<p>This study examined how three different manipulations of a single policing stance affected the quality scores and matching performance in a biometric facial recognition system; it was conducted in three phases. In the first phase, the researcher collected qualitative survey data from active, sworn law enforcement officers in 15 states. In the second phase, the researcher collected quantitative data using a single facial recognition subject and a static body-worn camera mounted to an adjustable tripod. In the third phase, the researcher collected quantitative data from body-worn camera-equipped law enforcement officers who filmed a stationary target as they executed a series of specified movements from the interview stance. The second phase tested two different body-worn cameras: one that is popular among law enforcement agencies in the United States, the Axon Body 2; and one that is inexpensive and available to the general public via a popular internet commerce website. The third phase tested only the Axon Body 2. Results of the study showed that matching results are poor in a biometric system where the test body-worn camera was the sensor, with error rates as high as 100% when the body-worn camera wearer was in motion. The general conclusion of this study is that a body-worn camera is not a suitable sensor for a biometric facial recognition system at this time, though advances in camera technology and biometric systems may close the gap in the future. </p>

<p>The need for STEM employees is on the rise in direct relation with the changing needs of our globe (Jang, 2015). There are gaps to be filled not only in the workforce and industry, but also by academia and government (Jang, 2015). K-12 STEM education has the ability to address 21^st century problems, in particular, the need for more highly skilled workers in STEM fields by focusing on developing students’ 21^st century skills. A critical skill for students to develop to be able to properly collaborate on teams and engage in the STEM workforce is problem solving. Problem solving is thought of as being the most important cognitive goal of education in every educational context: formal, informal, public schools, universities, and everything in between (Jonassen, 2010). In order to properly assess students, and know where improvements could be made, it is vital that we examine teachers first. By exploring how teachers approach problem-solving, and how self-efficacious they feel teaching problem-solving, then we can determine how to better assist both teachers and students. The current study sought to address this gap in the literature through surveying three states agriculture and science teachers using two established instruments. The survey was distributed online via Qualtrics and was available to participants for three weeks during the month of January 2020. The survey is divided into three major sections with the first two sections being the instruments used: (1) Problem Solving Inventory, (2) Teaching Science as Inquiry, and (3) Demographics. Demographics was placed at the end of the survey following recommendations from Dillman et al. (2014).</p><p> The final response rate for the survey was 9.04% for agriculture teachers and 13.4% for science teachers, a total of 22.44% (n = 504). After data cleaning there is a total of 4.3% of useable responses from agriculture and 5.58% for science resulting in a usable response rate of 9.88% (n = 205). A little more than half of the participants were female (59%) with the remainder being male (39.5%) and a small percentage (1.5%) elected not to respond or selected “prefer not to say”. The largest population that responded to the survey were between the ages of 44 and 54 (43.1%) and teaching for 21-25 years (19%). The survey found that teachers thought of themselves as being confident problem-solvers but used a more avoidance-style. Teachers also felt they had less control or had more negative feelings in regard to problem-solving. Overall, teachers from both agriculture and science viewed themselves as being moderate to high problem-solvers in general. The instrument was not intended to measure problem-solving relating to the classroom. The second instrument, the Teaching Science as Inquiry, measured how efficacious they felt teaching problem-solving. Teachers from both science and agriculture perceived themselves as being very self-efficacious and had high expectancy outcomes. ANOVA tests were conducted between the two groups to determine if there were differences in their responses and no statistically significant differences were found. A correlation was conducted in order to determine which variables from the two instruments held relationships. The correlation suggests that the two instruments have several strong relationships between the variables like personal self-efficacy and expectation outcomes. research should focus on refining the instruments to reduce the number of questions and survey more individuals to capture more generalizable results. </p>

<p>This study aimed at investigating the divergence in attitudes between Saudi students who have lived in the United States for four years or more compared to Saudi students who have not lived outside Saudi Arabia for more than a three-month period. A survey was designed based on the main aspects of Saudi culture for this study as surveys are found to be the most common means for measuring attitudes. Two samples of Saudi students were recruited, one sample included students who have lived in the United States for four years or more, and the other sample consisted of those who have not lived outside Saudi Arabia for more than three months. A statistically significant difference between the two samples was found; students who have lived in the United States for four years or more were found to be more tolerant than those who have not lived abroad for more than three months towards the issue of sex segregation in mixed environments.<br> </p>

Autism Spectrum Disorder is an increasingly common developmental disability. Students diagnosed with ASD can be challenging to incorporate into mainstream classrooms due to a lack of understanding and negative attitudes of neurotypical peers towards those students. This thesis aims to address the problem in a unit plan centered on the use of young adult literature with a main protagonist on the Spectrum in the English Language Arts classroom. Specifically, it argues the use of such texts in conjunction with a literature circles unit in providing better understanding and greater acceptance of students with ASD. The unit and lesson plans were written to reflect how Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, Bishop’s windows, doors, and mirrors , and the texts students read can influence their thinking and behavior. Using goodreads and local ELA book lists, I selected four YAL texts which portrayed the main character with ASD as they go about their daily lives. These texts were then incorporated into the twenty-lesson unit plan which aims at supporting positive attitudes and acceptance of neurotypical students towards their peers with ASD.

No description available.

<p>   </p> <p>Motivated by the lack of research that has explored the rhetorical structure of research articles in the humanities, this dissertation analyzes professional philosophical discourse using move-analysis as an approach. A corpus of 60 research articles was compiled from some of the leading philosophy journals. The articles were selected from three sub-disciplinary areas: (a) metaphysics and epistemology, (b) the history of philosophy, and (c) ethics. To analyze the articles, a move analysis codebook was developed, which identified the rhetorical functions (i.e., moves and steps) that different text segments played. The codebook was then applied to the entire research article structure of the 60 research articles. Linguistic features of certain functional units were also identified via corpus analysis techniques. The results of the study show that rhetorical structure of philosophical writing is distinctive compared to other fields and disciplines. On one hand, at the macro level, philosophical writing uses a problem-solution structure rather than the IMRD (intro-methods-results-discussion) structure, common in the social and natural sciences. At the move and step level, philosophical writing heavily relies on evaluation to critically analyze solutions to philosophical problems. Finally, the dissertation found systemic rhetorical functions that permeated the entire research article. Most notably, philosophers heavily qualify and outline their arguments throughout the text. </p> <p>  </p>

<p>Social presence positively influences the motivation, satisfaction, retention, and learning outcomes of online students. Although it is crucial for successful online learning experiences, little work has thoroughly examined the evolution of social presence over time and the influence of social presence on peer interaction. In other words, if social presence can be learned by interacting with others. This three-article dissertation study elucidates this gap by answering the overarching question: How does online students' social presence evolve over time to shape their online learning behaviors? Using stochastic-actor oriented models to reflect the dependence among learners in online collaborative learning communities, this dissertation investigated how learners' social presence evolved in learner-learner interaction resulting in two empirical studies and one conceptual framework. The first study explored social presence through clickstream interaction (e.g., number of replies received/sent in an online discussion) of 382 learners enrolled in a Massive Open Online Course. Three key findings from the study were: 1) dropout rates could be lowered if social presence affordances are used purposefully; 2) adding social media characteristics to online discussion boards, for example, "like" buttons, inhibits conversational behavior, and eventually, decreases achievement of learning outcomes; and 3) the "rich-get-richer" effect also applies to social presence, reinforcing highly active students' behavior and risking inactive online students to experience isolation. The second study used peer-nomination data (i.e., asking students who they interact with) and a scale to investigate the spread of social presence perceptions in online networks of students over three consecutive courses (n = 197). Although there was no evidence of social influence, online learners who nominated more peers are more likely to report higher social presence perceptions over time. Students were not more likely to share with those who showed similar levels of social presence. The "rich-get-richer effect" was observed in the incoming nominations of learners. The third study is a conceptual framework that integrates network theory and the online learning literature into a new perspective to analyze learners' online behaviors and interactions under the light of social presence theory. The proposed framework includes four main steps: 1) interaction, 2) social presence alignment, 3) unit of analysis definition, and 3) network statistics and inferential analysis selection. The findings of this dissertation improve educational practice by identifying behaviors that harm online social presence and providing specific actions for online instructors and instructional designers to promote social presence in online learning.  </p>

<p>The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) promote a new vision of K-12 science education that emphasizes the importance of integrating engineering practices into science education. Recent engineering studies have highlighted design approaches that focus on designers’ empathy, such as human-centered design (Hess & Fila, 2016a; Kouprie & Visser, 2009; Walther et al., 2017). Empathic engineering design approaches can help students understand how engineers understand various users’ contexts and develop effective design solutions. Furthermore, empathy is a key element in cross-cultural education (Gay, 2002; Webb et al., 2012) because it can help teachers create positive interactions with diverse students (Arghode et al., 2013; Warren, 2014). Empathy is an important attribute highlighted in both engineering and cross-cultural education. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to comprehend and integrate the principles of Human-Centered Design (HCD) approaches to provide more authentic and holistic engineering education. </p> <p>This study explored elementary preservice teachers’ competence in planning and implementing an empathic engineering design lesson plan in cross-cultural STEM education by applying a module. The module consisted of a researcher-developed elementary science methods unit on designing empathic integrated STEM instruction. Using a convergent mixed methods design (Creswell & Clark, 2018) and 16 participants, this study investigated preservice teachers’ understanding of empathic integrated STEM instruction before and after the module. This study utilized the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983) to examine preservice teachers’ levels of empathy and the Teaching Engineering Self-Efficacy Scale (Yoon et al., 2014) to measure their self-efficacy. For qualitative data, reflection papers, empathic design lesson plans, and interview transcripts were collected. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006) was employed to identify patterns and relationships within the data.</p> <p>The analysis of a paired samples t-test and a related-samples Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed a significant difference between the means of preservice teachers’ self-efficacy scores before and after the module. However, there was no significant difference in the means of their empathy scores. According to qualitative data analysis, preservice teachers understood the role of empathy in both engineering and cross-cultural education. The module enhanced preservice teachers’ pedagogical strategies regarding empathic techniques and culturally and socially responsive pedagogies. Preservice teachers also discovered the benefits of empathic integrated STEM instruction including broadening one’s perspectives, understanding the value of inclusive designs, and enhancing students’ 21st century skills. After experiencing the module, they felt confident in integrating empathic integrated STEM instruction and recognizing potential challenges of implementation. The study findings show that empathic integrated STEM instruction can be a way to support preservice teachers’ understanding of engineering pedagogical strategies, culturally responsive pedagogy, and the features of integrated STEM instruction. </p>

<p>  </p> <p>At the highest level, this dissertation is a case study on how bias can become encoded into the tools used to measure a construct and into the very definition of the construct itself. In this case, the construct is spatial ability. This dissertation focuses on the validity and accuracy of spatial tests and illuminates gender bias that is interwoven with the history of spatial testing. </p> <p><br></p> <p>First, I present a critical analysis of the graphical imagery used in spatial tests and explain why the imagery may be unclear and lead the tests to be inaccurate. I analyzed a collection of research in which researchers modified the stimuli used in spatial tests and found that the tests became easier when the imagery was made clearer. Thus, I conclude that imagery presentation impacts test difficulty, a likely example of construct-irrelevant variance which may reduce the validity of some spatial skills assessments and introduce bias in favor of individuals with past experience in engineering graphics, who historically are more likely to be men. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Second, I make a critical review of gender differential research in spatial skills. I argue that the construct of “spatial ability” has been co-constructed with gender, in that it has been devised in a manner influenced by gender beliefs. Because of a preexisting belief that men had better spatial skills than women, some test creators “selectively bred” spatial instruments to produce the expected gender differences. Such instruments, including the very popular Mental Rotation Test (MRT), cannot validly assess between-group differences. Biological or evolutionary explanations for sex differences in spatial ability lack empirical evidence. Instead, the differences are rooted in the shaping of the construct of “spatial ability” to create the expected gender patterns. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Finally, I describe an experiment designed to investigate the hypothesis that using a spatial test with content from a feminized discipline will show different patterns in gender differences. Female engineering students outperformed males on the Digital Apparel Spatial Visualization Test (DASVT), while the male engineering students scored higher than the female students on the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test (PSVT:R). Students with relevant background experience scored better than students without experience on both assessments. The results demonstrate the shortcomings of using a single instrument to assess a concept as heterogeneous as spatial skills. I conclude this dissertation with a discussion of the implications of my work and recommendations for researchers and educators. </p>

This dissertation presents in the form of two distinct chapters conceptually related in nature. The first chapter integrates literature from various fields such as indigenous, womanist, and feminist lenses to propose nine principles when working with Muslim women. The purpose of the second chapter is to examine Muslim women’s experiences in therapy at university counseling centers. The study explores women’s experiences from a social determinants of health perspective and a narrative inquiry method—namely, how intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy factors inform women’s experiences. Qualitative analysis from interviews with six women suggests Muslim women navigate multiple systems which inform their beliefs about health and their experiences in therapy.