process of United States Military-Affiliated Transfer Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ives, Emily Joanne

2017-01-01

This study examined the college choice process of transfer student veterans who are currently enrolled in a public research university. The research presented in this dissertation utilized both quantitative and qualitative strategies to identify key factors in students' college choice process. This study focuses on the following two research…

An Examination of the Design, Development, and Implementation of an Internet Protocol Version 6 Network: The ADTRAN Inc. Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perigo, Levi

2013-01-01

In this dissertation, the author examined the capabilities of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in regard to replacing Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) as the internetworking technology for Medium-sized Businesses (MBs) in the Information Systems (IS) field. Transition to IPv6 is inevitable, and, thus, organizations are adopting this protocol…

An Examination of a Virtual Private Network Implementation to Support a Teleworking Initiative: The Marcus Food Company Inc. Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferguson, Jason W.

2010-01-01

In this dissertation, the author examined the capabilities of virtual private networks (VPNs) in supporting teleworking environments for small businesses in the food marketing sector. The goal of this research was to develop an implementation model for small businesses in the food marketing sector that use a VPN solution to support teleworker…

Examining the Impact of Individual Variables on Support Needs and Underlying Relationships between Adults' and Children's Versions of the Supports Intensity Scale

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seo, Hyojeong

2013-01-01

This dissertation consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the evolved concept of disability and an introduction of the support needs construct to special education and related disciplines, as well as a summary of studies that examined the support needs of people with intellectual disability. This Chapter also presents research…

A Tale of Two Effective Title One Reward Charter Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Metcalfe, Laura

2014-01-01

This research project was a study that was based on a prior dissertation study that analyzed student success, as measured by achievement tests, within local communities with high poverty rates. Two Title 1 Reward high schools in the Phoenix area were examined through qualitative case studies to determine what had been implemented to help eliminate…

A Collective Case Study of the Idiosyncratic Language of Formal Thought Disorder in Cases of Disorganized Psychosis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lowe, Amanda R.

2012-01-01

This study focuses on a meaningful understanding of idiosyncratic language in psychosis. The psychotic neologisms examined in this dissertation challenge the listener's accurate understanding. Idiosyncratic aspects of speech in psychosis are largely researched from a diagnostic perspective in the literature. This study asks how individuals…

Sex Differences and Gendered Behaviors: An Analysis of School-Age Children and Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dean, Michelle Carol

2013-01-01

This dissertation contains two studies, which are intended to expand our current knowledge about girls with ASD without intellectual disability. The first study examined sex-differences in ASD symptom endorsement and coexisting internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The second study explored the social behaviors of boys and girls with ASD at…

The Practicality of Poetry: Using Sonnets to Improve Reading Ability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vallicelli, Arthur E.

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the way in which sonnets improved reading comprehension through a case study. The study was conceptually framed around the ideas of the New Critics, who employed two particular fallacies to ensure the most accurate reading of literature. The purpose of the study was to see the potential benefits that could come from…

Mathematics Coaching in High School: The Impact of Coach and Teacher Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pusey, Eleanor Louise

2013-01-01

This dissertation study examined a high school mathematics coach in the context of a three-year project called MAST (Mathematics Achievement Success Today) that provided summer content courses, lesson study, and mathematics coaching for high school teachers. This study focused in particular on the work of the MAST project coach as she interacted…

A Review of Classwide or Universal Social, Emotional, Behavioral Programs for Students in Kindergarten

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sabey, Christian V.; Charlton, Cade T.; Pyle, Daniel; Lignugaris-Kraft, Benjamin; Ross, Scott W.

2017-01-01

The purpose of this article is to synthesize the existing research on classwide social, emotional, and behavioral programs for kindergarten students. The researchers identified 26 studies in peer-reviewed journals and dissertation databases to review. Each study was examined and coded in terms of study characteristics, strength of evidence, and…

Examining Diverse Local Histories in Composition Courses, 1890-1940: A Study of Two Rhode Island Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Langston, Kathy Jones

2010-01-01

This study yields a broader understanding of the "development of rhetorical instruction in the American college" (Gold 15) by focusing on the composition programs at two little studied universities. This dissertation addresses the descriptions of composition courses as these appear in the course catalogs of two different kinds of…

The Effect of Study Abroad on the Development of Intercultural Sensitivity among Mainland Chinese High School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hao, Chenfang

2012-01-01

This dissertation examined the effect of year-long study abroad program on the development of intercultural sensitivity among the Mainland Chinese high school students. The sample consisted of 50 study abroad participants and 50 students on home campus. The instrument Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) was employed to assess the…

Argumentation as a Lens to Examine Student Discourse in Peer-Led Guided Inquiry for College General Chemistry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kulatunga, Ushiri Kumarihamy

This dissertation work entails three related studies on the investigation of Peer-Led Guided Inquiry student discourse in a General Chemistry I course through argumentation. The first study, Argumentation and participation patterns in general chemistry peer-led sessions, is focused on examining arguments and participation patterns in small student groups without peer leader intervention. The findings of this study revealed that students were mostly engaged in co-constructed arguments, that a discrepancy in the participation of the group members existed, and students were able to correct most of the incorrect claims on their own via argumentation. The second study, Exploration of peer leader verbal behaviors as they intervene with small groups in college general chemistry, examines the interactive discourse of the peer leaders and the students during peer leader intervention. The relationship between the verbal behaviors of the peer leaders and the student argumentation is explored in this study. The findings of this study demonstrated that peer leaders used an array of verbal behaviors to guide students to construct chemistry concepts, and that a relationship existed between student argument components and peer leader verbal behaviors. The third study, Use of Tolumin's Argumentation Scheme for student discourse to gain insight about guided inquiry activities in college chemistry , is focused on investigating the relationship between student arguments without peer leader intervention and the structure of published guided inquiry ChemActivities. The relationship between argumentation and the structure of the activities is explored with respect to prompts, questions, and the segmented Learning Cycle structure of the ChemActivities. Findings of this study revealed that prompts were effective in eliciting arguments, that convergent questions produced more arguments than directed questions, and that the structure of the Learning Cycle successfully scaffolded arguments. A semester of video data from two different small student groups facilitated by two different peer leaders was used for these three related studies. An analytic framework based on Toulmin's argumentation scheme was used for the argumentation analysis of the studies. This dissertation work focused on the three central elements of the peer-led classroom, students, peer leader, and the ChemActivities, illuminates effective discourse important for group learning. Overall, this dissertation work contributes to science education by providing both an analytic framework useful for investigating group processes and crucial strategies for conducting effective cooperative learning and promoting student argumentation. The findings of this dissertation work have valuable implications in the professional development of teachers specifically for group interventions in the implementation of cooperative learning reforms.

Dissertation Leadership Knowledge Transfer Using Sparsely Connected Networks with Bidirectional Edges: Case Study of Chester Hayden McCall Jr., His Dissertation Advisors, and His Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mallette, Leo A.

2012-01-01

There are many modes of information flow in the sciences: books, journals, conferences, research and development, acquisition of companies, co-workers, students, and professors in schools of higher learning. In the sciences, dissertation students learn from their dissertation advisor (or chairperson or mentor) and the other dissertation committee…

Re-Framing the World Wide Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Black, August

2011-01-01

The research presented in this dissertation studies and describes how technical standards, protocols, and application programming interfaces (APIs) shape the aesthetic, functional, and affective nature of our most dominant mode of online communication, the World Wide Web (WWW). I examine the politically charged and contentious battle over browser…

Predicting Technology Use in Post-Secondary Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Jada Octavia

2015-01-01

This study examined the relationships between UTAUT [Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology] scores, academic discipline, institutional characteristics, and technology use in post-secondary teaching. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.). [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further…

Discursive Tactical Negotiations within and across Literacy Coaching Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hunt, Carolyn S.

2013-01-01

In this dissertation, the researcher employed de Certeau's theoretical insights into cultural production in everyday life to examine how literacy coaches and teachers discursively negotiated issues of identity, power, and positioning during coaching interactions. The study also explored how literacy coaches and teachers enacted emotions within…

Making Controlled Experimentation More Informative in Inquiry Investigations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McElhaney, Kevin Wei Hong

2010-01-01

This dissertation incorporates three studies that examine how the design of inquiry based science instruction, dynamic visualizations, and guidance for experimentation contribute to physics students' understanding of science. I designed a week-long, technology-enhanced inquiry module on car collisions that logs students' interactions with a…

Short Term International Study for Teachers as a Form of Experiential Learning: A Case Study of American Educators in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berk, Zulfikar

2017-01-01

This dissertation is a case study of the experiences and perspectives of nine US teachers who participated in a short-term international study tour to Turkey, from the theoretical perspectives of global education and experiential learning. It examines how that experience shaped the teachers' understandings of global dynamics, cultural differences…

Common Methodology Mistakes in Dissertations: Improving Dissertation Quality.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, Bruce

Dissertations are the cumulative, tangible "best evidence" of interests of doctoral faculty and students in serious and incisive scholarship. Thus, dissertations are thoroughly studied by the program review teams periodically hired by boards of higher education in most states. The present paper explores seven errors in quantitative…

The Conceptual Dissertation: Commentaries by Practitioners as Inquirers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garman, Noreen B.; And Others

Opinions about the conceptual dissertation are offered in seven colloquium papers by educational practitioners/scholars who have finished their dissertations over the past 5 years. Conceptual/interpretive dissertation research issues include finding a consistent language and research rationale for studies. In addition to an introduction by Noreen…

Engaging Bioanthropology College Students: The Role of Active and Cooperative Pedagogies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soluri, Kathaeryne Elizabeth

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the design and implementation of an active, cooperative pedagogy in an undergraduate biological anthropology course. The research draws upon a theoretical framework constructed from anthropology, education, and psychology research. The pedagogy studied was developed for and used in the laboratory component of a large,…

Scholarly and Public Views: Understanding Narratives around Nanotechnology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teggatz, Jennifer L.

2012-01-01

How people come to conceptualize and understand science topics has implications for how they learn, communicate about, and relate to science. This dissertation conceptualizes and examines "cultural narratives" as cognitive tools used by individuals and shared through culture. Using nanotechnology as a case study I argue that people may…

Women's Perspectives of Peace: Unheard Voices from Pakistan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Habib, Zehra

2013-01-01

Pakistan is currently impacted by rampant terrorism and is simultaneously grappling with intrastate ethnic and sectarian violence. The focus of this dissertation was on examining grassroots Pakistani women's perspectives on peace and women's contributions to peace in Pakistan. The study was centered on grassroots women because their voices remain…

Variation and Change in Northern Bavarian Quantity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Drake, Derek

2013-01-01

This dissertation presents new research on the "Bavarian Quantity Law" (the BQL) in the northern Bavarian dialect of Hahnbach. Building upon earlier investigation of the BQL (cf. Bannert 1976a,b for Central Bavarian) this study examines the historical, phonological, and phonetic motivations for this feature as well the variability in its…

Navigating the Complex Practices of Specialized Literacy Professionals in Formalized Teacher Leadership Positions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yurkewecz, Thea A.

2017-01-01

This dissertation reports on how one school community engaged in a professional development grant initiative that incorporated teacher leadership. Teacher leaders may have numerous roles and responsibilities that support the professional learning and instructional practices of school communities. This study examined the experiences of three…

Effect of Tax Ratification Elections on Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Groppel, Lance

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the impact a Tax Ratification Election has on student achievement in Texas. Texas schools continue to struggle with shrinking budgets and increasing standards of student achievement (Equity Center, 2011). This study will provide greater insight into whether school districts that have completed a TRE have created a…

Planned Organizational Change in Higher Education: Dashboard Indicators and Stakeholder Sensemaking--A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smulowitz, Stacy

2014-01-01

This dissertation examined the introduction and implementation of an organizational Dashboard as a planned organizational change within four educational support service departments and the senior leadership group within a large, Northeastern university. General systems theory provides a theoretical framework for conceptualizing planned…

Teaching Citizenship under an Authoritarian Regime: A Case-Study of Burma

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Treadwell, Brooke Andrea

2013-01-01

What does citizenship education look like in a society ruled by an authoritarian military regime? This dissertation seeks to answer this question by examining official citizenship education policy in Burma/Myanmar and how it is implemented in contemporary government primary schools. Using critical qualitative methodology, I identify the…

Building Bridges: A Study of Coordination in Projects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hemphill, Libby Marie

2009-01-01

In our efforts to understand how collaborative work can be accomplished, we often turn to discussions of "coordination" for help. However, the concept of coordination is inadequate for explaining the many interdependent processes at work within successful collaborations. In this dissertation, I examined a collaborative construction project--the…

Digital Architectonics: A Case Study of Educator Designed Multimodal Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klein, Sipai

2011-01-01

This dissertation examines the composition process of three experienced professors who spent a semester designing instructional videos to be delivered online to students. The growing adoption of online education, in conjunction with the dominance of the screen in everyday communication, has required university educators to develop strategies for…

Ain't I Black Too: Counterstories of Black Atheists in College

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snipes, Jeremy T.

2017-01-01

Increasingly Black college students are identifying as atheist, however few empirical studies in higher education and student affairs are exploring the phenomenon. This dissertation examines the question, "How do Black atheist understand their identity in college?" Using Higginbotham's Politics of Respectability and tenants of Critical…

Explorations of Metacognition among Academically Talented Middle and High School Mathematics Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Adena Elizabeth

2010-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine metacognition among academically talented middle and high school mathematics students from both educational psychology and mathematics education perspectives. A synthesis of the literatures and three studies employing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies were used to address three…

Language and Social Identity Construction: A Study of a Russian Heritage Language Orthodox Christian School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moore, Ekaterina Leonidovna

2012-01-01

Grounded in discourse analytic and language socialization paradigms, this dissertation examines issues of language and social identity construction in children attending a Russian Heritage Language Orthodox Christian Saturday School in California. By conducting micro-analysis of naturally-occurring talk-in-interaction combined with longitudinal…

A Study of Motherhood and Perceived Career Satisfaction of Women in Student Affairs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snyder, Kacee Ferrell

2011-01-01

There is limited research available on the relationship between motherhood and career satisfaction. This dissertation examined women who worked as student affairs professionals to develop a greater understanding of the relationship between motherhood and career satisfaction. The following research questions were addressed: Is there a difference…

On Research Methodology in Applied Linguistics in 2002-2008

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martynychev, Andrey

2010-01-01

This dissertation examined the status of data-based research in applied linguistics through an analysis of published research studies in nine peer-reviewed applied linguistics journals ("Applied Language Learning, The Canadian Modern Language Review / La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes, Current Issues in Language Planning, Dialog on Language…

Consumer Online Search and New-Product Marketing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Ho

2013-01-01

This dissertation contains three essays that study the implications of online search activity for new-product marketing. Using the U.S. motion picture industry as a test case, the first essay examines the dynamic causal relationship between traditional media, consumers' media generation activity, media consumption activity, and market demand…

Impact of Dietary Carbohydrate and Protein Levels on Carbohydrate Metabolism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lasker, Denise Ann

2009-01-01

The goal of this dissertation was to investigate the impact of changing dietary carbohydrate (CARB) intakes within recommended dietary guidelines on metabolic outcomes specifically associated with glycemic regulations and carbohydrate metabolism. This research utilized both human and animal studies to examine changes in metabolism across a wide…

Writing Bytes: Articulating a Techno-Critical Pedagogy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shovlin, Paul W.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines how "modern literacy" and "contemporary writing" are increasingly influenced by technology from a critical pedagogical perspective. The study develops a definition of literacy that takes into account a reliance on technology, particularly computers, in our writing classes and writing lives. With a focus on one particular…

Chief Student Affairs Officers' Perceptions of Institutional Crisis Management, Preparedness, and Response

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Studenberg, Heather Nicole Lancin

2017-01-01

This dissertation examined chief student affairs officers' perceptions of institutional crisis management, preparedness, and response. A goal of this study was to uncover findings that can benefit crisis management protocols or best practices regarding crisis management team training, plan communications, and emergency management personnel on…

Remembering to Teach: Writing Instruction in Disciplinary Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kirell, Leah R.

2013-01-01

The following dissertation explores how higher education faculty members' memories of learning content and learning to write influence their pedagogical practices and examines how disciplinary and departmental contexts intersect with those pedagogical practices. The research was designed as a nested case study that draws on interview data,…

Students' Self-Perceptions of Support

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Villalobos, Anna Marie

2013-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine students with disabilities self-perceptions of their academic and social supports in the general and special education classroom and the impact of the students' counterstories to inform the design of classroom supports. This study was anchored in organizational theory, critical race theory, and the…

Maternal Participation and Scaffolding While Coviewing Educational Television

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neulight, Nina Raquel

2012-01-01

This dissertation study examined how mothers participated and scaffolded while watching an educational television program at home with their 3- to 5-year-old children; whether maternal participation and scaffolding predicted children's learning of vocabulary, sight words, and reading skills presented in the program; and reasons (i.e.,…

Turn Allocation in Japanese Business Meetings: Emergence of Institutionality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murayama, Emi

2012-01-01

This dissertation uses conversation analysis as a theoretical and methodological framework to examine the organization of in-house business meetings that are conducted in Japanese. In particular, this study focuses on how institutionality becomes apparent within the participants' interactions. The data consists of six videotaped in-house…

Dividing the Spoils: An Empirical Study of Two Industries

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-01-01

This dissertation examines the forces that influence the distribution of money in both the sports industry and the defense industry. The method to...addresses the impact of new professional sports venues on athletes’ salaries. In particular, the case of baseball is considered. To this point, the research

Elementary Teachers' Perceptions of Elementary Principals' Effectiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fridenvalds, Kriss R.

2012-01-01

This dissertation examined the beliefs of elementary teachers to determine if their perceptions of effective principal leadership align to transformational leadership theory vis-a-vis the Educational Leadership Policy Standards (ELPS). A phenomenological, single-case study approach was utilized by means of a mixed-methodological, Web-based survey,…

Leaving Librarianship: A Study of the Determinants and Consequences of Occupational Turnover

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rathbun-Grubb, Susan R.

2009-01-01

The purpose of this study was to better understand occupational turnover among librarians and archivists by examining the careers of individuals who have left or intend to leave the profession, in order to identify the factors associated with turnover, and to discover the career outcomes of those who leave. The dissertation analyzes a subset of…

An Examination of Teacher Understandings of Technology Integration at the Classroom Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carlson, Shawn M.

2016-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and understand how teachers describe the changes in their practices as a result of ten years participation in a one-to-one environment. This research study focuses on one successful middle school's adoption of laptops to support teaching and learning. A qualitative study using interviews of key…

Proof and Proving: Logic, Impasses, and the Relationship to Problem Solving

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Savic, Milos

2012-01-01

Becoming a skillful prover is critical for success in advanced undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses. In this dissertation, I report my investigations of proof and the proving process in three separate studies. In the first study, I examined the amount of logic used in student-constructed proofs to help in the design of…

A Quasi Meta-Analysis of Youth and Career Research Methodologies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bernes, Kerry

A quasi meta-analysis approach was used to examine the research methodologies used to study issues related to youth (ages 13-25) and careers. Psychlit, ERIC, Dissertation Abstracts, and four journals were searched to identify articles for the study. A total of 67 articles from 18 different sources were analyzed. Eighty-seven percent were from…

The Impact of the Structure, Function, and Resources of the Campus Security Office on Campus Safety

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bennett, Patricia Anne

2012-01-01

The topic of this dissertation is college and university safety. This national quantitative study utilized resource dependency theory to examine relationships between the incidence of reported campus crimes and the structure, function, and resources of campus security offices. This study uncovered a difference in reported total crime rates,…

Multiple Case Studies of Public Library Systems in New York State: Service Decision-Making Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ren, Xiaoai

2012-01-01

This research examined the functions and roles of public library systems in New York State and the services they provide for individual libraries and the public. The dissertation further studied the service decision-making processes at three selected New York State cooperative public library systems. Public library systems have played an important…

Administrative Decision-Making in a Time of Resource Decline: The Case of California's Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reimann, Jason Daniel

2011-01-01

This dissertation is a qualitative study on the decision-making of administrators within California's Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) teacher induction program. The study focuses on examining how declining resources act as a pressure, how well-established research on cutback management predict the behaviors of the BTSA…

[HYGIENE: STRUCTURE OF INNOVATIVE RESEARCH STUDIES IN RUSSIA (2000-2014)].

PubMed

Evdokimov, V I; Popov, V I; Rut, A N

2015-01-01

There was analyzed the array of 1548 dissertations on the scientific specialty 14.02.01 (former specification 14.00.07) "Hygiene". Over period of 2000-2014 to the Dissertation Committee in Russia there were annually submitted (103 ± 10) theses, which include (21 ± 3) doctoral dissertations and (83 ± 8) candidate dissertations. Doctoral dissertations accounted for 20,1%, dissertations in medicine--89.3%. There was established not only the decline in the number of theses in hygiene, but the reduction of their proportion in the total array of all medical and biological dissertations in Russia. The conjugacy of the trend curves of the total stream of dissertations in medicine and biology in Russia and in hygiene is considered to be not very high (r = 0.54). In the total structure of dissertation works on General Hygiene accounted for 22.7%, Community Hygiene--15.45%, Occupational Hygiene--19.6%, Children's and Adolescents' Hygiene--24.7%, Nutrition Hygiene--8.2%, Radiation Hygiene--2.3%, in Rural Hygiene--1.2%, Hospital Hygiene-- 3.4%, Military Hygiene--2.3% correspondingly. There is pointed the development gap between the research studies in hygiene and tendency in training of high class health care professionals' in Russia.

Nurse Educators' Consensus Opinion on Using an Academic Electronic Health Record: A Delphi Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hanson, Darlene S.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the opinions of nurse educators in the state of North Dakota (ND) who were using the academic Electronic Health Record (EHR) known as SimChart. In this dissertation research study, factors that either hindered or facilitated the introduction of SimChart in nursing programs in ND were examined.…

School and Community, Community and School: A Case Study of a Rural Missouri Setting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Franklin, Melia K.

2011-01-01

How do a school and a community interact? This question guided this dissertation examining one rural school and community. The purpose of this case study was to investigate the relationship between the rural Marceline R-V School District (a K-12 school system) and its community, Marceline, Missouri. The framework for this study included the…

A Dissertation Study: Determining the Successes and Challenges of Entrepreneurial Practices from Community College Leaders in Six States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lang, Clayton, Jr.

2017-01-01

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the extent of success and the challenges faced by community college presidents in creating an entrepreneurial culture. Fourteen American community colleges, identified by Roueche and Jones (2005), were surveyed for this study. These fourteen community colleges are located in Texas, Florida,…

The contemporary dynamics of Sino-Indian relations: Examining maritime security, economics, energy and elite dialogue

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Athwal, Amardeep

This dissertation examines the modern-day dynamics of the Sino-Indian relationship---with a particular focus on issues relating to maritime security, economics, energy and elite bilateral dialogue. In exploring the contemporary nature of the Sino-Indian relationship, the dissertation also seeks to assess the accuracy of predominant neorealist accounts of the Sino-Indian relationship. Since the 1962 Sino-Indian War, most analysts have continued to emphasize the conflictual and competitive elements within the Sino-Indian relationship. The dissertation first explores the crucial post-independence history of Sino-Indian relations to provide the appropriate contextual background (chapter one). Thereafter, the dissertation explores the geopolitical significance of the Indian Ocean in light of soaring (global) energy demands. This then leads into an analysis of China and India's naval modernization and China's strategic partnership with Pakistan and Myanmar (chapter two). While acknowledging the credibility of neorealist insights in the realm of maritime security by detailing China and India's naval buildup and naval strategy, overall, it is found that the security dilemma argument is overstated. There is both a lack of threat perception and the existence of alternate explanations for both Chinese and Indian activities in Southern Asia. The dissertation then moves on to explore the positive elements within the Sino-Indian relationship---growing economic interdependence, energy convergence and elite consensus. In the economic realm (chapter three) it is found that Sino-Indian bilateral trade is increasingly being framed institutionally and rapidly expanding every year. The areas where the Sino-Indian economic relationship could be fruitfully expanded are traced and the great potential of bilateral trade is discussed. Thereafter, the dissertation highlights how China and India are beginning to coordinate energy policy (chapter four) as well as the growing political will (chapter five) to transform the Sino-Indian relationship from a framework of conflict and competition to cooperation. The dissertation concludes that there are serious mitigating factors in the Sino-Indian relationship and that an exclusively neorealist outlook is impoverished. Theoretical insights from neoliberal institutionalism and constructivism point to how emerging economic interdependence in tandem with the (elite) creation of dependable expectations of peaceful change point towards stability in the Sino-Indian relationship.

Using a nursing theory or a model in nursing PhD dissertations: a qualitative study from Turkey.

PubMed

Mete, Samiye; Gokçe İsbir, Gozde

2015-04-01

The aim of this study was to reveal experiences of nursing students and their advisors using theories and models in their PhD dissertations. The study adopted a descriptive qualitative approach. This study was performed with 10 PhD candidates and their five advisors from nursing faculty. The results of the study were categorized into four. These are reasons for using a theory/model in a PhD dissertation, reasons for preferring a given model, causes of difficulties in using models in PhD dissertations, and facilitating factors of using theories and models in PhD of dissertations. It was also reported to contribute to the methodology of research and professional development of the students and advisors. © 2014 NANDA International, Inc.

Unifying the concept of consciousness across the disciplines: A concept-based, cross-cultural approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jones, Peter N.

The majority of studies concerning consciousness have examined and modeled the concept of consciousness in terms of particular lines of inquiry, a process that has circumscribed the general applicability of any results from such approaches. The purpose of this dissertation was to study consciousness from a concept-based, cross-cultural approach and to attempt to unify the concept across the cultures examined. The 4 cultures are the academic disciplines of philosophy, physics, psychology, and anthropology. Consciousness was examined in terms of how the concept is framed and where the major limitations in each line of inquiry occur. The rationale for examining consciousness as a concept across 4 cultures was to determine whether there was any common component in each line's framing that could be used to unify the concept. The study found that experience itself was the primary unifying factor in each field's framing and that experience was treated as a nonreducible property within each line of inquiry. By taking experience itself (but not subjective experience) as a fundamental property, each culture's concept of consciousness becomes tractable. As such, this dissertation argues that experience should be taken as a fundamental property of the concept. The significance of this analysis is that by taking experience as a fundamental property, it becomes possible to unify the concept across the 4 cultures. This unification is presented as a unity thesis, which is a theory arguing for unification of the concept based on the fundamental of experience. Following this theoretical examination, this paper discusses several key implications of the unity thesis, including implications of the unity thesis for the current status of altered states of consciousness and for the so-called hard and easy problems associated with the concept (at least within Occidental ontology). It is argued that the so-called hard problem does not exist when experience is taken as a fundamental property of ontological reality and that altered states of consciousness are in fact better understood as access states of consciousness based on unity thesis. The dissertation concludes with suggestions for further lines of research.

Hardiness commitment, gender, and age differentiate university academic performance.

PubMed

Sheard, Michael

2009-03-01

The increasing diversity of students, particularly in age, attending university has seen a concomitant interest in factors predicting academic success. This 2-year correlational study examined whether age, gender (demographic variables), and hardiness (cognitive/emotional variable) differentiate and predict university final degree grade point average (GPA) and final-year dissertation mark. Data are reported from a total of 134 university undergraduate students. Participants provided baseline data in questionnaires administered during the first week of their second year of undergraduate study and gave consent for their academic progress to be tracked. Final degree GPA and dissertation mark were the academic performance criteria. Mature-age students achieved higher final degree GPA compared to young undergraduates. Female students significantly outperformed their male counterparts in each measured academic assessment criteria. Female students also reported a significantly higher mean score on hardiness commitment compared to male students. commitment was the most significant positive correlate of academic achievement. Final degree GPA and dissertation mark were significantly predicted by commitment, and commitment and gender, respectively. The findings have implications for universities targeting academic support services to maximize student scholastic potential. Future research should incorporate hardiness, gender, and age with other variables known to predict academic success.

Innovative options for the doctoral dissertation in nursing.

PubMed

Robinson, Susan; Dracup, Kathleen

2008-01-01

The doctoral dissertation is the capstone event of doctoral study. While developing their dissertations, graduate students discover the cutting edge of the discipline, learn the intricacies of the research process, and engage in scientific dialogue with experts in the field. Traditional dissertation formats are confined to the Dissertation Abstracts International and are not easily accessed by clinicians, administrators, and researchers who are most in need of the information. Consequently, the number of universities offering options to the traditional dissertation format is growing. This article describes and compares 2 formats: the traditional dissertation and the publication option. The benefits and challenges of each format to doctoral students and faculty are discussed. The discussion reflects changing trends in the nursing profession as an academic discipline.

What Talking about Them Reveals about Us: The Organization of Person Reference in Conversations about Family Photographs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mates, Andrea Wong

2009-01-01

Talking with friend about personal photographs is a recognizable as an activity in which people participate in the modern world. This dissertation presents three studies examining the locally initial person reference formulations used to refer to people in the photographs in such an activity. The first study shows how the speakers narrating the…

Science for Survival: The Modern Synthesis of Evolution and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Lisa Anne

2012-01-01

In this historical dissertation, I examined the process of curriculum development in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) in the United States during the period 1959-1963. The presentation of evolution in the high school texts was based on a more robust form of Darwinian evolution which developed during the 1930s and 1940s called…

Using Learning Modules for Instructor Neutrality in Ethical Quagmires: A Cross-Curricular Study in Academic Debate

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walsh, Robert Lester

2014-01-01

The purpose of this disquisition is to add to the body of educational research through practitioner, quantitative, and qualitative inquiry on the topic of academic debate. In a three-tiered study, the author conducted research for this dissertation with the intent to examine argumentation and debate in higher education. The settings for this…

"You Who Have Been to School, What Have You Become?": An Ethnographic Study of University Life in Benin

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hessling O'Neil, Marcy

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the relationship between higher education and social mobility among students and their families in Benin, West Africa. In this study I draw on ethnographic research conducted at the public University of Abomey-Calavi in Cotonou, Benin in 2010. I utilize interviews, historical documents, and participant observation to…

Federalism and Lander Autonomy: The Higher Education Policy Network in the Federal Republic of Germany. Studies in Higher Education Dissertation Series.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Onestini, Cesare

This study traces the development of the German higher education system, examining the development of higher education policies from the postwar years to the postunification period. It focuses on federalism and the relative positions of"Lander" (German states) and the government of the Federal Republic (FRG) as revealed in higher…

Trends in Dissertations Involving Technology-Assisted Mathematics Instruction: The Case of Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tatar, Enver; Akkaya, Adnan; Kagizmanli, Türkan Berrin

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study is to examine thesis studies on technology-supported mathematics education in Turkey in terms of the keywords, mathematical areas, technologies and methodology used and results obtained. Data were obtained from 105 graduate theses. At the end of the analysis of the data, it was determined that most used keywords were from…

A Collective Case Study of Veterans inside an Arts and Crafts Room and Their Perceptions Regarding Empowerment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hasio, Cindy Lee

2013-01-01

This dissertation is "A Collective Case Study of Veterans Inside an Arts and Crafts Room and Their Perceptions Regarding Empowerment." This research examined to what degree art making, and in what ways a community of learning contributed to veterans' self-worth and empowerment through their creative activities and interactions inside an…

An Investigation of the Relationship between Factors of Beginning Teachers' Development within a Mentor-Based Induction Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, James Kenny

2017-01-01

This dissertation was a quantitative, correlational study that examined the impact of the mentor component of a mentor-based induction program on three factors of new teacher development and support. The focus of this study was on beginning teachers participating in a district-supported mentoring program designed to support and acclimate teachers…

Critical Pedagogy 2.0: Researching the Visual Culture of Marketing with Teenage Coresearchers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ciampaglia, Steve

2014-01-01

This article charts the progression of my critical teaching practice as it examines how the emancipatory critical pedagogy of the visual culture of marketing used in my master's thesis study evolved into the critical-democratic pedagogy of the visual culture of marketing used in my dissertation study. It explores how my use of these two distinct…

Response to Intervention, Family Involvement, and Student Achievement at Tier 2: A Mixed Methods Study of K-1 Students and Their Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gerzel-Short, Lydia

2013-01-01

This dissertation examined the importance of family involvement in student learning and achievement within the Response to Intervention framework. This study built upon the premise that family involvement in a child's education is paramount if educational gaps are to be closed. Families included in this study were randomly assigned into a…

The Use of Illustrations in Large-Scale Science Assessment: A Comparative Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Chao

2012-01-01

This dissertation addresses the complexity of test illustrations design across cultures. More specifically, it examines how the characteristics of illustrations used in science test items vary across content areas, assessment programs, and cultural origins. It compares a total of 416 Grade 8 illustrated items from the areas of earth science, life…

Reciprocity in Online Markets: Empirical Studies of Auction and Barter Markets

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ye, Shun

2013-01-01

My dissertation seeks to understand how reciprocity affects transaction outcomes and mechanism design in online markets. The first essay examines negative reciprocity illustrated as feedback-revoking behavior in the eBay auction market, focusing on its impact and implications for reputation system design. I utilize the biggest policy change of…

Semantic vs. Phonetic Decoding Strategies in Non-Native Readers of Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Clay H.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the effects of semantic and phonetic radicals on Chinese character decoding by high-intermediate level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners. The results of the main study (discussed in Chapter #5) suggest that the CFL learners tested have a well-developed semantic pathway to recognition; however, their…

Archives of Transformation: A Case Study of the International Women's Network against Militarism's Archival System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cachola, Ellen-Rae Cabebe

2014-01-01

This dissertation describes the International Women's Network Against Militarism's (IWNAM) political epistemology of security from an archival perspective, and how they create community archives to evidence this epistemology. This research examines records created by Women for Genuine Security (WGS) and Women's Voices Women Speak (WVWS), U.S. and…

School Principals, Leadership Coaches, and Student Achievement: Enhancing Self-Efficacy through the Coaching Relationship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelsen, Virginia E.

2011-01-01

School principals face an increasing number of professional demands, especially the challenge of improving student achievement. As such, the purpose of this dissertation is to study the effect of leadership coaching on a school principal's responsibilities related to carrying out these demands. Specifically, the researcher examined a subset of…

Investigations in a Simplified Bracketed Grid Approach to Metrical Structure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Patrick Pei

2010-01-01

In this dissertation, I examine the fundamental mechanisms and assumptions of the Simplified Bracketed Grid Theory (Idsardi 1992) in two ways: first, by comparing it with Parametric Metrical Theory (Hayes 1995), and second, by implementing it in the analysis of several case studies in stress assignment and syllabification. Throughout these…

College Alcohol Policy and Student Drinking-while-Driving: A Multilevel Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Jing

2012-01-01

Alcohol prohibition and legal or administrative sanctions have been implemented in attempts to curb alcohol drinking and drinking-while-driving in the general population as well as among college students. This dissertation study examines the impact of college alcohol prohibition and policy enforcement on students' alcohol drinking and…

Three Studies on Student Outcomes in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cannon, Russell

2016-01-01

This dissertation contains chapters that explore higher education policy issues related to student outcomes. In the first chapter, I examine the results of a controlled randomized trial of a brief, inexpensive phone call outreach to a sample of Pell eligible students at the University of Missouri intended to increase FAFSA filing, on-time FAFSA…

An Investigation of Syntactic Priming among German Speakers at Varying Proficiency Levels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruf, Helena T.

2011-01-01

This dissertation investigates syntactic priming in second language (L2) development among three speaker populations: (1) less proficient L2 speakers; (2) advanced L2 speakers; and (3) LI speakers. Using confederate scripting this study examines how German speakers choose certain word orders in locative constructions (e.g., "Auf dem Tisch…

A Sociolinguistic Study of Sustained Veneto-Spanish Bilingualism in Chipilo, Mexico

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnes, Hilary

2009-01-01

This dissertation project examines the language contact situation of Chipilo, a Veneto-Spanish bilingual community of immigrant origin in central Mexico, focusing both on the social motivations for the sustained bilingualism observed and the linguistic outcomes in the Spanish of the community. Chipilo is a unique community in that Veneto, a…

Examining First-Year Non-Dominant Students' Experiences as Academic Writers: An Identity Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Panayotova, Dora Marinova

2013-01-01

This dissertation reports on a study investigating the identity of first-year university students as writers. The longitudinal project explored how students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds construct their identities as undergraduates and as academic writers in their first year. The research was qualitative and interpretative, and used…

Seeking Information after the 2010 Haiti Earthquake: A Case Study in Mass-Fatality Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gupta, Kailash

2013-01-01

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which killed an estimated 316,000 people, offered many lessons in mass-fatality management (MFM). The dissertation defined MFM in seeking information and in recovery, preservation, identification, and disposition of human remains. Specifically, it examined how mass fatalities were managed in Haiti, how affected…

Case Study of Tenure-Track Early Career Faculty in a College of Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Esping, Gretchen Revay

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines an understudied group according to the American Council on Education: the tenure-track early career faculty (ECF). The focus is on the culturalization, socialization, academic culture, and emergent themes discerned from ten semi-structured interviews with tenure-track ECF. This qualitative bounded system case study…

Speaking of Sisterhood: A Sociolinguistic Study of an Asian American Sorority

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bauman, Carina

2016-01-01

This dissertation explores language as a resource for the formation and expression of ethnic identity among the members of an Asian American college sorority. As a community of practice organized around ethnicity, the sorority provides an excellent site to examine the mutually constitutive relationship of language and ethnic identity. Two features…

The Impact of Mentorship and Sponsorship on the Job Satisfaction of Female Student Affairs Administrators

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Friday, Yolanda Cleveland

2014-01-01

This dissertation examines the job satisfaction of mid to high level female student affairs administrators within higher education institutions in the United States. The study investigates factors related to job satisfaction as identified through Kalleberg's theory on intrinsic and extrinsic factors, and theories on mentorship and sponsorship as…

Collegiate Student-Athletes' Academic Success: Academic Communication Apprehension's Impact on Prediction Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

James, Kai'Iah A.

2010-01-01

This dissertation study examines the impact of traditional and non-cognitive variables on the academic prediction model for a sample of collegiate student-athletes. Three hundred and fifty-nine NCAA Division IA male and female student-athletes, representing 13 sports, including football and Men's and Women's Basketball provided demographic…

Enterprise Social Networking: Technology Acceptance Related to Personality, Age, and Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rochelle, Joseph

2017-01-01

In this dissertation, the researcher examined and added to the body of knowledge within the project change management field of technology implementation. The rationale behind the study was to evaluate technology acceptance of Enterprise Social Networking (ESN), which has been widely implemented across over 90% of the "Fortune" 500…

Morphophonological Practice: An Ethnographic Study of Grammar and Discourse in Four American English Stuttering Speech Communities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dumas, Nathaniel William

2010-01-01

Using the Practice Theory Approach to Language, this dissertation examines how social actors use communicative practices within activities to constitute a communicative context that I call the American English Stuttering Speech Community (AESSC). Building on previous linguistic research on stuttering and sociological research on collectives of…

The State of Knowledge of Outdoor Orientation Programs: Current Practices, Research, and Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bell, Brent J.; Gass, Michael A.; Nafziger, Christopher S.; Starbuck, J. David

2014-01-01

Outdoor orientation programs represent a prominent area of experiential education with over 25,000 participants annually. More than 191 outdoor orientation programs currently operate in the United States and Canada. The research examining outdoor orientation programs consists of 25 peer-reviewed published studies and 11 dissertations. A new theory…

Second Language Identity Building through Participation in Internet-Mediated Environments: A Critical Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klimanova, Liudmila

2013-01-01

Using a data-driven qualitative approach and drawing from language socialization and communities of practice theories, this dissertation study examines the second language (L2) identity-building strategies of 22 American learners of Russian who engaged in a six-week telecollaborative project with Russian native speakers in two genres of…

Testing for All: The Emergence and Development of International Assessment of Student Achievement, 1958-2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pizmony-Levy, Oren

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines a vital catalyst in the globalization of education: international assessments--that involve testing and rankings--of student achievement in academic subjects. Nearly all high-income countries participate in international assessments such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in…

The Interface between Language and Music in Huju: Tone-Tune Relationship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Lu

2017-01-01

This dissertation examines the interface between music and language in "Huju", which is a Shanghai dialect based regional opera. Chapter I is a short introduction. Chapter II presents a thorough review of the studies on linguistic tone and music tune, and provides descriptive background information about "Huju" and Shanghai…

Psychological Conditions of Engagement among Community College Maintenance Employees: A Cross-Sectional Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Franks, Tammy T.

2017-01-01

This dissertation examined the relationship between employee engagement and the factors that may influence the three psychological conditions of engagement: meaningfulness, safety, and availability for the sector of employees classified as maintenance, grounds, and custodial employees in a community college setting. The factors for each of the…

African American Male Superintendents in Urban School Districts: National Stories of Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carrier, Isaac Charles

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study is to examine and interpret the life experiences and leadership practices of four African American male superintendents leading urban school districts across the nation. The research approach adopted in this dissertation used semi-structured interviews with four African American male superintendents that consisted of…

Parent Power and Public Education Reform: The Experience of Participation in Grassroots Organizing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mediratta, Kavitha

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the effects of participation in grassroots organizing on the capacity and commitment of public school parents and community members to engage in future activism. The study used a mixed-methods research design, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected from individuals involved in seven exemplar…

Visual Impairment and Its Effect on the Development of the Self-Concept.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gish, R. Brian

This doctoral dissertation compares the self-concept of people with visual impairments with that of normally sighted individuals in 14 studies from various geographical regions in the United States. Discussion of methodological issues examines first, definitions regarding the self (self-image, self-perception, self-evaluation, self-esteem,…

Exploring the Importance of Mentoring for New Scholars: A Social Exchange Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ugrin, Joseph C.; Odom, Marcus D.; Pearson, J. Michael

2008-01-01

This exploratory study examines the importance of mentor/mentee relationships on faculty development by measuring how social exchange between new faculty members (mentees) in information systems and their former dissertation chairs (mentors) relate to how quickly the new faculty members completed their doctoral program and the number of peer…

Arts Integration: An Exploration of the Dis/Connect between Policy and Live(d) Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LaJevic, Lisa M.

2009-01-01

This dissertation explores the dis/connect between arts integration policy (i.e. written texts and curriculum documents) and the live(d) practice of teachers working with arts integration. Although previous studies have examined how arts integration is implemented in schools and how it affects student achievement, particularly standardized test…

An Examination of Student Reengagement District Administrative Procedures: An Action Research Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoadley, Jared Louis

2016-01-01

Changes in Washington State law require all school districts to adopt policies and procedures concerned with student reengagement. This dissertation describes the action research undertaken in the Mead School District to address requirements of the new law to successfully reenter students after being absent due to exclusionary discipline. The…

Essays on Applied Microeconomics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mejia Mantilla, Carolina

2013-01-01

Each chapter of this dissertation studies a different question within the field of Applied Microeconomics. The first chapter examines the mid- and long-term effects of the 1998 Asian Crisis on the educational attainment of Indonesian children ages 6 to 18, at the time of the crisis. The effects are identified as deviations from a linear trend for…

Empirical Studies of Interactions of Semantic Roles: The Agent and Patient in Mandarin Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yue, Kun

2010-01-01

This dissertation investigates the interaction between form and function in Mandarin Chinese by empirically examining the interactions of core semantic roles (Agent and Patient) and the syntactic representation of those interactions in semantically transitive events. First, I demonstrate that syntactic structures and functions are intertwined with…

Distance Education as Counter to Declining State Appropriations at Public Institutions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Theresa

2017-01-01

Universities and colleges have experienced a reduction in state appropriations since the 2008 Great Recession. The purpose of this phenomenological dissertation in practice study was to examine whether distance education would be a viable strategy to compensate for declining state appropriations at four-year public higher education institutions in…

Teacher Educators: Addressing the Needs of All Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cook, Ellen

2017-01-01

This qualitative dissertation examines how teacher preparation programs take up policy messages from two state agencies. These questions guided the study: (1) What are the messages about RTI and MTSS from the California Department of Education [CDE] and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing [CCTC]; and (2) How are RtI and MTSS taken…

No One Rises to Low Expectations: Citizenship Education in an "Urban" Charter School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hinton, Harvey, III.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines how middle level teachers at HOPE Academy, an urban charter school with a majority African American student population, understand citizenship education and what it means to teach African American students to be good citizens. Specifically, the study: (a) investigated how teachers' personal histories and pedagogical…

Political Emotions: Toward a Fresh Perspective on Collective Emotion in Composition Work

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilfus, Jonna Ingrid

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines theories of emotion in politically contentious discourse in order to better understand the implications for teachers and students in composition classrooms where critical pedagogical practices lead to contentious political work. I suggest that partly as a result of the social and political turn in composition studies,…

Examination of Achievement Gaps among Fourth Grade Students in a Selected Louisiana School District

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LeJeune, Kevin Scott

2010-01-01

A major concern for educators is that student achievement is disproportionate and not increasing for all groups at the same rate. This applied dissertation addressed the problem of unequal achievement for African American, economically disadvantaged, and academically at-risk students. This quantitative study utilized a correlational design to…

Economics of Corruption in Doctoral Education: The Dissertations Market

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Osipian, Ararat L.

2012-01-01

This paper addresses the issue of "dissertations for sale" in Russia. The tasks of this anthropological study include establishing the problem of corruption in doctoral education, identification of the dissertations suppliers, study of the specific services they offer, analysis of their prices on different services, and generalizations…

Beliefs and Uses of Tagging among Undergraduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kramer-Duffield, Jacob

2010-01-01

Context: This dissertation examines beliefs and uses regarding tagging among current undergraduate students, and examines the ecology of communications practice and implications for formation and maintenance of identity within the population. Currently enrolled undergraduate students at UNC-Chapel Hill formed the population for examination. …

Evaluability Assessment Thesis and Dissertation Studies in Graduate Professional Degree Programs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walser, Tamara M.; Trevisan, Michael S.

2016-01-01

Evaluability assessment (EA) has potential as a design option for thesis and dissertation studies, serving as a practical training experience for both technical and nontechnical evaluation skills. Based on a content review of a sample of EA theses and dissertations from graduate professional degree programs, the authors of this article found that…

The Community College Baccalaureate Movement: Cutting-Edge Dissertation Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hrabak, Michael R.

2009-01-01

In this review of dissertations, the researcher presents summaries of 10 of the most recent and cutting-edge dissertations focusing on the ever-growing and complex field of the community college baccalaureate movement. These studies focus on the gamut of specific legislation, case studies of particular programs and schools, financing of such…

The Role of Conceptions of Value in Data Practices: A Multi-Case Study of Three Small Teams of Ecological Scientists

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Akmon, Dharma R.

2014-01-01

This dissertation examines the role of conceptions of data's value in data practices. Based on a study of three small teams of scientists carrying out ecological research at a biological station, my study addresses the following main question: How do scientists conceive of the value of their data, and how do scientists enact conceptions of value…

The Effectiveness of Multiple Intelligence Applications on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis=Çoklu Zekâ Ögretim Uygulamalarinin Akademik Basari Üzerindeki Etkisi: Bir Meta-Analiz Çalismasi

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yurt, Eyüp; Polat, Seyat

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of multiple intelligence applications on academic achievement in Turkey. Accordingly, findings of independent research studies aimed to find out effectiveness of multiple intelligence applications are gathered in a meta-analysis. Total of 71 studies, 66 dissertations and 7 articles were…

The Student Experience of Distance Education: Reviews of Two Qualitative Theses Designed to Explore the Day-to-Day Experience of Learners Studying Online

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kinash, Shelley; Crichton, Susan

2003-01-01

There is an emerging body of published research inquiring into distance education, yet the student experience is under-­represented. Berge and Mrozowski (2001) examined ten years (1990­-99) of dissertations and journal articles from four distance education journals. They reported that of 1,419 publications, 890 depicted research studies. They…

The Effects of Flipping the Classroom on Specific Aspects of Critical Thinking in a Christian College: A Quasi-Experimental, Mixed-Methods Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hantla, Bryce F.

2014-01-01

This quasi-experimental, mixed methods study analyzes the effects of the flipped classroom on the variables of a critical thinking rubric used by a Christian liberal arts college and compares these results with those of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). Second, this dissertation examines the effects of the flipped classroom on…

Try to Be a Hero: Community Service Learning as a Pedagogy for Moral-Political Education and Leadership Development in the Chinese University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Waite, Paul Daniel

2009-01-01

Based on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, including more than 65 in-depth interviews with Chinese university students and higher education administrators, this study examines the roots of an emerging community service learning movement in mainland China. The dissertation focuses on a case study of a pioneering Chinese Party State-sponsored…

Master Principals' Perceptions of the Impact of the Arkansas Leadership Academy's Master Principal Program on Leadership Practices, School Cultures and Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peer, Diana

2012-01-01

A qualitative dissertation study was conducted to examine the impact of the Arkansas Leadership Academy's Master Principal Program through the perspective of those who have completed the entire program and attained designation as a Master Principal. A logic model for the Master Principal Program offered a context for the study. A review of…

Classroom Discourse and Reading Comprehension in Bilingual Settings: A Case Study of Collaborative Reasoning in a Chinese Heritage Language Learners' Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsai, Hsiao-Feng

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the participation of one Chinese teacher and five 13 to 15 year-old Chinese heritage students in a classroom in a Chinese community school during group discussions about narrative texts. In this study, the teacher used Collaborative Reasoning (CR) (Anderson, et al., 2001) to help the Chinese heritage students extend…

Content Area Reading Instruction for Secondary Teacher Candidates: A Case Study of a State-Required Online Content Area Reading Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biggs, Brad

2014-01-01

This dissertation examined in a state-required, online preservice teacher course in content area reading instruction (CARI) at a large land-grant university in Minnesota. Few studies have been published to date on revitalized literacy teacher preparation efforts in CARI (See Vagle, Dillon, Davison-Jenkins, & LaDuca, 2005; Dillon, O'Brien,…

Examining Attitudes, Enjoyment, Flow, and Physical Activity Levels in Pre-Service Teachers Utilizing the BLISS Model Compared to Traditional Dance Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, Christa Ann

2013-01-01

This dissertation describes two studies, based on data collection within a pre-existing collegiate course for pre-service teachers in a children's dance setting at a northwest public university. The overall purpose of these experimental studies was to compare traditional movement/dance with the influence of a relevance-based instructional model,…

Literacy, Education, and Inequality: Assimilation and Resistance Narratives from Families Residing at a Homeless Shelter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jacobs, Mary M.

2014-01-01

In this article, I draw on data from my qualitative dissertation study of the literacy practices of five families who resided in a homeless shelter to complicate the relationship between literacy, education, and inequality. Homelessness is examined through the lens of sponsorship to understand the differential access the families have to powerful…

A Study of Novice Instructors' Questioning Techniques and Classroom Discourse Surrounding Those Questions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roach, Kitty Lane

2015-01-01

The goals of this dissertation were to examine how novice calculus teachers used questions in their classrooms, how those questions and their use might change after video case-based course coordination, and what evidence of influence on student learning might be seen in undergraduate student achievement. This research focused on one way to elicit…

Differences in Teacher and Student Characteristics by Accountability Ratings: A Texas Statewide Multiyear Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moreno, Samson Alexander

2017-01-01

Purpose: Four purposes were present in this journal-ready dissertation. The first purpose was to examine the degree to which the percentage of beginning teachers in traditionally configured elementary, middle, and secondary Texas schools differed as a function of two distinction designations (i.e., Academic Achievement in Reading/English Language…

Controversies over the Pledge of Allegiance in Public Schools: Case Studies Involving State Law, 9/11, and the Culture Wars

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Montgomery, Jennifer J.

2015-01-01

This dissertation examines state-level efforts to mandate the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, especially following 9/11. Despite longstanding Supreme Court precedent declaring mandatory flag salutes unconstitutional, various state legislatures sought to institute or strengthen pledge mandates irrespective of students' civil liberties.…

Effects of an Informal Energy Exhibit on Knowledge and Attitudes of Fourth- and Fifth-Grade Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodman, David Wayne

2009-01-01

This dissertation addresses the growing need for renewable energy education by looking at the design, development, and implementation of an informal energy education exhibit that was developed for placement into a regional science museum, school, and community center. This study examined several research questions related to the concept that an…

An Investigation of the Use of Synchronous Text-Based Communication Technologies by Undergraduate University Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Austin, Richard John

2012-01-01

This dissertation presents the results of an exploratory study which examined the use of synchronous text-based communication technologies (SMS texting and instant messaging) by undergraduate university students generally 18 to 24 years old. Preliminary focus groups were conducted in order to gain additional understanding of their usage of these…

Thinking Locally about Global Human Rights: A Case Study of a Turkish University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mandry, Antonia Dorothea

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines diverse pedagogic approaches to teaching human rights and citizenship at the university level and how a particular academic community perceives of and engages with human rights and citizenship discourse. Based on fieldwork conducted at Sabanci University in Turkey, I explore how students and educators draw on, modify and…

Agency, Socio-Cultural Context, and the Role of the Technical Communicator during IT Adoption: A Case Study in Innovation Diffusion across Cultures

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coggio, Grace Leinbach

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the diffusion of an innovative information technology system across multiple cultures between 2000 and 2006. Developed and implemented by technical communicators in the technical communication department of a global medical device company, the Advanced Single-Source Authoring and Publication System (ASAPS) brought…

An Empirical Study of the Process of Crafting and Using Definitions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Little, Angela Jean

2013-01-01

In this dissertation I analyze the process of crafting definitions whose purpose is classification. The context I examine is undergraduate upper-division physical science majors defining and naming sub-categories of a physical phenomenon in the context of a design task over an extended period of time. The goal of the design task is one of…

Parameterizing Phrase Based Statistical Machine Translation Models: An Analytic Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cer, Daniel

2011-01-01

The goal of this dissertation is to determine the best way to train a statistical machine translation system. I first develop a state-of-the-art machine translation system called Phrasal and then use it to examine a wide variety of potential learning algorithms and optimization criteria and arrive at two very surprising results. First, despite the…

Patient Handoffs between Emergency Department and Inpatient Physicians: A Qualitative Study to Inform Standardization of Practice and Organization Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hilligoss, Phillip Brian

2011-01-01

This dissertation is motivated by two problems. First, existing literature characterizes patient handoff as an information transfer activity in which safety and quality are compromised by practice variation. This has prompted a movement to standardize practice. However, existing research has not closely examined how practice variations may be…

A Narrative Inquiry of Chinese Immigrant Students' Educational Experiences in the United States: Language, Culture, and Identity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deng, Yuwen

2017-01-01

In this dissertation research, I examined the overall educational experiences of Chinese immigrant students, particularly their educational experiences in the United States. Using narrative inquiry methodology in my study, I portrayed the stories of six Chinese immigrant students, including four undergraduates and two graduates in a Midwestern…

A Delphi Study: Identifying Strategies That Promote Student Self-Efficacy in the Middle Level Mathematics Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kieschnick, Lauren E.

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the strategies that promote mathematical self-efficacy in the middle level mathematics classroom. The need for more self-efficacious students to pursue mathematics is prevalent in the United States due to the need of workers in the STEM fields. Finding strategies to promote mathematical self-efficacy will provide…

Comparing the Leadership Styles of Two Heads of Department at Carnelian School: Comparative Case Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parascandalo, Marthese

2014-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation was to compare and contrast the Leadership Styles of two Heads of Department who work at Carnelian Secondary School (anonymized). It augments a previous paper (Parascandalo 2011) which examined the role of the middle leader in secondary schools in educational literature. The investigation by means of two…

The Influence of Social Networking Sites on High School Students' Social and Academic Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahn, June

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the effects of social network sites on youth social and academic development. First, I provide a critical analysis of the extant research literature surrounding social network sites and youth. I merge scholarly thought in the areas of Internet studies, digital divides, social capital theory, psychological well-being,…

Giving Voice to Student and Alumnae Opposition during the Transition to Coeducation by a College for Women

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clarke, Rebecca Jean Grandstaff

2011-01-01

This dissertation provides insight into students' and alumnae's experiences during the transition and legal proceedings as their former college for women transitioned to coeducation. Previous research on the transition of single-sex colleges to coeducation has primarily examined the process from an organizational perspective. This study focuses on…

Designing Mobile Learning Environments to Support Teacher-Led Field Trips within Informal Learning Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hawkins, Donald S.

2016-01-01

Mobile devices have become increasingly more visible within classrooms and informal learning spaces. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the impact of mobile learning (m-learning) tools to support student learning during teacher-led field trips. Specifically, the research questions for this study are: (a) What conditions affect student…

Strategies Used to Teach Mathematics to Special Education Students from the Teachers' Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Desline A.

2016-01-01

The perspectives of special education teachers on the strategies used to teach mathematics to special education students were examined in this dissertation. Three central research questions that guided the study are: (a) What were New York special education teachers' opinions about the methods they use to teach mathematics to special education…

Acquisition of Structure and Interpretation: Cases from Mandarin Bare and Non-Bare Noun Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Hsiang-Hua

2011-01-01

Children's production of bare nominals is universal. When acquiring languages disallowing bare nominals, children will develop from the bare to the non-bare stage. However, Mandarin nominals may appear bare or non-bare in various positions with all kinds of interpretations. This dissertation conducts two acquisition studies to examine the…

Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Perception: L2 and L3 Perception of Japanese Contrasts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Onishi, Hiromi

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the possible influence of language learners' second language (L2) on their perception of phonological contrasts in their third language (L3). Previous studies on Third Language Acquisition (TLA) suggest various factors as possible sources of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of an L3. This dissertation…

Facebook, Political Narrative, and Political Change: A Case Study of Palestinian Youth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kenderes, Amanda M.

2012-01-01

In this dissertation I aim to advance political narrative theory by exploring the use of political narrative on Facebook and the possibility for Facebook to be used among Palestinian youth for political change. To examine the concepts of political narrative and political change, I developed a model for political change based on the changing…

The Experiences of Licensed Mental Health Professionals Who Have Encountered and Navigated through Compassion Fatigue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jorgensen, Louise B.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation study was to increase understanding of licensed mental health professionals' experiences as they have encountered and navigated through compassion fatigue (CF). CF is a complex construct with an attendant constellation of secondary stress responses. In order to examine the complex and varying factors…

Talking to Learn: A Mixed-Methods Study of a Professional Development Program for Teachers of English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shea, Lauren M.

2012-01-01

Most teachers of English language learners (ELLs) have had virtually no specialized, in-service training in adapting instruction for their students. Prior research fails to investigate the impact of professional development (PD) specifically designed for teachers of ELLs. This dissertation examines a PD program that attempted to prepare teachers…

Redefining Technological Literacy in the Workplace: A Qualitative Study of Social Affordances in Workplace Email

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bacci, Tina Marie

2011-01-01

This dissertation examines the social affordances of workplace email use. Through group and individual interviews of six knowledge workers in a distributed real estate firm, it explores the extent workplace writers recognize and rely on extra-textual devices (i.e., copy, blind-copy, and forward devices) and email applications (i.e., email…

Essays on the Effect of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on the Management of Healthcare Supply Chain Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cakici, Ozden Engin

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines three issues on the effect of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on the management of healthcare supply chain performance within the context of inventory management. Motivated by a case study conducted in a radiology practice, the second chapter analyzes the incremental benefits of RFID over barcodes for managing…

Teaching and Learning Critical Reading with Transnational Texts at a Mexican University: An Emergentist Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perales Escudero, Moises Damian

2011-01-01

This dissertation project examines the implementation of a critical reading intervention in a Mexican university, and the emergence of target critical reading processes in Mexican college-level EFL readers. It uses a Complexity Theory-inspired, qualitative methodology. Orienting the selection and design of materials is a deep view of culture that…

Graphics in Children's Informational Texts: A Content Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fingeret, Lauren

2012-01-01

This dissertation is comprised of two manuscripts resulting from a single study, which examines a) the types of graphics that appear, and in what frequencies, in children's informational texts, and b) the defining features of different graphics. Graphics are ubiquitous in children's informational texts and a lot is known about the impact…

A Study and Model of Machine-Like Indexing Behavior by Human Indexers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McAllister, Caryl

Although a large part of a document retrieval system's resources are devoted to indexing, the question of how people do subject indexing has been the subject of much conjecture and only a little experimentation. This dissertation examines the relationships between a document being indexed and the index terms assigned to that document in an attempt…

An Analysis of the Selection and Distribution of Knowledge in Massachusetts Music Teacher Preparation Programs: The Song Remains the Same

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borek, Matthew

2012-01-01

Music teachers occupy a conflicted and contested position in many secondary schools, and music teacher education programs have been given the task of preparing students to enter this challenging environment. This qualitative dissertation study examined the explicit, implicit, and null curricula of music teacher preparation programs in…

What Does Research Tell Us about Trends in Dissertations on PBL?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Erdogan, Tolga

2017-01-01

The aim of this study is to investigate the research trends in dissertations on PBL from 2002 to 2015 in Turkey. For this purpose, the master's and doctorate dissertations in the National Thesis Database of Council of Higher Education (CoHE) were selected for rigorous content analysis. The analysis was utilized to classify the type of study, the…

Contributions to the Characterization and Mitigation of Rotorcraft Brownout

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tritschler, John Kirwin

Rotorcraft brownout, the condition in which the flow field of a rotorcraft mobilizes sediment from the ground to generate a cloud that obscures the pilot's field of view, continues to be a significant hazard to civil and military rotorcraft operations. This dissertation presents methodologies for: (i) the systematic mitigation of rotorcraft brownout through operational and design strategies and (ii) the quantitative characterization of the visual degradation caused by a brownout cloud. In Part I of the dissertation, brownout mitigation strategies are developed through simulation-based brownout studies that are mathematically formulated within a numerical optimization framework. Two optimization studies are presented. The first study involves the determination of approach-to-landing maneuvers that result in reduced brownout severity. The second study presents a potential methodology for the design of helicopter rotors with improved brownout characteristics. The results of both studies indicate that the fundamental mechanisms underlying brownout mitigation are aerodynamic in nature, and the evolution of a ground vortex ahead of the rotor disk is seen to be a key element in the development of a brownout cloud. In Part II of the dissertation, brownout cloud characterizations are based upon the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), a metric commonly used in the optics community for the characterization of imaging systems. The use of the MTF in experimentation is examined first, and the application of MTF calculation and interpretation methods to actual flight test data is described. The potential for predicting the MTF from numerical simulations is examined second, and an initial methodology is presented for the prediction of the MTF of a brownout cloud. Results from the experimental and analytical studies rigorously quantify the intuitively-known facts that the visual degradation caused by brownout is a space and time-dependent phenomenon, and that high spatial frequency features, i.e., fine-grained detail, are obscured before low spatial frequency features, i.e., large objects. As such, the MTF is a metric that is amenable to Handling Qualities (HQ) analyses.

Incorporating voltage security into the planning, operation and monitoring of restructured electric energy markets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nair, Nirmal-Kumar

As open access market principles are applied to power systems, significant changes are happening in their planning, operation and control. In the emerging marketplace, systems are operating under higher loading conditions as markets focus greater attention to operating costs than stability and security margins. Since operating stability is a basic requirement for any power system, there is need for newer tools to ensure stability and security margins being strictly enforced in the competitive marketplace. This dissertation investigates issues associated with incorporating voltage security into the unbundled operating environment of electricity markets. It includes addressing voltage security in the monitoring, operational and planning horizons of restructured power system. This dissertation presents a new decomposition procedure to estimate voltage security usage by transactions. The procedure follows physical law and uses an index that can be monitored knowing the state of the system. The expression derived is based on composite market coordination models that have both PoolCo and OpCo transactions, in a shared stressed transmission grid. Our procedure is able to equitably distinguish the impacts of individual transactions on voltage stability, at load buses, in a simple and fast manner. This dissertation formulates a new voltage stability constrained optimal power flow (VSCOPF) using a simple voltage security index. In modern planning, composite power system reliability analysis that encompasses both adequacy and security issues is being developed. We have illustrated the applicability of our VSCOPF into composite reliability analysis. This dissertation also delves into the various applications of voltage security index. Increasingly, FACT devices are being used in restructured markets to mitigate a variety of operational problems. Their control effects on voltage security would be demonstrated using our VSCOPF procedure. Further, this dissertation investigates the application of steady state voltage stability index to detect potential dynamic voltage collapse. Finally, this dissertation examines developments in representation, standardization, communication and exchange of power system data. Power system data is the key input to all analytical engines for system operation, monitoring and control. Data exchange and dissemination could impact voltage security evaluation and therefore needs to be critically examined.

A Case Study of Four Latina/o Pre-Service Teachers in Learning to Teach Mathematics for Understanding and Integrate a Child's Out-of-School Mathematical Knowledge and Experiences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalinec-Craig, Crystal

2012-01-01

This dissertation study examines the experiences of four Latina/o pre-service teachers (PSTs) as they learn about teaching mathematics for understanding (TM4U) and integrating a child's out-of-school mathematical knowledge and experiences during instruction. Studying the knowledge and experiences of Latina/o PSTs is necessary because PSTs…

Clear-air radar observations of the atmospheric boundary layer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ince, Turker

2001-10-01

This dissertation presents the design and operation of a high-resolution frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FM- CW) radar system to study the structure and dynamics of clear-air turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). This sensitive radar can image the vertical structure of the ABL with both high spatial and temporal resolutions, and provide both qualitative information about the morphology of clear-air structures and quantitative information on the intensity of fluctuations in refractive-index of air. The principles of operation and the hardware and data acquisition characteristics of the radar are described in the dissertation. In October 1999, the radar participated in the Cooperative Atmosphere-Surface Exchange Study (CASES'99) Experiment to characterize the temporal structure and evolution of the boundary-layer features in both convective and stable conditions. The observed structures include clear-air convection, boundary layer evolution, gravity waves, Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, stably stratified layers, and clear-air turbulence. Many of the S-band radar images also show high- reflectivity returns from Rayleigh scatterers such as insects. An adaptive median filtering technique based on local statistics has, therefore, been developed to discriminate between Bragg and Rayleigh scattering in clear-air radar observations. The filter is tested on radar observations of clear air convection with comparison to two commonly used image processing techniques. The dissertation also examines the statistical mean of the radar-measured C2n for clear-air convection, and compares it with the theoretical predictions. The study also shows that the inversion height, local thickness of the inversion layer, and the height of the elevated atmospheric layers can be estimated from the radar reflectivity measurements. In addition, comparisons to the radiosonde-based height estimates are made. To examine the temporal and spatial structure of C2n , the dissertation presents two case studies with the measurements of remote (the FM-CW radar and Doppler lidar) and in-situ (research aircraft, kite, and radiosonde) sensors from the stable nighttime boundary layer. It also presents a unique observation of evolution of the convective and nocturnal boundary layers by the S-band radar, and provides description of the observed boundary layer characteristics with the aid of in-situ measurements by the 55m instrumented tower and radiosonde.

The Effects of Synchronous Text-Based Computer-Mediated Communication Tasks on the Development of L2 and Academic Literacy: A Mixed Methods Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Jinrong

2012-01-01

The dissertation examines how synchronous text-based computer-mediated communication (SCMC) tasks may affect English as a Second Language (ESL) learners' development of second language (L2) and academic literacy. The study is motivated by two issues concerning the use of SCMC tasks in L2 writing classes. First, although some of the alleged…

[Brazilian studies on nephrology produced in nursing thesis and dissertations].

PubMed

de Carvalho, Glória Maria Custódio; Lima, Francisca Elisângela Teixeira; Barbosa, Islene Victor; Melo, Elisabeth Mesquita

2010-01-01

The purpose was to evaluate the scientific production in Brazilian nursing about nephrology in theses and dissertations published from 2001 to 2007. A bibliometric study was carried out with the nursing thesis and dissertations according to the Center of Studies and Researches in Nursing catalog. It was found 50 works on nephrology, predominating: 45 (90%) dissertations; 30 (60%) in the state of São Paulo; 18 (36%) in clinics of dialysis; 39 (78%) samples were patients. Considering the types of study, it predominated: 26 (52%) exploratory, 28 (56%) survey and 27 (54%) quantitative. Concerning the theme, hemodialysis predominated with 21 (42%) publications. Scientific researches on this theme make possible a multi and interdisciplinary assistance to these clients, in an individualized, systematized and humanized way.

John Archibald Wheeler: A study of mentoring in modern physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Christensen, Terry M.

This dissertation has two objectives. The first objective is to determine where best to situate the study of mentoring (i.e. the 'making of scientists') on the landscape of the history of science and science studies. This task is accomplished by establishing mentoring studies as a link between the robust body of literature dealing with Research Schools and the emerging scholarship surrounding the development, dispersion, and evolution of pedagogy in the training of twentieth century physicists. The second, and perhaps more significant and novel objective, is to develop a means to quantitatively assess the mentoring workmanship of scientific craftsmen who preside over the final stages of preparation when apprentices are transformed into professional scientists. The project builds upon a 2006 Master's Thesis that examined John Archibald Wheeler's work as a mentor of theoretical physicists at Princeton University in the years 1938--1976. It includes Wheeler's work as a mentor at the University of Texas and is qualitatively and quantitatively enhanced by virtue of the author having access to five separate collections with archival holdings of John Wheeler's papers and correspondence, as well as having access to thirty one tape recorded interviews that feature John Wheeler as either the interviewee or a prominent subject of discussion. The project also benefited from the opportunity to meet with and gather background information from a number of John Wheeler's former colleagues and students. Included in the dissertation is a content analysis of the acknowledgements in 949 Ph.D. dissertations, 122 Master's Theses, and 670 Senior Theses that were submitted during Wheeler's career as an active mentor. By establishing a census of the students of the most active mentors at Princeton and Texas, it is possible to tabulate the publication record of these apprentice groups and obtain objective measures of mentoring efficacy. The dissertation concludes by discussing the wider applicability of the quantitative methodology and the qualitative analysis for the history of science and science studies.

Public Safety Networks--Examining Mimetic, Complexity, and Legacy Effects on Interorganizational Collaborations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dias, Martin A.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine information systems-enabled interorganizational collaborations called public safety networks--their proliferation, information systems architecture, and technology evolution. These networks face immense pressures from member organizations, external stakeholders, and environmental contingencies. This…

Preservice elementary teachers learning of astronomy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fidler, Chuck Gary

The dissertation presents a new approach for the study of preservice elementary teacher astronomy education. The approach suggests that learning astronomical concepts are facilitated by greater sophistication in scale perception and spatial-aptitude. This dissertation is underscored by the national call for elementary science education reform efforts and suggests certain strategies shown more effective for the development of accurate astronomical comprehension. The present research study describes how preservice elementary teachers conceptualize and communicate ideas about Space. Instead of assuming a universal mental conception of cosmic orientations and relationships, the dissertation claims that the perception of Space related dimensions vary among preservice elementary teachers. Furthermore, the dissertation suggests individual perceptions of the scale sizes and orientations of celestial systems have direct influences on mental models used to organize and communicate astronomical information. The development of inaccurate mental models of the scaled dimensions of Space may perpetuate the teacher-student cycle of misconception and naive-theory generation among children in elementary education settings. The ability to conceptualize the vast cosmos is facilitated by the minds ability to think about vast scales and orientations of celestial objects. The Earth-based perspective of astronomy education compels the learner to think about astronomical principles within imaginary frames of reference and across unfamiliar scaled dimensions. Therefore, mental astronomical model building is underscored by the perception of scale and cosmic spatiality. This study suggests these cognitive skill sets are interconnected and facilitate the learning of accurate astronomy principles; as well as play an important role when designing an astronomy education program for preservice elementary teachers. This research study is comprised of three separate standalone articles designed and formatted for journal submission. Chapter 1 outlines the intent, rationale, and design of the overall dissertation process and format. Chapter 2 describes an in-depth review of the specific astronomy curricula used for comparison by subsequent chapters and is not intended as a standalone article, but rather as an informative outline of events and activities to help the reader understand the differences of instruction between the two sections of sample populations. Chapter 3 uses qualitative interviews to explore the cosmic dimensions associated with learning of astronomy and finds diverse perceptions of astronomical scales may influence preservice teachers' mental organization of astronomical information. Chapter 4 further analyzes cosmic dimensions using quantitative analyses and specifically examines preservice teachers perceptions of scale and spatiality within the context of astronomy education. Findings from Chapter 4 show that perceptions of scale and spatiality are an interconnected set of learning skills which may greatly enhance the learning of astronomy. Chapter 5 describes how concepts of scale and spatiality may be operationalized within a secondary school science classroom in order to better understand the scaled distances of stars though an inquiry-based three-dimensional modeling activity. Chapter 6 briefly concludes the dissertation work. Due to the nature of this dissertation design, the conclusions chapter is quite succinct as previous chapters are designed with conclusions sections embedded within the body of the text as outlined by specific journal submission guidelines. These dissertation ideas are presented in a formal setting so that the various research undertakings can be studied and analyzed. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of research data are present to support the claims made in this study. The results of this research combine with features of previous research in order to advance our understanding of how preservice elementary teachers think about and learn astronomy.

A Study of Primary Teachers Participating in Professional Learning Communities with a Focus on Brain Compatible Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bachman, Karen S.

2012-01-01

This dissertation is the result of research which examined the implementation of professional learning communities in a primary school. Professional learning communities or PLCs are groups of educators coming together collaboratively in a process of inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. While there were…

A Delphi Study to Examine the Quality Measurement Standards by Online Instructors Using the Quality Matters™ Rubric as a Basis for Creating Instructional Materials

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robinson, Daniel J.

2017-01-01

Quality measurement tools such as the Rubric for Online Instruction (ROI) and Quality Matters (QM) have developed guidelines by providing research based educational criteria for planning, creating, and implementing quality online education courses. This dissertation reviews QM program standards and identifies the primary characteristics of…

Learning and Relevance in Information Retrieval: A Study in the Application of Exploration and User Knowledge to Enhance Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hyman, Harvey

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the impact of exploration and learning upon eDiscovery information retrieval; it is written in three parts. Part I contains foundational concepts and background on the topics of information retrieval and eDiscovery. This part informs the reader about the research frameworks, methodologies, data collection, and…

Racial Discourse in Predominantly White Classrooms: A Phenomenological Study of Teachers' Lived Experiences Discussing Race

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee-Nichols, Mary Elizabeth

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the lived experiences of white middle school teachers in predominantly white rural communities as they discuss race and race issues with students. Using methods of descriptive phenomenology, interviews were conducted with teachers to explore what it was like for them to talk about race in classrooms comprised of only…

"As a Gay Man, I": How One Literacy Worker's Coming out Changed a Campus Community

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Justice, Clifton R.

2012-01-01

This dissertation investigates how a gay literacy worker's coming out helped change the campus discourse surrounding sexuality. Through an ethnographic examination of this English instructor and the community college where he taught composition and literature for nearly thirty years, the study illustrates a rhetorical situation where a gap in…

Second Language Acquisition of Reflexive Verbs in Russian by L1 Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alexieva, Petia Dimitrova

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the process of acquisition of semantic classes of reflexive verbs (RVs) in Russian by L2 learners with a native language English. The purpose of this study is to bridge the gap between current linguistic knowledge and the pedagogical literature existing in English on reflexives in Russian. RVs are taught partially and…

Working Memory-Learning Condition Interactions Proficiency in L2 Russian under Naturalistic and Formal Learning Conditions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Canner, Marc T.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the relationships between working memory (WM) and three commonly used learning strategies or conditions in the nature of proficiency among adult L2 Russian learners. Based on the aptitude-learning condition interaction framework articulated by Robinson (2002b), the study identifies two types of…

Stative and Stativizing Constructions in Arabic News Reports: A Corpus-Based Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mansouri, Aous

2016-01-01

This dissertation uses a corpus of tokens retrieved from broadcast news stories and print news articles to examine the array of constructions used to encode stative predications in Modern Standard Arabic. A state is defined as a situation that includes its reference time, whether that time is encoding time or another time of orientation. A range…

In Pursuit of the American Degree: Internationalization, National Security, and the Making of South Asian Foreign Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas, Susan

2013-01-01

My dissertation examines how global neoliberal forces intersect with racialized state security practices to shape the transnational subjectivities of South Asian overseas students studying in the U.S. in the post-9/11 moment. These students' movement across national borders to pursue higher education in the United States positions them as ideal…

Giving My Heart a Voice: Reflection on Self and Others through the Looking Glass of Pedagogy--An Autoethnography

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neyman, Vera L.

2011-01-01

To improve students academic outcomes this auto-ethnographic dissertation examines my teaching practice in the Ukraine and in the United States, and the similarities and differences between the two educational systems. This study, designed in the form of auto-ethnographic vignettes, explores the effect of my personal and professional metamorphosis…

Repertoire, Authenticity, and Instruction: The Presentation of American Indian Music in Oklahoma's Elementary Schools. Native Americans: Interdisciplinary Perspectives--A Garland Series.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Damm, Robert J.

This book examines the presentation of American Indian music by elementary music educators in Oklahoma, which has the largest American Indian population of any state. A literature review covers an historical profile of multicultural music education, ethnomusicological studies of American Indian music, dissertations pertaining to American Indian…

Gesture in Multiparty Interaction: A Study of Embodied Discourse in Spoken English and American Sign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shaw, Emily P.

2013-01-01

This dissertation is an examination of gesture in two game nights: one in spoken English between four hearing friends and another in American Sign Language between four Deaf friends. Analyses of gesture have shown there exists a complex integration of manual gestures with speech. Analyses of sign language have implicated the body as a medium…

The Role of IT Assets in Organizational Accumulation and Appropriation of Social Capital for Business Risk Mitigation and Inter-Organizational Innovation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simha, Anand N.

2013-01-01

This dissertation comprises of three essays examining the interplay of information technology with various social processes that typically inhabit the organizational space. The first essay presents the concept of a Relationship Memory System (RMS). This study uses grounded theory methodology and interview data collected at a global…

Essays on the Impact of Social Media: Evidence from the Music Industry and the Stock Market

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Hailiang

2012-01-01

As both individuals and businesses are starting to embrace social media, understanding the power and influence of social media becomes an important question. This dissertation aims to address this issue and study the impact of social media in different contexts. It consists of two essays. The first essay examines the effectiveness of social media…

Analyzing Mathematics High School State Examinations in Albania in the 1970S and 2006-2015: Two Decades, Two Historical Periods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gjoci, Bukurie

2017-01-01

This dissertation is devoted to the history of the Albanian system of education in general, its mathematics education program in particular, and, specifically, the Albanian high school mathematics assessment. Historical in terms of its research methodology, and mathematical-pedagogical in terms of the objects of the study, this research explores…

The University of South Carolina School of Social Work, 1934-1954

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Townsend, Elaine

2009-01-01

This dissertation examines the School of Social Work at the University of South Carolina from 1934-1954. This first attempt at establishing a school of social work failed after twenty years of inconsistent performance. The primary concern of the study is to uncover and describe the events that led to the closing of the school. To that end, the…

Organizational Information-Seeking in the Digital Era: A Model of New Media Use, Uncertainty Reduction, Identification and Culture

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ju, Ran

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the role of new media in individuals' organizational socialization process across cultures. First, this study has explored individuals' use of new media in their organizational socialization process in two countries, China and the United States, to gain a general understanding of the usage patterns. Second, this study…

Changing People, Consistent Experiences: 20 Years of Change and Stability at Grand Canyon National Park 1984-2004

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Backlund, Erik A.

2009-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine long term changes in the overnight backcountry hiker population at Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) between 1984 and 2004. Longitudinal studies of visitor behavior in wildland recreation settings have been relatively rare but offer great potential for the improvement of management, clarification of…

Multiple Motives, Conflicting Conceptions: Parsing the Contexts of Differentiated Access to Scientific Information in the Federal Government

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oltmann, Shannon M.

2012-01-01

Scientific information, used by the U.S. federal government to formulate public policy in many arenas, is frequently contested and sometimes altered, blocked from publication, deleted from reports, or restricted in some way. This dissertation examines how and why restricted access to science policy (RASP) occurs through a comparative case study.…

Nurses' Perceptions of the Impact of Work Systems and Technology on Patient Safety during the Medication Administration Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gallagher Gordon, Mary

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines nurses' perceptions of the impacts of systems and technology utilized during the medication administration process on patient safety and the culture of medication error reporting. This exploratory research study was grounded in a model of patient safety based on Patricia Benner's Novice to Expert Skill Acquisition model,…

An Analysis of Discourse-Pragmatic and Grammatical Constraints on the Acquisition and Development of Referential Choice in Child English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hughes, Mary E.

2011-01-01

This dissertation investigates how discourse-pragmatics informs children's choice of referential forms. Three studies utilizing naturalistic data examine the role that six discourse-pragmatic features play in the acquisition of referential forms in a non-null subject language, English. The influence of child-directed speech on development is also…

Examining the Effects of Students' Classroom Expectations on Undergraduate Biology Course Reform

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hall, Kristi Lyn

2013-01-01

In this dissertation, I perform and compare three studies of introductory biology students' classroom expectations--what students expect to be the nature of the knowledge that they are learning, what they think they should be (or are) doing in order to learn, and what they think they should be (or are) doing in order to be successful. Previous…

Virtual Black Spaces: An Anthropological Exploration of African American Online Communities' Racial and Political Agency amid Virtual Universalism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heyward, Kamela S.

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the strategic practice of virtual racial embodiment, as a case study of African Americans attempting to complicate current constructions of race and social justice in new media. I suggest that dominant racial constructions online teeter between racial stereotypes and the absence of race. Virtual racial classification and…

The Unintended Consequences of the Adoption of Electronic Medical Record Systems on Healthcare Costs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ganju, Kartik K.

2016-01-01

In my dissertation, I study unintended consequences of the adoption of EMR systems. In my three essays, I examine how the adoption of EMR systems affects neighboring hospitals (spillover effects), can be used by hospitals to further its objectives in an unconventional manner ("upcoding" of patient case mix data), and how EMR adoption may…

Factors Regarding a Sense of Belonging on a University Campus: Affects on the Success of African American Male Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Addo-Yobo, Festus

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the relationship of African American male undergraduate students from the context of one academic institution in the southwest border region of the United States. It explores the aspect of a sense of belonging on this particular university campus. The multiple mixed simultaneous study was conducted through the…

Building Local Economic Development Capacity: A Case Study of Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bredfeldt, Erik A.

2009-01-01

This dissertation examines the role of the community college in building institutional capacity within the context of a community's local and regional economy and provides recommendations on the manner in which the role of the community college can be enhanced with respect to interaction with other urban and regional partners. It seeks to at least…

Animal-Assisted Literacy Instruction for Students with Identified Learning Disabilities: Examining the Effects of Incorporating a Therapy Dog into Guided Oral Reading Sessions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Treat, Wendy Abigail

2013-01-01

Literacy acquisition is imperative to successful academic progress and to successful participation in our society. Students with identified learning disabilities are often among those who struggle to acquire literacy skills. The following dissertation shares the results of a reading intervention study in which nine students with identified…

The Neural Basis of Competition in Auditory Word Recognition and Spoken Word Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Righi, Giulia

2010-01-01

The goal of this dissertation is to examine how brain regions respond to different types of competition during word comprehension and word production. I will present three studies that attempt to enhance the current understanding of which brain regions are sensitive to different aspects of competition and how the nature of the stimuli and the…

Cite Globally, Analyze Locally: Citation Analysis from a Local Latin American Studies Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schadl, Suzanne M.; Todeschini, Marina

2015-01-01

This citation analysis examines the use of Spanish- and Portuguese-language books and articles in PhD dissertations on Latin America at the University of New Mexico between 2000 and 2009. Two sets of data are presented: The first identifies the use of Spanish- and Portuguese-language books and articles across 17 academic departments; and the…

Preservice World Language Teachers' Reflection on Classroom Language Use: An Application of Video Study Groups Focused on Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hagedorn, Jan

2017-01-01

Within a framework of reflective practice, this dissertation examines the ways in which preservice K-12 world language teachers discuss classroom language use when reflecting with peers on videos of their teaching. Twelve preservice language teachers at a large public university in the United States participated in four meetings of video study…

The UK Postgraduate Masters Dissertation: An "Elusive Chameleon"?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pilcher, Nick

2011-01-01

Many studies into the process of producing and supervising dissertations exist, yet little research into the "product" of the Masters dissertation, or into how Masters supervision changes over time exist. Drawing on 62 semi-structured interviews with 31 Maths and Computer Science supervisors over a two-year period, this paper explores…

Development of advanced capitalism: a case study of retired coal miners in southern West Virginia

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Legeay, S.P.

1980-01-01

This dissertation develops a critical analysis of changes in American society during the last fifty years. It is focused in particular on the southern West Virginia coal fields, and examines the changes in class structure (specifically, coal miners), the labor process, the union, class consciousness, community and leisure. The study is grounded within a theoretical perspective that is dialectical. It is concerned with the interaction between specific social categories (such as the union) and the greater whole of capitalist development. It is centrally concerned with continuing a research orientation to which the Frankfurt School gave a powerful contribution: the developmentmore » of advanced capitalism in the modern epoch. The study utilizes life-history interviews with retired coal miners, almost all of whom had experience with the exploitive company towns of an earlier time. Thus, techniques for the study of oral history are instrumental in developing an analysis of social developments, inasmuch as they provide data appropriate for an analysis of the transformation from early to late capitalism. Finally, this dissertation examines a problem central to dialectical theory, that of the relation between theory and praxis, by approaching the life histories as exemplifications of collective (i.e., social) experience. It integrates the biographical experience of individual miners with the theoretical dimensions of political economy in early and late capitalism. The current crisis in the coal fields is examined, with a view to possible transformation.« less

Reading and Study Skills and Instruction: Secondary: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through June 1980 (Vol. 40 Nos. 7 through 12).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 15 titles deal with the following topics: (1) a hierarchy of purposes for reading assignments applied to secondary school social studies; (2) the effects of sentence combining practice on reading comprehension; (3) the effects of…

The Path to Graduation: A Model Interactive Web Site Design Supporting Doctoral Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simmons-Johnson, Nicole

2012-01-01

Objective. This 2-phase mixed method study assessed 2nd-year doctoral students' and dissertation students' perceptions of the current Graduate School of Education dissertation support Web site, with implications for designing a model dissertation support Web site. Methods. Phase 1 collected quantitative and qualitative data through an…

(Re)Reenvisioning the Dissertation in English Studies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olson, Gary A.; Drew, Julie

1998-01-01

Contends that the academy has forgotten the origin of the dissertation and has turned it from a substantive contribution of scholarship to an instrument of evaluation. Argues that continuing to treat the dissertation in this way maintains an unequal power hierarchy of "masters" and initiates--it should be seen as the first serious scholarly…

An Analysis of the New Jersey Public School District School Bond Referendum Process: A Historical Case Study of the Egg Harbor Township School District Bond Referendum of 2004-05

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Werner, Michael J.

2012-01-01

This dissertation presents a historical case study of the Egg Harbor Township School District bond referendum that passed with an exceptionally high 92 percent of votes in January 2005. The methodology used in this study resulted in both an examination of the components of the New Jersey Public School District bond referendum process as well as an…

Developing and Conducting a Dissertation Study through the Community-Based Participatory Research Approach.

PubMed

Nadimpalli, S B; Van Devanter, N; Kavathe, R; Islam, N

2016-06-01

The community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach has been shown to be innovative and effective in conducting research with communities experiencing health disparities. Doctoral nursing students, and other doctoral students in the health sciences, who are interested in this approach can benefit through structured CBPR training experiences in learning how to engage with communities, build community capacity, share resources, implement CBPR study plans, and disseminate results of CBPR-focused studies. The objectives of this case-study are to demonstrate ways in which one doctoral student aligned with academic mentors and a funded CBPR project to build a relationship with the Sikh Asian Indian (AI) community of New York City to develop and implement a CBPR-focused doctoral dissertation study. The purpose of the research was to examine the relationship between the experience of perceived discrimination and health outcomes in this community. CBPR methods utilized in developing the study entailed the author partaking in formal and informal CBPR learning experiences, building relationships with community and academic partners early on through volunteering, developing a research plan in collaboration with members of the community and academic partners, identifying an appropriate setting and methods for recruitment and data collection, increasing capacity and resources for all partners (the author, community, and academic), and presenting dissertation study findings to the community. In conclusion, CBPR-focused doctoral experiences are novel pedagogical and professional approaches for nursing and health science students which can lead to mutual benefits for all involved, and ultimately successful and effective community-based health research.

Differences in Persistence and Graduation Rates of Hispanic Students in Texas Community Colleges: A Texas Statewide Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stagg, Danielle R.

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to examine the 1-year persistence rates of Hispanic community college students in Texas for the 2007-2008 through the 2013-2014 academic years. Specifically, the relationship of the 1-year persistence rates for Hispanic students as a function of their institutional status (i.e., stayed or…

Interactions between and among Heritage Language Learners and Second Language Learners during Collaborative Writing Activities: How Learners Attend to Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walls, Laura

2013-01-01

This study investigates the dynamics in the Spanish classroom between heritage language learner (HLL) dyads, second language learner (L2L) dyads, and mixed HLL-L2L dyads. Specifically, it examines oral, written and embodied discourse that informs our understanding of how learners attend to language. Analysis for this dissertation examined…

What's the Use of Race? Investigating the Concept of Race in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnston, Marc Phillip

2013-01-01

What's the use of race and does race matter? These two questions serve as the foundation for this dissertation comprised of three studies examining: (1) how scholars "use" race in their research and how their decisions matter for the way race is interpreted; (2) how students make meaning of race (as a social construct) during a time…

Bringing the Community to Campus: An Oral History of Women's Week at Ball State University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jarrett, Courtney

2012-01-01

This dissertation examined the annual Women's Week events hosted by Ball State's Women's and Gender Studies Program. It served to paint a historical picture of how the local Muncie community has been linked with the academic community at Ball State through events about women's issues. The program began when a group of people wanting to broaden the…

Developing an Enterprise Systems Appropriation Model in the Public Sector: A Case Study of Implementing Payroll System Replacement (PAYSERV) at the New York State Office of the State Comptroller

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kamya, Moses M.

2009-01-01

This dissertation examines an enterprise system appropriation process applying structuration theory and adaptive structuration theory (AST). The key research questions are: (1) what structures emerge from the implementation of enterprise information technology (EIT); (2) how do enterprise technologies and existing organization structures influence…

Is Transfer Shock a Treatable Condition for Underrepresented in Medicine Students Transferring to a Predominantly White Institution, with a Goal of Medical School Admission?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dennis, Brady Allen

2017-01-01

This dissertation examined the experiences of underrepresented-in-medicine transfer students studying in a Division I, research university in the South that is considered to be a predominantly White institution (PWI). These underrepresented-in-medicine transfer students were admitted to State University (SU) with the intent of completing the…

Measuring Adult Learners' Foreign Language Anxiety, Motivational Factors, and Achievement Expectations: A Comparative Study between Chinese as a Second-Language Students and English as a Second-Language Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Li-Ching

2013-01-01

This dissertation focuses on interpreting the impacts of foreign language anxiety and individual characteristics on the achievement expectations of Chinese second-language learners and English second-language students at the university level. Four research questions are examined through quantitative design. In relation to methodology, this study…

The Influence of Standards on the College Fraternity Man: An Evaluative Study on the Impact of the 2004 Implementation of the North American Interfraternity Conference Standards for Member Organizations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Godwin, Kimberly A.

2011-01-01

This dissertation sought to examine the effects that the implementation of standard nine by the North American Interfraternity Conference had upon member behaviors with respect to academic achievement, alcohol consumption, career preparation, civic engagement, hazing, leadership development, sexual assault awareness/prevention, and values and…

Metaphor and Pedagogy in Early Buddhist Literature: An Edition and Study of Two Sutras from the Senior Collection of Gandhari Manuscripts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marino, Joseph

2017-01-01

This dissertation examines the role of metaphorical language in early Buddhist literature through the lens of two previously unpublished Gandhari sutras on a manuscript from the Robert Senior Collection. At the microscopic level, I offer an edition, translation, and textual analysis of a Buddhist manuscript containing two Sa?yuktagama-type sutras…

A Case Study Investigating the Use of Facebook as a Learning Management System in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gutschmidt, Adam M.

2012-01-01

This dissertation addresses the issue of using the social networking website, Facebook, for educational purposes by examining how it was used in an upper-level public relations course. Research on education suggests instructors should find ways for their students to take a more active approach in learning and can do so by having them engage in…

Correlates of Three Year Transfer Student Retention Rates with Race, Gender, Age, Credit Hours, and Place of Residence at a Regional Public University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mills, Michael Thomas

2011-01-01

This dissertation examined the relationship between the three year academic success of transfer students and the variables of race, gender, age, number of transfer credit hours, and place of residence. The study was conducted at Midwestern State University, a public, regional four-year institution and followed the incoming transfer classes of the…

Investigating Variation in Teaching with Technology-Rich Intervention: What Matters in Teaching and Teacher Training at Scale?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunn, Margaret Breslin

2009-01-01

A main question this dissertation addresses is: what variation in teaching and teacher training matter? This question is examined within a specific but important context: the scale-up of a technology-rich intervention focused on the algebra strand of 8th grade mathematics. I conducted a multi-level case study by gathering and analyzing data at…

Differences in Persistence and Graduation Rates of Black Students in Texas Community Colleges: A Multiyear, Statewide Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moss, Sheldon

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to examine the 1-year and 2-year persistence rates of Black students in Texas community colleges for the 2007-2008 through the 2014-2015 academic years. Specifically, the relationship of the 1-year and 2-year persistence rates for Black students as a function of their institutional status…

A Longitudinal Examination of Middle School Science Learners' Use of Scaffolding In and Around a Dynamic Modeling Tool

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fretz, Eric Bruce

Scaffolding is a term rooted in multiple research communities over decades of development. Customized, contingent support can be provided to learners to enable performances beyond what they can do alone. This dissertation seeks to examine how effectively scaffolds designed to promote articulation (written expressions of learner understanding) actually work, and if this effectiveness and/or the quality of the resulting models changes over time. It longitudinally examines the use of scaffolds designed into a dynamic modeling tool, as it is used by middle school science learners to create, test, and revise models of complex science phenomena like stream ecosystems. This dissertation also reviews the origins of the scaffolding construct, and summarizes conceptions of scaffolding from various lines of research. Scaffolding can be provided by both human and non-human agents, such as computers, which require specialized interface design to ensure maximum effectiveness. In the study, learners created models in four curriculum units over the seventh and eighth grade school years. Additionally, this dissertation examines the nature of the discussion learners have while using these scaffolds and the frequency and types of interpersonal scaffolds employed during the creation of models. Model quality is also examined using a rubric developed through review of prior research on assessing models and concept maps. Learner pairs' model creation sessions on a computer are captured with screen video and learner audio, and then distilled to transcripts for subsequent coding and analysis, supported by qualitative analysis software. Articulation scaffolds were found to succeed in promoting articulations and the quality of those articulations improved over time. Learner dialog associated with these written articulations is of reasonable quality but did not improve over time. Quality of model artifacts did improve over time. The overall use of scaffolding by each learner pair was contrasted with that pairs model quality, but no relationship was found. Software design and classroom implementation implications of these findings are discussed. The frequency of interpersonal scaffolding provided by teachers highlights the need to consider scaffolding holistically and synergistically, with design decisions for software tools made in light of careful analysis as to what human and non-human agents can and should each provide.

Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramírez, Marisa L.; McMillan, Gail; Dalton, Joan T.; Hanlon, Ann; Smith, Heather S.; Kern, Chelsea

2014-01-01

In academia, there is a growing acceptance of sharing the final electronic version of graduate work, such as a thesis or dissertation, in an online university repository. Though previous studies have shown that journal editors are willing to consider manuscripts derived from electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), faculty advisors and graduate…

Motives for Dissertation Research at the Intersection between Rural Education and Curriculum and Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howley, Craig B.; Howley, Aimee; Yahn, Jacqueline

2014-01-01

Dissertation literature focusing on issues of curriculum and instruction (C&I) in rural schools has substantially increased since 1987. We located 580 possibly rural C&I dissertations and subsequently identifi ed 194 as probably rural; of these we were able to obtain digital copies of 188 full-length studies. Our purpose was to…

A Microscope or a Mirror?: A Question of Study Validity Regarding the Use of Dissertation Citation Analysis for Evaluating Research Collections

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beile, Penny M.; Boote, David N.; Killingsworth, Elizabeth K.

2004-01-01

Use of dissertation citation analysis for collection evaluation was investigated. Analysis of 1842 education dissertation citations from three institutions suggests the assumption of doctoral student expertise in their use of the scholarly literature may be overstated. For purposes of developing research collections, dependence on dissertation…

Developing Mentors: Adult participation, practices, and learning in an out-of-school time STEM program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scipio, Deana Aeolani

This dissertation examines learning within an out-of-school time (OST) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) broadening participation program. The dissertation includes an introduction, three empirical chapters (written as individual articles), and a conclusion. The dissertation context is a chemical oceanography OST program for middle school students called Project COOL---Chemical Oceanography Outside the Lab. The program was a collaboration between middle school OST programming, a learning sciences research laboratory, and a chemical oceanography laboratory. Both labs were located at a research-based university in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Participants include 34 youth, 12 undergraduates, and five professional scientists. The dissertation data corpus includes six years of ethnographic field notes across three field sites, 400 hours of video and audio recordings, 40 hours of semi-structured interviews, and more than 100 participant generated artifacts. Analysis methods include comparative case analysis, cognitive mapping, semiotic cluster analysis, video interaction analysis, and discourse analysis. The first empirical article focuses on synthesizing productive programmatic features from four years of design-based research.. The second article is a comparative case study of three STEM mentors from non-dominant communities in the 2011 COOL OST Program. The third article is a comparative case study of undergraduates learning to be mentors in the 2014 COOL OST Program. Findings introduce Deep Hanging as a theory of learning in practice. Deep Hanging entails authentic tasks in rich contexts, providing access, capitalizing on opportunity, and building interpersonal relationships. Taken together, these three chapters illuminate the process of designing a rich OST learning environment and the kinds of learning in practice that occurred for adult learners learning to be mentors through their participation in the COOL OST program. In the conclusion, I offer a set of design principles for mentor learning gleaned from empirical findings from the last two empirical chapters on how mentors can productively support the science learning of youth. The findings from this dissertation offer implications for designers of learning environments seeking to leverage experts for mentoring while engaging youth in contemporary science practices in order to broaden participation for youth and adult participants from non-dominant communities in STEM disciplines.

Examining Factors Influencing Asian American and Latino American Students' College Choice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang-Yeung, Leilani Weichun

2016-01-01

This dissertation examines the gap in college enrollment between Asian Americans and Latino Americans regarding the effects of family and school factors, classifying them into the six ethnic/generational status groups (Asian American first generation, Asian American second generation, Asian American third generation and plus, Latino American first…

Examining the Relationship between Organization Systems and Information Security Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tintamusik, Yanarong

2010-01-01

The focus of this dissertation was to examine the crucial relationship between organization systems within the framework of the organizational behavior theory and information security awareness (ISA) of users within the framework of the information security theory. Despite advanced security technologies designed to protect information assets,…

Household energy consumption in the United States, 1987 to 2009: Socioeconomic status, demographic composition, and energy services profiles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kemp, Robert J.

This dissertation examines household energy consumption in the United States over the period of 1987 to 2009, specifically focusing on the role of socioeconomic status, demographic composition, and energy services profiles. The dissertation makes use of four cross-sections from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey data series to examine how household characteristics influence annual energy consumption overall, and by fuel type. Chapter 4 shows that household income is positively related to energy consumption, but more so for combustible fuel consumption than for electricity consumption. Additionally, results for educational attainment suggest a less cross-sectional association and more longitudinal importance as related to income. Demographic composition matters, as predicted by the literature; household size and householder age show predicted effects, but when considered together, income explains any interaction between age and household size. Combustible fuels showed a far greater relationship to housing unit size and income, whereas electricity consumption was more strongly related to educational attainment, showing important differences in the associations by fuel type. Taken together, these results suggest a life course-based model for understanding energy consumption that may be strongly linked to lifestyles. Chapter 5 extends the findings in Chapter 4 by examining the patterning of physical characteristics and behaviors within households. The chapter uses Latent Class Analysis to examine a broad set of energy significant behaviors and characteristics to discover five unique energy services profiles. These profiles are uniquely patterned across demographic and socioeconomic compositions of households and have important effects on energy consumption. These profiles are likely byproducts of the lifestyles in which the household takes part, due to factors such as their socioeconomic status and household demographic composition. Overall, the dissertation finds strong evidence for taking a more lifecycle-based approach to understanding how energy is consumed based on the combined importance of householder age, household size, and socioeconomic status. Additionally, these factors produce very different energy services profiles that I argue are indicative of the lifestyle in which a household engages. Finally, the dissertation argues that these connections are essential to understanding energy consumption and provide a fertile ground for future research.

Biological and psychosocial effects of space travel: A case study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hsia, Robert Edward Tien Ming

This dissertation interviewed a single astronaut to explore psychosocial issues relevant to long-duration space travel and how these issues relate to the astronaut's training. It examined the psychological impact of isolation, crew interaction, and the experience of microgravity with the goal of increasing understanding of how to foster crew survivability and positive small group interactions in space (Santy, 1994). It also focused on how to develop possible treatments for crews when they transition back to Earth from the extreme environment of space missions. The astronaut's responses agreed with the literature and the predictions for long-duration space missions except the participant reported no temporary or permanent cognitive or memory deficits due to microgravity exposure. The dissertation identified five frequently endorsed themes including communication, environmental stressors, personal strengths, un-researched problems, and other. The agreement found between the literature and astronaut's responses offer a strong foundation of questions and data that needs to be further studied before conducting research in space or long-duration space missions.

Real Fantasies in Mathematics Education: Numeracy, Quantitative Reasoners, and Transdisciplinary Wicked Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Craig, Jeffrey Carl

2017-01-01

This dissertation has seven chapters. In chapter one, I discuss through why I am doing this dissertation, my positionality, and how I learned from and with all of my committee members. Chapter two is where I situate my dissertation study through developing a social theory of quantitative literacy by translating a social theory of literacy (Barton…

A Celebration of Diversity: LIS Research in the Nordic Countries as Shown by PhD Dissertations 2005-2014

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tveit, Åse Kristine

2017-01-01

A study of PhD dissertations in library and information science (LIS) was carried out to investigate which research topics have been of interest in Nordic LIS institutions. Seventy-nine doctoral dissertations from 2005 to 2014, published by 13 different research institutions, were retrieved from the institutions' archives and from library…

Scholarly Capacities, Habits of Mind, and Dispositions: Case Studies of Education Doctoral Students in a Dissertation Proposal Seminar

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McArthur, Dana Lynn

2011-01-01

The completion of a formal proposal for a dissertation research project is a standard requirement as a prelude to the process of conducting research and writing a doctoral dissertation for students who complete a doctoral degree in most academic fields including all the branches of the field of education. Many students satisfactorily complete…

Drama and Oral Interpretation: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," July through December 1978 (Vol. 39 Nos. 1 through 6).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 15 titles deal with the following topics: interpersonal conflict and the nonviolent peacemaking tradition; theatrical transactional analysis; recycling existing spaces for theatre use; the effect of theatre study on the…

Non-conventional technologies for data collection in Brazilian dissertations and theses.

PubMed

Salvador, Pétala Tuani Candido de Oliveira; Rodrigues, Cláudia Cristiane Filgueira Martins; de Lima, Kálya Yasmine Nunes; Alves, Kisna Yasmin Andrade; Santos, Viviane Euzébia Pereira

2015-01-01

to characterize non-conventional technologies used for data collection of dissertations and theses available in the Catalog of Theses and Dissertations (CEPEn) of the Brazilian Nursing Association (ABEn). this is a documentary research, whose data were collected in the catalogs of theses and dissertations available at the ABEn website, from Volumes XIX to XXI. The indicators collected were: academic level; educational institution; year; qualification of the author; setting; non-conventional technology used; type of technology; association with conventional techniques; methodological design; benefits and methodological limitations. from a total of 6346 studies, only 121 (1.91%) used non-conventional technologies for data collection, representing the fi nal sample of the study. it is concluded that Brazilian Nursing researches still need methodological innovations for data collection.

An Examination of the Effectiveness of Public Management Networks (PMNs): Evidence from the Case of the Hurricane Katrina Disaster

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, Girte Leah

2012-01-01

This dissertation examined the performance outcomes of public management networks (PMNs) in the disaster management context. The effectiveness of three disaster response sub-networks in the area of evacuation were examined and compared using the case of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, Louisiana in August 2005: Citizen Protection:…

[Theses and dissertations of nurses about education in nursing and health: a bibliometric study].

PubMed

Backes, Vânia Marli Schubert; do Prado, Marta Lenise; Lino, Mônica Motta; Ferraz, Fabiane; Canever, Bruna Pedroso; Gomes, Diana Coelho; Martini, Jussara Gue

2013-01-01

The study aimed to describe the panorama of Education in Nursing and Health from abstracts of theses and dissertations published by nurses in Brazil between the years 2001 to 2009. This is a bibliometric, descriptive and quantitative study. Data were collected in the "Catalogue of Theses and Dissertations" from CEPEn/ABEn. After reading the abstracts and systematization of the material, analysis was performed using descriptive statistics. It was reviewed 4.101 studies, 523 of them on the theme of education. From these, 67% were dissertations and 33% of them were theses, predominantly produced in the southeast of Brazil. One conclude that the representation of the theme in the national context is significant and contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field of Nursing, even though there are regional differences in the production process of this area of knowledge.

The Discursive Exercise of School Leadership: Disputes on the Representation of Educational Realities in Workplace Interactions between a Chilean Principal and Her Colleagues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Unda, Viviana

2011-01-01

This dissertation examines the ways in which a principal of a K-12 school in Chile exercises leadership through talk and nonverbal communication when engaging other educational practitioners about how to view particular school events. More specifically, this study focuses on the verbal and nonverbal means that the principal uses, as a political…

An Historiographical Analysis of the Impact of the 1960s on Institutions of Higher Education in Metropolitan Boise, Idaho

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andersen, R. Scott

2010-01-01

This dissertation traces the history of three of the colleges in Idaho's Treasure Valley during the 1960s: Boise State University (BSU), the College of Idaho (C of I), and Northwest Nazarene University (NNU). The time period examined in the study begins with the Soviet launch of Sputnik in late 1957 and ends with the deaths of students during…

First-Generation College Students and Undergraduate Research: Narrative Inquiry into the University of Arizona's Ronald E. McNair Achievement Program and the Phenomenon of Student Transformation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huerta, Andrew L.

2013-01-01

With increasing numbers of first-generation college students enrolling in colleges and universities across the US, so too is the need to begin preparing such underrepresented students for graduate school and a career in academia. As a phenomenological case study of student transformation, this dissertation examines the experience of nine…

Review of research designs and statistical methods employed in dental postgraduate dissertations.

PubMed

Shirahatti, Ravi V; Hegde-Shetiya, Sahana

2015-01-01

There is a need to evaluate the quality of postgraduate dissertations of dentistry submitted to university in the light of the international standards of reporting. We conducted the review with an objective to document the use of sampling methods, measurement standardization, blinding, methods to eliminate bias, appropriate use of statistical tests, appropriate use of data presentation in postgraduate dental research and suggest and recommend modifications. The public access database of the dissertations from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences was reviewed. Three hundred and thirty-three eligible dissertations underwent preliminary evaluation followed by detailed evaluation of 10% of randomly selected dissertations. The dissertations were assessed based on international reporting guidelines such as strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE), consolidated standards of reporting trials (CONSORT), and other scholarly resources. The data were compiled using MS Excel and SPSS 10.0. Numbers and percentages were used for describing the data. The "in vitro" studies were the most common type of research (39%), followed by observational (32%) and experimental studies (29%). The disciplines conservative dentistry (92%) and prosthodontics (75%) reported high numbers of in vitro research. Disciplines oral surgery (80%) and periodontics (67%) had conducted experimental studies as a major share of their research. Lacunae in the studies included observational studies not following random sampling (70%), experimental studies not following random allocation (75%), not mentioning about blinding, confounding variables and calibrations in measurements, misrepresenting the data by inappropriate data presentation, errors in reporting probability values and not reporting confidence intervals. Few studies showed grossly inappropriate choice of statistical tests and many studies needed additional tests. Overall observations indicated the need to comply with standard guidelines of reporting research.

Meeting the Challenges of Completing a Counseling Doctoral Program.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boes, Susan R.; Ullery, Elizabeth K.; Millner, Vaughn S.; Cobia, Debra C.

1999-01-01

Tasks of a doctoral program are discussed, including selecting a program, maneuvering through initial experiences, making adjustments, completing coursework, preparing for comprehensive examinations, choosing an internship, and completing the dissertation. (Author)

Part four: The research dissertation: planning, producing and writing a thesis.

PubMed

Quick, J; Hall, S

2015-11-01

Dissertations have become common inclusions to postgraduate degrees in healthcare. To the novice researcher, undertaking an extensive project of this kind can appear daunting. In this final article in the series 'Spotlight on Research', Julie Quick and Susan Hall advise perioperative practitioners on how to plan, produce and write a research dissertation. Guidance is also given on disseminating the results from research studies.

Rhetorical and Communication Theory: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," July 1979 through June 1980 (Vol. 40 Nos. 1 through 12).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 16 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the philosophy of rhetoric; (2) an analytical study of the development of major concepts of causality in philosophy; (3) an ontological approach to interpersonal communication…

Reading, Comprehension, and Memory Processes: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through June 1980 (Vol. 40 Nos. 7 through 12).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 23 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effects on reading comprehension of a number of reader-related factors, including lookback during studying, oral versus silent reading modes, reading…

Career Advancement Outcomes in Academic Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM): Gender, Mentoring Resources, and Homophily

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Sang Eun

2017-01-01

This dissertation examines gender differences in career advancement outcomes among academic science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) scientists. In particular, this research examines effects of gender, PhD advisors and postdoctoral supervisors mentoring resources and gender homophily in the mentoring dyads on the career advancement…

Transitioning towards the Digital Native: Examining Digital Technologies, Video Games, and Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Salomon, John

2010-01-01

Although digital technologies have become commonplace among people who grew up around them, little is known about the effect that such technology will have on learners or its impact on traditional methods of educational delivery. This dissertation examines how certain technologies affect digital natives and seeks to understand specific…

Adult Education in Local Environmental Initiatives for Ecological and Cultural Sustainability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Woodhouse, Janice Lynn

2011-01-01

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of how communities can effect change in policy and practice to support greater ecological and cultural sustainability. The general purpose of this research is to examine selected local initiatives for ecological and cultural sustainability to better understand the role of adult education in those efforts.…

Student Ratings of Instruction: Examining the Role of Academic Field, Course Level, and Class Size

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laughlin, Anne M.

2014-01-01

This dissertation investigated the relationship between course characteristics and student ratings of instruction at a large research intensive university. Specifically, it examined the extent to which academic field, course level, and class size were associated with variation in mean class ratings. Past research consistently identifies…

Essays on Academic Achievement and Student Behavior in Public Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moussa, Wael Soheil

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the student academic achievement through various mechanisms, put in place by the public school district, classroom student behavior, and negative external shocks to the students' living environment. I examine the impacts of various treatments on student short and long run academic outcomes such as math and English test…

Examining Social Climate and Youth Social Goals on Extended Wilderness Courses: A Path toward Improving Participant Experiences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mirkin, Benjamin J.

2013-01-01

This dissertation examined participants' expectations of the social climate on extended wilderness courses, how students' actually experienced the social climate during their course, and how these expectations, perceptions and the influence of environmental characteristics, impacted their goals for peer interactions. Pre and posttest surveys were…

Rethinking Teacher Preparation: Conceptualizing Skills and Knowledge of Novice Teachers of Secondary Mathematics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cummings, Margarita Borelli

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the extent to which novice secondary mathematics teachers (licensed and currently teaching in Utah) perceive they are prepared to do the work of teaching secondary mathematics. It first examined if novice secondary mathematics teachers' perceptions of their knowledge and skills of doing their work fell into four…

Professional Citizenship and Otherness Leadership Development: Examining the Relationships among Meaning, Moral Reasoning, and Diversity Competencies of Graduate Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Edwards, Alexander Kyei

2009-01-01

This dissertation explored the relationships among three variables: meaning, moral reasoning, and diversity competencies. The relationships were examined to attempt explaining two central themes: professional citizenship and otherness leadership. A sampling of graduate students from business and education colleges at a Midwestern public…

Reframing Practice: High School Mathematics Teachers' Learning through Interactions in Their Workplace Community

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bannister, Nicole A.

2009-01-01

This dissertation seeks to understand how teachers learn through interactions in newly formed workplace communities by examining how mathematics teachers engaged in equity-oriented reforms frame problems of practice. It examines how teachers' framings develop over time, and how teachers' shifting frames connect to their learning in a community of…

Localization of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Nepal: Strategies of Himalayan Knowledge-Workers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ivins, Tiffany Zenith

2011-01-01

This dissertation examines localization of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Himalayan community technology centers of Nepal. Specifically, I examine strategies and practices that local knowledge-workers utilize in order to localize educational content for the disparate needs, interests, and ability-levels of learners in rural villages. This…

Social Studies Doctoral Dissertations in the United States and Turkey: A Comparative Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Savas, Behsat

2016-01-01

This study delves into 169 social studies doctoral dissertations published from January 2012 to October 2015. The results of the included studies were qualitatively synthesized and presented in narrative form in the results section. In preliminary searching for systematic reviews concerning social studies, we concentrated on 169 doctoral…

Three essays on U.S. electricity restructuring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sergici, Sanem I.

2008-04-01

The traditional structure of the electricity sector in the U.S. has been that of large vertically integrated companies with sole responsibility for distributing power to end users within a franchise area. The restructuring of this sector that has occurred in the past 10-20 years has profoundly altered this picture. This dissertation examines three aspects of that restructuring process. First chapter of my dissertation investigates the impacts of divestitures of generation, an important part of the process of restructuring, on the efficiency of distribution systems. We find that while all divestitures as a group do not significantly affect distribution efficiency, those mandated by state public utility commissions have resulted in large and statistically significant adverse effects on distribution efficiency. Second chapter of my dissertation explores whether independent system operator (ISO) formation in New York has led to operating efficiencies at the unit and the system level. ISOs oversee the centralized management of the grid and the energy market and are expected to promote more efficient power generation. We test these efficiencies focusing on the generation units in New York ISO region from 1998 to 2004 and find that the NYISO formation has introduced limited efficiencies at the unit and the system level. Restructuring in the electricity industry has spawned a new wave of mergers, both raising questions and providing opportunities to examine these mergers. Third chapter of my dissertation investigates the drivers of electric utility mergers consummated between 1992 and 2004. My results provide support for disturbance theory of mergers, size hypothesis, and inefficient management hypothesis as drivers of electric utility mergers. I also find that the adjacency of the service territories is the most noteworthy determinant of the pairings between IOUs.

Reading and Study Skills and Instruction: Secondary: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," July through December 1981 (Vol. 42 Nos. 1 through 6).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The ten titles deal with the following topics: (1) an inductive method for teaching three skills necessary for reading narrative fiction; (2) the use of reading strategies in secondary level content area classrooms; (3) seventh grade…

Written Language and Writing Abilities: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through June 1985 (Vol. 45 Nos. 7 through 12).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 16 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) a study of the meanings of experience of ten published feminist women writers; (2) the composing activities of computer literate writers; (3) the informational…

Reading and Study Skills and Instruction--College and Adult: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," July through December 1984 (Vol. 45 Nos. 1 through 6).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 13 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the development, implementation, and evaluation of a reading improvement program for business and industry; (2) how instruction in a college rapid reading course meets individual…

Literature, Literary Values, and the Teaching of Literature: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through April 1978 (Vol. 38 Nos. 7 through 10).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: the teaching of children's literature; the study of American Indian literature and Biblical literature at the college level; the relationship between response to…

Reading and Study Skills and Instruction: Preschool and Elementary: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through June 1980 (Vol. 40 Nos. 7 through 12).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 53 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) instructional procedures for teaching word meanings; (2) readability; (3) reading acquisition; (4) the relation of word deprivation to reading in elementary…

Reading and Study Skills and Instruction: Preschool and Elementary: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through June 1984, (Vol. 44 Nos. 7 through 12).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 24 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) inferential questions in four basal readers; (2) reading instruction in an effective school setting; (3) the social-emotional dimension of teacher-student…

Does the modified Stroop effect exist in PTSD? Evidence from dissertation abstracts and the peer reviewed literature.

PubMed

Kimble, Matthew O; Frueh, B Christopher; Marks, Libby

2009-06-01

The modified Stroop effect (MSE), in which participants show delayed colour naming to trauma-specific words, is one of the most widely cited findings in the literature pertaining to cognitive bias in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current study used a novel approach (Dissertation Abstract Review; DAR) to review the presence of the MSE in dissertation abstracts. A review of dissertations that used the modified Stroop task in a PTSD sample revealed that only 8% of the studies found delayed reaction times to trauma-specific words in participants with PTSD. The most common finding (75%) was for no PTSD-specific effects in colour naming trauma-relevant words. This ratio is significantly lower than ratios found in the peer reviewed literature, but even in the peer reviewed literature only 44% of controlled studies found the modified Stroop effect. These data suggest that a reevaluation of the MSE in PTSD is warranted.

A Study of How Letters to the Editor Published in "The Stars and Stripes" Newspaper between March 1, 1918, and November 15, 1918, Reflected the Morale of the Troops during World War I

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hatch, Vicky Ann

2009-01-01

This dissertation is a qualitative historical study that examines the state of morale of World War I soldiers as reflected in letters to the editor published in "The Stars and Stripes" newspaper between March 1, 1918, and November 15, 1918. The narrative includes extensive use of the actual words published in the soldiers' letters in order to…

Grey literature in systematic reviews: a cross-sectional study of the contribution of non-English reports, unpublished studies and dissertations to the results of meta-analyses in child-relevant reviews.

PubMed

Hartling, Lisa; Featherstone, Robin; Nuspl, Megan; Shave, Kassi; Dryden, Donna M; Vandermeer, Ben

2017-04-19

Systematic reviews (SRs) are an important source of information about healthcare interventions. A key component of a well-conducted SR is a comprehensive literature search. There is limited evidence on the contribution of non-English reports, unpublished studies, and dissertations and their impact on results of meta-analyses. Our sample included SRs from three Cochrane Review Groups: Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI), Infectious Diseases (ID), Developmental Psychosocial and Learning Problems (DPLP) (n = 129). Outcomes included: 1) proportion of reviews that searched for and included each study type; 2) proportion of relevant studies represented by each study type; and 3) impact on results and conclusions of the primary meta-analysis for each study type. Most SRs searched for non-English studies; however, these were included in only 12% of reviews and represented less than 5% of included studies. There was a change in results in only four reviews (total sample = 129); in two cases the change did not have an impact on the statistical or clinical significance of results. Most SRs searched for unpublished studies but the majority did not include these (only 6%) and they represented 2% of included studies. In most cases the impact of including unpublished studies was small; a substantial impact was observed in one case that relied solely on unpublished data. Few reviews in ARI (9%) and ID (3%) searched for dissertations compared to 65% in DPLP. Overall, dissertations were included in only nine SRs and represented less than 2% of included studies. In the majority of cases the change in results was negligible or small; in the case where a large change was noted, the estimate was more conservative without dissertations. The majority of SRs searched for non-English and unpublished studies; however, these represented a small proportion of included studies and rarely impacted the results and conclusions of the review. Inclusion of these study types may have an impact in situations where there are few relevant studies, or where there are questionable vested interests in the published literature. We found substantial variation in whether SRs searched for dissertations; in most reviews that included dissertations, these had little impact on results.

Effects of Shift Work on Air Force Security Police Personnel.

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-01-01

Naitoh, Paul. " Chronobiologic Approach for Optimizing Human Performance ." In Rhythmic Aspects of Behavior. eds. Frederick M. Brown and R. Curtis...Effects of Shift Work on Air Force THESIS/DISSERTATION Security Police Personnel 6. PERFORMING O1G. REPORT NUMBER 7. AUTHOR(.) 8. CONTRACT OR GRANT...shift work has a significant effect on those who perform it, this study examines the perceived effects of shift work on a population of security

Analysis of Academic and Non-Academic Outcomes from a Bottom-up Comprehensive School Reform in the Absence of Student Level Data through Simulation Methods: A Mixed Methods Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sondergeld, Toni A.

2009-01-01

This dissertation examines the efficacy of a bottom-up comprehensive school reform (CSR) program by evaluating its impact on student achievement, attendance, and behavior outcomes through an explanatory mixed methods design. The CSR program (Gear Up) was implemented in an urban junior high school over the course of seven years allowing for…

Nuclear weapons, irrational behavior, and extended deterrence

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rhodes, E.J.

1985-01-01

This dissertation examines the problem of extended deterrence deductively develops a theory of commitment-through-contingent irrationality, and draws upon this theory to frame a set of comparatively attractive policy recommendations. To these ends, the dissertation explores the nature, sources, and types of irrationality and irrational behavior, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of coercive power, the various logical modes of commitment, and the various modes of nuclear coercion. These strands are fused into a theory of nuclear coercion based on contingently irrational behavior that has relevance for the problem of extended deterrence and that has important implications for USmore » policy.« less

The Dissertation House Model: Doctoral Student Experiences Coping and Writing in a Shared Knowledge Community

PubMed Central

Carter-Veale, Wendy Y.; Tull, Renetta G.; Rutledge, Janet C.; Joseph, Lenisa N.

2016-01-01

The problem of PhD attrition, especially at the dissertation-writing stage, is not solely related to mentoring, departments, or disciplines; it is a problem that affects the entire institution. As such, solutions require collaborative efforts for student success. Building on Yeatman’s master–apprentice model, which assumes mastering disciplinary writing in singular advisor–student contexts, and Burnett’s collaborative cohort model, which introduced doctoral dissertation supervision in a collaborative-learning environment with several faculty mentors in a single discipline, the Dissertation House model (DHM) introduces a model of doctoral dissertation supervision that involves multiple mentors across several disciplines. On the basis of more than 200 students’ reflections, we find that challenges in completing the dissertation extend beyond departmental and disciplinary boundaries. The DHM’s multidisciplinary approach preserves the traditional master–apprentice relationship between faculty and students within academic departments while providing an additional support mechanism through interdisciplinary collaborative cohorts. Using Thoits’s coping assistance theory and data from DH students over a 10-year period, the DHM incorporates Hoadley’s concept of knowledge communities to establish a successful dissertation-writing intervention for graduate students across doctoral programs. Using propensity score analysis, we provide in this study an empirical assessment of the benefits and efficacy of the DHM. PMID:27521236

Untangling a Teacher's Story through Heuristic Inquiry: A Life Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Slayton, Bonner

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the professional and personal growth of a teacher after he became frustrated and burned out after a successful career in education and in ministry. By looking through 15 years of data (notebooks, journals, lesson plans, books, etc.), I examine the professional pressures that I have faced working in the field of…

The Cultural Reproduction of Architecture: Examining the Roles of Cultural Capital and Organizational Habitus in the Socialization of Architectural Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chamberlin, Jennifer L.

2010-01-01

Compared to other professions in recent years, architecture has lagged woefully behind in attracting and retaining a diverse population, as typically defined by class, race and gender. This dissertation investigates the extent to which architecture culturally reproduces itself, specifically examining the socialization process of students into the…

Economic Growth, Rural Educational Investment and the Level and Distribution of Rural Incomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Badiani, Reena Chandu

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines two related questions. First, it estimates the effect of growth in the demand for skilled and unskilled labor on rural household incomes and the rural wage structure. Second, it examines the effect of growth in household incomes and in labor market returns to education on household educational investment. The…

An Examination of Native and Immigrant Students' Social Networking Using the College Search and Selection Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neimeyer, Bruce Carlton

2009-01-01

This dissertation explores the use of formal and informal networks through cyber- and traditional communication methods in the college search and selection process by native and immigrant students to examine various postulates and propositions of social capital theory. In addition, the analysis of cybernetworks used by disadvantaged, college bound…

Virtual First Impressions Matter: The Effect of Social Networking Sites on Impression Formation in Virtual Teams

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cummings, Jeffrey

2012-01-01

The introduction of social media has changed the way individuals communicate and collaborate both within and outside the organization. While social media has the potential to change how organizations interact internally, minimal research has examined the impact this media may have within a virtual team environment. This dissertation examines a…

The Coded Schoolhouse: One-to-One Tablet Computer Programs and Urban Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crooks, Roderic N.

2016-01-01

Using a South Los Angeles charter school of approximately 650 students operated by a non-profit charter management organization (CMO) as the primary field site, this two-year, ethnographic research project examines the implementation of a one-to-one tablet computer program in a public high school. This dissertation examines the variety of ways…

Stability and Change in New York State Regents Mathematics Examinations, 1866-2009: A Socio-Historical Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watson, Robert Stephen

2010-01-01

This dissertation illuminates relationships between micro-level practices of schools and macro-level structures of society through the socio-historical lens of New York State Regents mathematics examinations, which were administered to public school students throughout the State of New York between 1866 and 2009, inclusive. Fundamental research…

Ill-Structured Problem Solving of Novice Reading Specialists and Expert Assessment Specialists: Learning and Expertise

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Currie-Rubin, Rachel

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the problem-solving processes of seven graduate student novices enrolled in a course in educational assessment and ten educational assessment experts. Using Jonassen's (1997) ill- and well-structured problem-solving frameworks, I analyze think-aloud protocols of experts and novices as they examine ill-structured…

Building v/s Exploring Models: Comparing Learning of Evolutionary Processes through Agent-based Modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wagh, Aditi

Two strands of work motivate the three studies in this dissertation. Evolutionary change can be viewed as a computational complex system in which a small set of rules operating at the individual level result in different population level outcomes under different conditions. Extensive research has documented students' difficulties with learning about evolutionary change (Rosengren et al., 2012), particularly in terms of levels slippage (Wilensky & Resnick, 1999). Second, though building and using computational models is becoming increasingly common in K-12 science education, we know little about how these two modalities compare. This dissertation adopts agent-based modeling as a representational system to compare these modalities in the conceptual context of micro-evolutionary processes. Drawing on interviews, Study 1 examines middle-school students' productive ways of reasoning about micro-evolutionary processes to find that the specific framing of traits plays a key role in whether slippage explanations are cued. Study 2, which was conducted in 2 schools with about 150 students, forms the crux of the dissertation. It compares learning processes and outcomes when students build their own models or explore a pre-built model. Analysis of Camtasia videos of student pairs reveals that builders' and explorers' ways of accessing rules, and sense-making of observed trends are of a different character. Builders notice rules through available blocks-based primitives, often bypassing their enactment while explorers attend to rules primarily through the enactment. Moreover, builders' sense-making of observed trends is more rule-driven while explorers' is more enactment-driven. Pre and posttests reveal that builders manifest a greater facility with accessing rules, providing explanations manifesting targeted assembly. Explorers use rules to construct explanations manifesting non-targeted assembly. Interviews reveal varying degrees of shifts away from slippage in both modalities, with students who built models not incorporating slippage explanations in responses. Study 3 compares these modalities with a control using traditional activities. Pre and posttests reveal that the two modalities manifested greater facility with accessing and assembling rules than the control. The dissertation offers implications for the design of learning environments for evolutionary change, design of the two modalities based on their strengths and weaknesses, and teacher training for the same.

Three Interdisciplinary Studies on IT Outsourcing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gantman, Sonia Vilvovsky

2012-01-01

This dissertation provides interdisciplinary insights into the role of client's internal collaborative experience in managing communication during a complex outsourced project, building a quality client-vendor relationship and ultimately achieving success in the project. Each of the three studies in this dissertation identifies a gap in…

Portfolio as a Means of Promoting Autonomous Learning in Teacher Education: A Quasi-Experimental Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meeus, Wil; Van Petegem, Peter; Meijer, Joost

2008-01-01

Background: The predominant dissertation model used in teacher education courses in Flanders is the "literature study with practical processing". Despite the practical supplement, this traditional model does not fit sufficiently well with autonomous learning as the objective of modern teacher education dissertations. This study reports on the…

Grounded Learning Experience: Helping Students Learn Physics through Visuo-Haptic Priming and Instruction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Shih-Chieh Douglas

In this dissertation, I investigate the effects of a grounded learning experience on college students' mental models of physics systems. The grounded learning experience consisted of a priming stage and an instruction stage, and within each stage, one of two different types of visuo-haptic representation was applied: visuo-gestural simulation (visual modality and gestures) and visuo-haptic simulation (visual modality, gestures, and somatosensory information). A pilot study involving N = 23 college students examined how using different types of visuo-haptic representation in instruction affected people's mental model construction for physics systems. Participants' abilities to construct mental models were operationalized through their pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system and their performance on a transfer task involving an advanced physics system. Findings from this pilot study revealed that, while both simulations significantly improved participants' mental modal construction for physics systems, visuo-haptic simulation was significantly better than visuo-gestural simulation. In addition, clinical interviews suggested that participants' mental model construction for physics systems benefited from receiving visuo-haptic simulation in a tutorial prior to the instruction stage. A dissertation study involving N = 96 college students examined how types of visuo-haptic representation in different applications support participants' mental model construction for physics systems. Participant's abilities to construct mental models were again operationalized through their pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system and their performance on a transfer task involving an advanced physics system. Participants' physics misconceptions were also measured before and after the grounded learning experience. Findings from this dissertation study not only revealed that visuo-haptic simulation was significantly more effective in promoting mental model construction and remedying participants' physics misconceptions than visuo-gestural simulation, they also revealed that visuo-haptic simulation was more effective during the priming stage than during the instruction stage. Interestingly, the effects of visuo-haptic simulation in priming and visuo-haptic simulation in instruction on participants' pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system appeared additive. These results suggested that visuo-haptic simulation is effective in physics learning, especially when it is used during the priming stage.

EEG Subspace Analysis and Classification Using Principal Angles for Brain-Computer Interfaces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ashari, Rehab Bahaaddin

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) help paralyzed people who have lost some or all of their ability to communicate and control the outside environment from loss of voluntary muscle control. Most BCIs are based on the classification of multichannel electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded from users as they respond to external stimuli or perform various mental activities. The classification process is fraught with difficulties caused by electrical noise, signal artifacts, and nonstationarity. One approach to reducing the effects of similar difficulties in other domains is the use of principal angles between subspaces, which has been applied mostly to video sequences. This dissertation studies and examines different ideas using principal angles and subspaces concepts. It introduces a novel mathematical approach for comparing sets of EEG signals for use in new BCI technology. The success of the presented results show that principal angles are also a useful approach to the classification of EEG signals that are recorded during a BCI typing application. In this application, the appearance of a subject's desired letter is detected by identifying a P300-wave within a one-second window of EEG following the flash of a letter. Smoothing the signals before using them is the only preprocessing step that was implemented in this study. The smoothing process based on minimizing the second derivative in time is implemented to increase the classification accuracy instead of using the bandpass filter that relies on assumptions on the frequency content of EEG. This study examines four different ways of removing outliers that are based on the principal angles and shows that the outlier removal methods did not help in the presented situations. One of the concepts that this dissertation focused on is the effect of the number of trials on the classification accuracies. The achievement of the good classification results by using a small number of trials starting from two trials only, should make this approach more appropriate for online BCI applications. In order to understand and test how EEG signals are different from one subject to another, different users are tested in this dissertation, some with motor impairments. Furthermore, the concept of transferring information between subjects is examined by training the approach on one subject and testing it on the other subject using the training subject's EEG subspaces to classify the testing subject's trials.

Development and Demonstration of a Multiplexed Magnetic Tweezers Assay

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Johnson, Keith Charles

This dissertation is concerned with the methods and applications of single molecule force spectroscopy. In the introduction, the traditional single molecule force spectroscopy instruments are introduced and the advantages and drawbacks of each are discussed. The first chapter is a review of methods to ensure that biomolecular bond lifetime parameter estimations are not contaminated by multiple bond data. This review culminates in an examination of the literature on the strength of the bond between biotin and streptavidin and finds that by filtering the numerous publications for those that clearly demonstrate specific single bond behavior, there is a consensus of the bond strength and kinetic parameters. The second chapter of the dissertation discusses the capabilities of a magnetic tweezer assay, which combines massive multiplexing, precision bead tracking, and bi-directional force control into a flexible and stabile platform for examining single molecule behavior. Using a novel method for increasing the precision of force estimations on heterogeneous paramagnetic beads, I demonstrate the instrument by examining the force dependence of uncoiling and recoiling velocity of type 1 fimbriae from Eschericia coli (E. coli) bacteria, and see similar results to previous studies. Chapter 3 is a study of the lifetime of the activated FimH-mannose bond under various force conditions using the previously described magnetic tweezer. The bond is found to be extremely long-lived at forces less than 30 pN, with an average lifetime > 1000 times longer than the biotin-streptavidin bond, making it one of the strongest non-covalent interactions known in nature. Furthermore, the average lifetime of the bond is similar between 9 and 30 pN of force, suggesting a force range at which the lifetime is force-independent, demonstrating ideal bond behavior for the first time in a natural system. It is hypothesized that the long lifetime and ideal behavior is due to a gateway that locks mannose into the binding pocket and opens at a rate independent of force. This study elucidates a mechanism for very strong biological binding, and provides insight into approaches for developing novel antiadhesive therapies. This dissertation is concluded with a review of the body of work in chapters 1-3 and a discussion of the future directions for this research.

Honors Dissertation Abstracts: A Bounded Qualitative Meta-Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holman, Debra K.; Banning, James H.

2012-01-01

A potential source of useful information about undergraduate honors education can be found in doctoral dissertation abstracts that focus on honors. Debra Holman and James Banning of Colorado State University sought to explore this resource by undertaking a bounded qualitative meta-study of such abstracts using document analysis. Three…

Early Field Experience in Career and Technical Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smalley, Scott Walter

2011-01-01

The purpose of the three studies in this dissertation was to enhance career and technical education in the area of agriculture, business, and family and consumer sciences. This dissertation contains three papers: (1) a Delphi study identifying the purpose, expected outcomes, and methods of documenting preservice teacher early field experience…

Evaluation of Interoperability Protocols in Repositories of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hakimjavadi, Hesamedin; Masrek, Mohamad Noorman

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the status of eight interoperability protocols within repositories of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) as an introduction to further studies on feasibility of deploying these protocols in upcoming areas of interoperability. Design/methodology/approach: Three surveys of 266 ETD…

Transformative Learning Following Job Loss: A Dissertation Renewal

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Benway, Robert

2017-01-01

This study renews a doctoral dissertation written in 2003 on transformative learning following job loss. An abbreviated literature review compares corporate and worker circumstances from the original study to the present time. Findings show that corporations choose reductions in force due to pressure from investors instead of productivity, and…

Leadership in Doctoral Dissertations of Educational Sciences in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yardibi, Nursel

2014-01-01

The purpose of the study is to determine tendencies in educational sciences doctoral dissertations according to divisions, research methods and desings, data collection tools, data analysis techniques, and leadership levels in Turkey. This content analysis study has been desinged with qualitative research methods. This research has been limited by…

Contemporary Dissertation Research on Employment and Training.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barth, Peter S.

This monograph summarizes 20 recently completed dissertations representative of research being done in employment and training. Each summary has this format: description of the framework into which the study fits, explanation of its purpose, summary of methodology and type of data, and author's findings and conclusions. Six studies in section I on…

Astronomy Education Research Observations from the iSTAR international Study of Astronomical Reasoning Database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tatge, C. B.; Slater, S. J.; Slater, T. F.; Schleigh, S.; McKinnon, D.

2016-12-01

Historically, an important part of the scientific research cycle is to situate any research project within the landscape of the existing scientific literature. In the field of discipline-based astronomy education research, grappling with the existing literature base has proven difficult because of the difficulty in obtaining research reports from around the world, particularly early ones. In order to better survey and efficiently utilize the wide and fractured range and domain of astronomy education research methods and results, the iSTAR international Study of Astronomical Reasoning database project was initiated. The project aims to host a living, online repository of dissertations, theses, journal articles, and grey literature resources to serve the world's discipline-based astronomy education research community. The first domain of research artifacts ingested into the iSTAR database were doctoral dissertations. To the authors' great surprise, nearly 300 astronomy education research dissertations were found from the last 100-years. Few, if any, of the literature reviews from recent astronomy education dissertations surveyed even come close to summarizing this many dissertations, most of which have not been published in traditional journals, as re-publishing one's dissertation research as a journal article was not a widespread custom in the education research community until recently. A survey of the iSTAR database dissertations reveals that the vast majority of work has been largely quantitative in nature until the last decade. We also observe that modern-era astronomy education research writings reaches as far back as 1923 and that the majority of dissertations come from the same eight institutions. Moreover, most of the astronomy education research work has been done covering learners' grasp of broad knowledge of astronomy rather than delving into specific learning targets, which has been more in vogue during the last two decades. The surprisingly wide breadth of largely unknown research revealed in the iSTAR database motivates us to begin to synthesize the research and look for broader themes using widely accepted meta analysis techniques.

Profile of brazilian dissertations and theses on trauma: a documentary research.

PubMed

Salvador, Pétala Tuani Candido de Oliveira; Alves, Kisna Yasmin Andrade; Martins, Claudia Cristiane Filgueira; Santos, Viviane Euzébia Pereira; Tourinho, Francis Solange Vieira

2012-01-01

To characterize the dissertations and theses available in the Bank of Theses of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) that deal with trauma. This is a documentary research on the characterization of Brazilian theses and dissertations that deal with trauma, available at the CAPES Theses Database. Data collection was carried out in March 2012, by master's degree students and PhDs, following a research protocol. A total of 411 dissertations and theses about trauma were analyzed. We elucidated considerations on the following aspects of the selected studies: academic level, location of conduction of the work, author's training, methodological design, theme and type of trauma. The significant amount of studies analyzed reveals the importance of trauma in the current scenario, the expansion of graduate programs and researchers being in line with the theme that alarmingly affects the national and international epidemiology.

Adoption and Use of Internet Technologies in Health Communication: Examining Disparities in Diffusion Patterns, Health Information Sources, and Patient-Provider Encounters

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Massey, Philip Minter

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the impact of internet technologies on the field of health communication. Access and use of health communication technologies has and will continue to become increasingly important to manage and treat chronic conditions and other ailments, particularly in the context of health care reform that promotes improved quality…

"First We Crawled, Then We Walked, Now We Want to Run": An Examination of the Transition Processes Used by Inclusive Camps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tucker, Teresa W.

2010-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the transition processes camps undergo when including campers with disabilities into the organized camp from the perspective of key individuals who championed inclusion. Despite research that supports inclusion and knowledge of best inclusive practices, few camps have implemented the inclusion of…

Toward Democratic Education and Transformational Learning: An Examination of Students' Experiences at Kigali Institute of Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tusiime, Michael

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the experiences of Kigali Institute of Education students using a framework of democratic education theories. In Rwanda, the discriminatory and non-critical education system is believed to have been one of the major causes for the civil strife that has characterized the country, beginning in its post independence to its…

Resilience, Suicide, and Enrollment in Higher Education: Three Essays on Impacts of Recession

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carriere, Danielle E.

2016-01-01

This dissertation is comprised of three essays, all of which focus on various impacts of economic recession. The first two essays utilize county-level data to examine differences between rural and urban response to economic downturn, while the final essay makes use of individual-level data to examine the impact of recession on enrollment in higher…

Examining Health Information Technology Implementations: Case of the Patient-Centered Medical Home

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Behkami, Nima A.

2012-01-01

It has been shown that the use of Health Information Technology (HIT) is associated with reduced cost and increased quality of care. This dissertation examined the use of registries in Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) practices. A survey questionnaire was sent to a nationwide group of clinics certified for being a PCMH. They were asked to…

An Analysis of Research Methods and Statistical Techniques Used by Doctoral Dissertation at the Education Sciences in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karadag, Engin

2010-01-01

To assess research methods and analysis of statistical techniques employed by educational researchers, this study surveyed unpublished doctoral dissertation from 2003 to 2007. Frequently used research methods consisted of experimental research; a survey; a correlational study; and a case study. Descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, factor…

Restructuring a Master's Degree Dissertation as a Patchwork Text.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maisch, Maire

2003-01-01

Describes the introduction of the Patchwork Text format into the dissertation on a Master's degree in Social Work. Discusses the rationale for rethinking the conventional dissertation and the "patches" making up the revised dissertation format. Draws upon completed dissertations of two students on the program to illustrate how the characteristics…

Dissertation Abstracts in Mathematics Education, 1983.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suydam, Marilyn N., Comp.

The dissertation abstracts in this compilation all appeared in "Dissertation Abstracts International" in 1983. The 300 dissertations cited in the annual listing of research in the July 1984 issue of the "Journal for Research in Mathematics Education" are included, as well as 55 dissertations which were located but could not be…

Examination of Acute Sensitivity to Morphine and Morphine Self-Administration Following Physical and Environmental Stressors in Fischer-344 and Lewis Female Rats

DTIC Science & Technology

1997-01-16

Administration Following Physical and Environmental Stressors in Fischer-344 and Lewis Female Rats" Name of Candidate: Kelly Brown Doctor...Title ofDissertation: Examination ofAcute Sensitivity to Morphine and Morphine Self- Administration Following Physical and Environmental Stressors in...to tolerance, toxicity, or addiction liability. IV Examination ofAcute Sensitivity to Morphine and Morphine Self-Administration Following Physical and

A Study on the Impact of Collective Feedback in the Online Technical and Professional Communication Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singleton, Meredith

2016-01-01

This dissertation study seeks to determine whether feedback in the online Technical and Professional Communication classroom impacts student performance. This dissertation proposes that online Technical and Professional Communication instructors consider adopt such a feedback methodology in order to engage students with writing practices that…

A Quantitative Study into the Information Technology Project Portfolio Practice: The Impact on Information Technology Project Deliverables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yu, Wei

2013-01-01

This dissertation applied the quantitative approach to the data gathered from online survey questionnaires regarding the three objects: Information Technology (IT) Portfolio Management, IT-Business Alignment, and IT Project Deliverables. By studying this data, this dissertation uncovered the underlying relationships that exist between the…

The Profession of Transition Specialization: In Search of an Identity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Breault, Dawn E.

2016-01-01

This qualitative phenomenological dissertation examined the overall profession of transition specialization; in particular the perceptions of transition specialists regarding the sufficiency of their professional preparation and development. Fifteen transition specialists from the six states participated via semi-structured interviews. Major…

The Public Life of Information

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rowe, Josh

2011-01-01

The mid-twentieth century marked a shift in Americans' fundamental orientation toward information. Rather than news or knowledge, information became a disembodied quantum--strings of ones and zeros processed, increasingly, by complex machines. This dissertation examines how Americans became acquainted with "information", as newly conceived by…

75 FR 42097 - Proposed Collection; Comment Request; NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education Application

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-07-20

... history, standardized examination scores, reference information, resume components, employment history, employment interests, dissertation research details, letters of recommendation, financial aid history... information technology. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: To request more information on the proposed project...

Agreement with Subjects in Lubukusu

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diercks, Michael J. K.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines three topics in the morphosyntax of Lubukusu (Bantu, Kenya), all of which are concerned with agreement with subjects: locative inversion, complementizer agreement, and alternative agreement effects in subject extraction. Each topic reports novel Lubukusu data which are both typologically interesting and theoretically…

Typologizing native language influence on intonation in a second language: Three transfer phenomena in Japanese EFL learners

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Albin, Aaron Lee

While a substantial body of research has accumulated regarding how intonation is acquired in a second language (L2), the topic has historically received relatively little attention from mainstream models of L2 phonology. As such, a unified theoretical framework suited to address unique acquisitional challenges specific to this domain of L2 knowledge (such as form-function mapping) has been lacking. The theoretical component of the dissertation makes progress on this front by taking up the issue of crosslinguistic transfer in L2 intonation. Using Mennen's (2015) L2 Intonation Learning theory as a point of departure, the available empirical studies are synthesized into a typology of the different possible ways two languages' intonation systems can mismatch as well as the concomitant implications for transfer. Next, the methodological component of the dissertation presents a framework for overcoming challenges in the analysis of L2 learners' intonation production due to the interlanguage mixing of their native and L2 systems. The proposed method involves first creating a stylization of the learner's intonation contour and then running queries to extract phonologically-relevant features of interest for a particular research question. A novel approach to stylization is also introduced that not only allows for transitions between adjacent pitch targets to have a nonlinear shape but also explicitly parametrizes and stores this nonlinearity for analysis. Finally, these two strands are integrated in a third, empirical component to the dissertation. Three kinds of intonation transfer, representing nodes from different branches of the typology, are examined in Japanese learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). For each kind of transfer, fourteen sentences were selected from a large L2 speech corpus (English Speech Database Read by Japanese Students), and productions of each sentence by approximately 20-30 learners were analyzed using the proposed method. Results suggest that the three examined kinds of transfer are stratified into a hierarchy of relative frequency, with some phenomena occurring much more pervasively than others. Together as a whole, the present dissertation lays the groundwork for future research on L2 intonation by not only generating empirical predictions to be tested but also providing the analytical tools for doing so.

A Qualitative Inquiry of the Counseling Dissertation Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flynn, Stephen V.; Chasek, Christine L.; Harper, Irene F.; Murphy, Katherine M.; Jorgensen, Maribeth F.

2012-01-01

The authors in this consensual qualitative research study explored the dissertation experiences of 42 graduates (27 counselor educators, 13 counselors, 2 administrators) from 4 midwestern states. Identified domains included impact of environment, competing influences, personality traits, chair influence, committee function, and barriers to…

The New Left at California State College, Fullerton: A Case Study of the Radical New Left in a Conservative, State College Community during the 1960s & Early 1970s

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thornburg, Barry S.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the impact and significance of the New Left on the conservative campus and community of California State College, Fullerton (CSF) during the 1960s and early 1970s. Built to meet the demands of the Baby Boom after World War II, CSF became the latest in a series of California State campus expansions in 1959-1960.…

Separating the Signal from the Noise: An Examination of Student and Teacher Scores Based on Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) in One State

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buckley, Katie Hills

2015-01-01

Despite the prevalence of student learning objectives (SLOs) in teacher evaluation systems throughout the United States, research on the validity of student and teacher SLO scores used for high-stakes decisions is lacking. For this reason, this dissertation is comprised of two chapters that examine student and teacher-level SLO performance data…

Mentoring and Professional Teacher Development: A Case Study of Mentor Teachers at a Rural North Carolina High School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clark, Patricia D.

2016-01-01

This case study dissertation investigated the perceptions of mentor teachers in regard to their professional practice, teacher leadership, and workplace satisfaction. The researcher investigated the lived experiences of these teachers within the bounds of their prescribed relationships with a beginning teacher. This dissertation is motivated by…

Bones, Boys, Bombs and Booze: An Exploratory Study of the Reliability of Marking Dissertations across Disciplines

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bettany-Saltikov, Josette; Kilinc, Stephanie; Stow, Karen

2009-01-01

The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the reliability of the University's Masters' level (M-level) generic assessment criteria when used by lecturers from different disciplines. A further aim was to evaluate if subject-specific knowledge was essential to marking these dissertations. Four senior lecturers from diverse disciplines…

Children with Autism Wearing Action Cameras: Changing Parent/Child Interactions Using Point-of-View Video Modeling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stump, Keenan C.

2017-01-01

My dissertation research involves the implementation of a parent-provided point-of-view modeling (POVM) intervention created to improve social interaction between parents and their children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A series of studies ultimately lead to my dissertation study. The first manuscript entitled "Autism-Related Insurance…

Content Analysis of Master Theses and Dissertations Based on Action Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Durak, Gürhan; Yünkül, Eyup; Cankaya, Serkan; Akpinar, Sükran; Erten, Emine; Inam, Nazmiye; Taylan, Ufuk; Tastekin, Eray

2016-01-01

Action Research (AR) is becoming popular in the field of education, and according to literature, it could be stated that AR studies have positive influence on practice in education. The present study aims at conducting content analysis of action research (AR) master theses and doctoral dissertations submitted at the level of Turkish higher…

Graduate Research in Technology and Engineering Education: 2000-2009

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foster, W. Tad

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study was to amass as comprehensive a collection of dissertations and theses in technology and engineering education as possible, and to conduct a modified meta-analysis of this body of research. The current study was limited to dissertations and theses completed between 2000 and 2009 that were identified using the ProQuest…

Effect of Gender on Teachers' Organizational Culture Perception: A Meta-Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ipek, Cemalettin; Aytaç, Tufan; Gok, Enes

2015-01-01

This study aims to assess the strength of the effect of gender, if there is any, on the perceptions of teachers on organizational culture in a meta-analysis. 27 studies consisting of Master's theses and PhD dissertations were chosen from the National Thesis/Dissertation Database provided by Turkish Council of Higher Education. The sample consists…

Effects of Submesoscale Turbulence on Reactive Tracers in the Upper Ocean

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, Katherine Margaret

In this dissertation, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are used to model the coupled turbulence-reactive tracer dynamics within the upper mixed layer of the ocean. Prior work has shown that LES works well over the spatial and time scales relevant to both turbulence and reactive biogeochemistry. Additionally, the code intended for use is able to carry an arbitrary number of tracer equations, allowing for easy expansion of the species reactions. Research in this dissertation includes a study of 15 idealized non-reactive tracers within an evolving large-scale temperature front in order determine and understand the fundamental dynamics underlying turbulence-tracer interaction in the absence of reactions. The focus of this study, in particular, was on understanding the evolution of biogeochemically-relevant, non-reactive tracers in the presence of both large ( 5 km) submesoscale eddies and smallscale ( 100 m) wave-driven Langmuir turbulence. The 15 tracers studied have different initial, boundary, and source conditions and significant differences are seen in their distributions depending on these conditions. Differences are also seen between regions where submesoscale eddies and small-scale Langmuir turbulence are both present, and in regions with only Langmuir turbulence. A second study focuses on the examination of Langmuir turbulence effects on upper ocean carbonate chemistry. Langmuir mixing time scales are similar to those of chemical reactions, resulting in potentially strong tracer-flow coupling effects. The strength of the Langmuir turbulence is varied, from no wave-driven turbulence (i.e., only shear-driven turbulence), to Langmuir turbulence that is much stronger than that found in typical upper ocean conditions. Three different carbonate chemistry models are also used in this study: time-dependent chemistry, equilibrium chemistry, and no-chemistry (i.e., non-reactive tracers). The third and final study described in this dissertation details the development of a reduced-order biogeochemical model with 17 state equations that can accurately reproduce the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) ecosystem behavior, but that can also be integrated within high-resolution LES.

Research on Mathematics Education Reported in 1983.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suydam, Marilyn N.

1984-01-01

This is the fourteenth annual listing of research on mathematics education prepared for the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education. References are organized alphabetically by author within three categories: research summaries, articles, and dissertations. Included are 37 summaries, 247 articles, and 300 dissertations. Studies focused on…

Implementing Professional Learning Communities in Small High Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eichelkraut, Jeff P.

2017-01-01

Professional learning communities (PLCs) are collaborative teacher groups that focus on learning and continual improvement. Establishing PLCs can be a challenging endeavor, especially in smaller schools. Smaller schools employ fewer staff members, limiting opportunities for collaboration. This dissertation examined the implementation of PLCs in…

Faculty/Librarian Interprofessional Collaboration and Information Literacy in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Franklin, Kimberly Y.

2013-01-01

Collaboration is a best practice for integrating information literacy into teaching and learning, but extant research suggests that differences between the professional practice and professional socialization of faculty and librarians can hinder collaboration. This dissertation examines interprofessional factors that facilitate and hinder…

Prosody and Intonation of Western Cham

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ueki, Kaori

2011-01-01

This dissertation investigates the prosodic and intonational characteristics of Western Cham (three letter code for International Organization for Standardization's ISO 639-3 code: [iso=cja]), an Austronesian language in the Chamic sub-group. I examine acoustic variables of prominence at word and postlexical levels: syllable duration, pitch…

The roots of physics students' motivations: Fear and integrity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Van Dusen, Ben

Too often, physics students are beset by feelings of failure and isolation rather than experiencing the creative joys of discovery that physics has to offer. This dissertation research was founded on the desire of a teacher to make physics class exciting and motivating to his students. This work explores how various aspects of learning environments interact with student motivation. This work uses qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how students are motivated to engage in physics and how they feel about themselves while engaging in physics. The collection of four studies in this dissertation culminates in a sociocultural perspective on motivation and identity. This perspective uses two extremes of how students experience physics as a lens for understanding motivation: fear and self-preservation versus integrity and self-expression. Rather than viewing motivation as a property of the student, or viewing students as inherently interested or disinterested in physics, the theoretical perspective on motivation and identity helps examine features of the learning environments that determine how students' experience themselves through physics class. This perspective highlights the importance of feeling a sense of belonging in the context of physics and the power that teachers have in shaping students' motivation through the construction of their classroom learning environments. Findings demonstrate how different ways that students experience themselves in physics class impact their performance and interest in physics. This dissertation concludes with a set of design principles that can foster integration and integrity among students in physics learning environments.

Polarimetry of random fields

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ellis, Jeremy

On temporal, spatial and spectral scales which are small enough, all fields are fully polarized. In the optical regime, however, instantaneous fields can rarely be examined, and, instead, only average quantities are accessible. The study of polarimetry is concerned with both the description of electromagnetic fields and the characterization of media a field has interacted with. The polarimetric information is conventionally presented in terms of second order field correlations which are averaged over the ensemble of field realizations. Motivated by the deficiencies of classical polarimetry in dealing with specific practical situations, this dissertation expands the traditional polarimetric approaches to include higher order field correlations and the description of fields fluctuating in three dimensions. In relation to characterization of depolarizing media, a number of fourth-order correlations are introduced in this dissertation. Measurements of full polarization distributions, and the subsequent evaluation of Stokes vector element correlations and Complex Degree of Mutual Polarization demonstrate the use of these quantities for material discrimination and characterization. Recent advancements in detection capabilities allow access to fields near their sources and close to material boundaries, where a unique direction of propagation is not evident. Similarly, there exist classical situations such as overlapping beams, focusing, or diffusive scattering in which there is no unique transverse direction. In this dissertation, the correlation matrix formalism is expanded to describe three dimensional electromagnetic fields, providing a definition for the degree of polarization of such a field. It is also shown that, because of the dimensionality of the problem, a second parameter is necessary to fully describe the polarimetric properties of three dimensional fields. Measurements of second-order correlations of a three dimensional field are demonstrated, allowing the determination of both the degree of polarization and the state of polarization. These new theoretical concepts and innovative experimental approaches introduced in this dissertation are expected to impact scientific areas as diverse as near field optics, remote sensing, high energy laser physics, fluorescence microscopy, and imaging.

Contrasting Causatives: A Minimalist Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tubino Blanco, Mercedes

2010-01-01

This dissertation explores the mechanisms behind the linguistic expression of causation in English, Hiaki (Uto-Aztecan) and Spanish. Pylkkanen's (2002, 2008) analysis of causatives as dependent on the parameterization of the functional head v[subscript CAUSE] is chosen as a point of departure. The studies conducted in this dissertation confirm…

Brain Based Learning in Science Education in Turkey: Descriptive Content and Meta Analysis of Dissertations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yasar, M. Diyaddin

2017-01-01

This study aimed at performing content analysis and meta-analysis on dissertations related to brain-based learning in science education to find out the general trend and tendency of brain-based learning in science education and find out the effect of such studies on achievement and attitude of learners with the ultimate aim of raising awareness…

The Undergraduate Education Studies Dissertation: Philosophical Reflections upon Tacit Empiricism in Textbook Guidance and the Latent Capacity of Argumentation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibson, Howard; Garside, Darren

2017-01-01

The final-year undergraduate dissertation is commonplace in Education Studies programmes across the world and yet its philosophical assumptions are complex and not always questioned. In England there is evidence to suggest a tacit preference for empiricism in textbooks designed to support early researchers. This brings, we suggest, problems…

The Detection and Characterization of Urbanization, Industrialization, and Longwall Mining Impacts on Forest Ecosystems Through the Use of GiS and Remote Sensing Techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pfeil-McCullough, Erin Kathleen

Urbanization has far reaching and significant effects on forest ecosystems, directly through urban development and indirectly through supportive processes such as coal mining and agriculture. Urban processes modify the landscape leading to altered hillslope hydrology, increased disturbance, and the introduction of non-native forest pathogens. This dissertation addresses several challenges in our ability to detect these urbanization impacts on forests via geospatial analyses. The role of forests in urban hydrological processes has been extensively studied, but the impacts of urbanized hydrology on forests remain poorly examined. This dissertation documented impacts to hydrology and forests at variety of temporal and spatial scales: 1) A geospatial comparison of the historic and contemporary forests of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania revealed substantial shifts in tree species, but less change in the species soil moisture preference. These results document additional evidence that increased heterogeneity in urban soil moisture alters forest structure. 2) To examine soil moisture changes, impacts of longwall mine subsidence were assessed by using a Landsat based canopy moisture index and hot spot analysis tools at the forest patch scale. Declines in forest canopy moisture were detected over longwall mines as mining progressed through time, and results contradicted assumptions that the hydrological impacts overlying LMS recover within 4-5 years following subsidence of undermined land. 3) Utilizing a landslide susceptibility model (SINMAP), increases in landslide susceptibility were predicted in Pittsburgh, PA based on several scenarios of ash tree loss to the emerald ash borer (EAB), a bark beetle that rapidly kills ash trees. This model provides a tool to predict changes in landslide susceptibility following tree loss, increasing the understanding of urban forest function and its role in slope stability. Detecting how urbanized hydrology impacts forest health, function, and development is fundamental to sustaining the services forests provide. Results from this dissertation will ultimately allow improvements in the management and protection of both trees and water resources in urban systems and beyond.

The Fossil Fueled Metropolis: Los Angeles and the Emergence of Oil-Based Energy in North America, 1865--1930

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cooke, Jason Arthur

Beginning with coal in the nineteenth century, the mass production and intensive consumption of fossil fuel energy fundamentally changed patterns of urban and industrial development in North America. Focusing on the metropolitan development of Los Angeles, this dissertation examines how the emergence of oil-based capitalism in the first three decades of the twentieth century was sustained and made increasingly resilient through the production of urban and industrial space. In a region where coal was scarce, the development of oil-based energy was predicated on long-term investments into conversion technologies, storage systems and distribution networks that facilitated the efficient and economical flow of liquefied fossil fuel. In this dissertation, I argue that the historical and geographical significance of the Southern California petroleum industry is derived from how its distinctive market expansion in the first three decades of the twentieth century helped establish the dominance of oil-based energy as the primary fuel for transportation in capitalist society. In North America, the origins of oil-based capitalism can be traced to the turn of the twentieth century when California was the largest oil-producing economy in the United States and Los Angeles was the fastest growing metropolitan region. This dissertation traces how Los Angeles became the first city in North America where oil became a formative element of urban and industrial development: not only as fuel for transportation, but also in the infrastructures, landscapes and networks that sustain a critical dependence on oil-based energy. With a distinctive metropolitan geography, decentralized and automobile-dependent, Los Angeles became the first oil-based city in North America and thus provides an ideal case study for examining the regional dynamics of energy transition, establishment and dependence. Interwoven with the production of urban and industrial space, oil remains the primary fuel that sustains the capitalist mode of production.

Constraining Substellar Magnetic Dynamos using Brown Dwarf Radio Aurorae

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kao, Melodie Minyu

Brown dwarfs share characteristics with both low-mass stars and gas giant planets, making them useful laboratories for studying physics occurring in objects throughout this low mass and temperature range. Of particular interest in this dissertation is the nature of the engine driving their magnetic fields. Fully convective magnetic dynamos can operate in low mass stars, brown dwarfs, gas giant planets, and even fluid metal cores in small rocky planets. Objects in this wide mass range are capable of hosting strong magnetic fields, which shape much of the evolution of planets and stars: strong fields can protect planetary atmospheres from evaporating, generate optical and infrared emission that masquerade as clouds in the atmospheres of other worlds, and affect planet formation mechanisms. Thus, implications from understanding convective dynamo mechanisms also extend to exoplanet habitability. How the convective dynamos driving these fields operate remains an important open problem. While we have extensive data to inform models of magnetic dynamo mechanisms in higher mass stars like our Sun, the coolest and lowest-mass objects that probe the substellar-planetary boundary do not possess the internal structures necessary to drive solar-type dynamos. A number of models examining fully convective dynamo mechanisms have been proposed but they remain unconstrained by magnetic field measurements in the lowest end of the substellar mass and temperature space. Detections of highly circularly polarized pulsed radio emission provide our only window into magnetic field measurements for objects in the ultracool brown dwarf regime, but these detections are very rare; until this dissertation, only one attempt out of 60 had been successful. The work presented in this dissertation seeks to address this problem and examines radio emission from late L, T, and Y spectral type brown dwarfs spanning 1-6 times the surface temperature of Earth and explores implications for fully convective magnetic dynamo models.

Market penetration of biodiesel and ethanol

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Szulczyk, Kenneth Ray

This dissertation examines the influence that economic and technological factors have on the penetration of biodiesel and ethanol into the transportation fuels market. This dissertation focuses on four aspects. The first involves the influence of fossil fuel prices, because biofuels are substitutes and have to compete in price. The second involves biofuel manufacturing technology, principally the feedstock-to-biofuel conversion rates, and the biofuel manufacturing costs. The third involves prices for greenhouse gas offsets. The fourth involves the agricultural commodity markets for feedstocks, and biofuel byproducts. This dissertation uses the Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model-Greenhouse Gas (FASOM-GHG) to quantitatively examine these issues and calculates equilibrium prices and quantities, given market interactions, fossil fuel prices, carbon dioxide equivalent prices, government biofuel subsidies, technological improvement, and crop yield gains. The results indicate that for the ranges studied, gasoline prices have a major impact on aggregate ethanol production but only at low prices. At higher prices, one runs into a capacity constraint that limits expansion on the capacity of ethanol production. Aggregate biodiesel production is highly responsive to gasoline prices and increases over time. (Diesel fuel price is proportional to the gasoline price). Carbon dioxide equivalent prices expand the biodiesel industry, but have no impact on ethanol aggregate production when gasoline prices are high again because of refinery capacity expansion. Improvement of crop yields shows a similar pattern, expanding ethanol production when the gasoline price is low and expanding biodiesel. Technological improvement, where biorefinery production costs decrease over time, had minimal impact on aggregate ethanol and biodiesel production. Finally, U.S. government subsidies have a large expansionary impact on aggregate biodiesel production. Finally, U.S. government subsidies have a large expansionary impact on aggregate biodiesel production, but only expand the ethanol industry at low gasoline prices. All of these factors increase agricultural welfare with most expanding producer surplus and mixed effects on consumers.

The Relationship of Goldberg's Big Five Personality Trait Measures of Mid-Level Leaders at Midwest State-Supported Colleges and Universities to the Cameron and Quinn Competing Values Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kempke Eppler, Michelle R.

2012-01-01

This dissertation expands previous work of Giberson, Resick, Dickson, Mitchelson, Randall, and Clark (2009), Zhang, Tsui, Song, & Jia (2008), and Tsui, Zhang, Wang, Xin, and Wu (2006) by examining higher education organizational culture and leadership. There is a paucity of research in examining the relationships between university mid-level…

Backwards and Forwards: Behavioral and Neurophysiological Investigations into Dependency Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Witzel, Jeffrey D.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the processing of sentences involving long-distance linguistic dependencies, or sentences containing elements that must be linked across intervening words and phrases. Specifically, both behavioral (self-paced reading and eye tracking) and neurophysiological (electroencephalography) methods were used (a) to evaluate the…

Impact of Process Protocol Design on Virtual Team Effectiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cordes, Christofer Sean

2013-01-01

This dissertation examined the influence of action process dimensions on team decision performance, and attitudes toward team work environment and procedures given different degrees of collaborative technology affordance. Process models were used to provide context for understanding team behavior in the experimental task, and clarify understanding…

Identifying Productive Resources in Secondary School Students' Discourse about Energy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harrer, Benedikt

2013-01-01

A growing program of research in science education acknowledges the beginnings of disciplinary reasoning in students' ideas and seeks to inform instruction that responds productively to these disciplinary progenitors in the moment to foster their development into sophisticated scientific practice. This dissertation examines secondary school…

A Process Model for the Comprehension of Organic Chemistry Notation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Havanki, Katherine L.

2012-01-01

This dissertation examines the cognitive processes individuals use when reading organic chemistry equations and factors that affect these processes, namely, visual complexity of chemical equations and participant characteristics (expertise, spatial ability, and working memory capacity). A six stage process model for the comprehension of organic…

Charter Schools and Market Segmentation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Batie, Michael

2009-01-01

This dissertation was undertaken to examine the effect(s) of charter school marketing on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) education landscape with respect to the stratification of charter schools. Information from four sources: school websites, a survey of charter school parents, existing online statistics and data, and various…