A mixed method, exploratory, sequential research design was conducted to investigate the presence of latent bias in early childhood STEM literature content, applying a non-biased, sociocultural, STEM identity, theoretical framework. A survey of children's perceptions of gender and a content analysis found unintentional bias. Exploratory findings confirmed 102 children were gendering images. An examination of the relationship between the participants' gender and how the participant gendered AND preferred the images indicated differences existed between boys and girls. Children preferred images perceived as matching their own, with statistical significance. Girls were found to prefer images less than boys AND they were more likely to gender the images. Children were more likely to give gender to the 50 images considered in the study, than to non-gender them. The gendering and preference was found to be statistically significantly higher for anthropomorphic and personified inanimate images. Additionally, a content analysis of eight award winning and popular selling STEM children's books were conducted and were found to contain biased narratives and image content. A content analysis found significant differences relating to the frequency of character representation in the eight books. Analysis indicated a higher lexical representation of females to males, and image representation was more male than female. Further analysis of additional books and images is warranted from the findings of this exploratory study.

Recent literature suggested that while the discussion of presidential selection, evaluation, and compensation was common to both private and public institutions, special attention was paid to public university presidents. They and their presidencies were subject to intense public debate and scrutiny. Florida's public university presidents have contended with the same issues as their counterparts in other states. However, the 2001 changes in the state's higher education governance created distinct challenges and opportunities for the 11 presidents in the Florida State University System. The purpose of this study was to analyze the trends in the selection, evaluation, and compensation of the 11 university presidents in the Florida State University System (SUS) from 1996-2006, the period five years before and five years after the changes in governance. Interviews with university presidents, members of boards of trustees, and members of the Florida Board of Governors, members of the Florida Legislature, and salary histories from seven of the 11 Florida institutions were used to analyze the trends in light of the shift in perceptions of the presidents' roles and the changes in higher education governance. Since 2001, and the establishment of boards of trustees and by Florida statute, presidents were seen as the chief executive officer of their institutions, a change from an academic to a business model. Trustees, who primarily came from a business background, viewed them as CEOs and chose to compensate presidents at a higher level than they had previously been paid. The Board of Governors, a majority of whose members also had corporate backgrounds, implied the need for a CEO-type leadership style and more corporate-style accountability. In 2003, the Florida Legislature responded to the salary surge at the chief executive level and placed a $225,000 salary cap from appropriated funds on the university presidents' salaries. The legislation did not place any restrictions on university foundations or other sources for supplementing the compensation package.

This study examines the current state of computer-based instructional systems design (ISD) tools and outlines its implications for the future. The study utilizes the grounded theory methodology to capture and document modern instructional designers' perspectives regarding the current state of ISD tools, the issues associated with them, and their interrelationships. The study also presents a framework for classifying modern ISD tools and a conceptual prototype of a designer-oriented system of computer-based ISD tools.

The pursuit of this ethnographic study was inspired by my lived experiences as an urban school teacher for 18 years, as well as, the experiences of a group of other urban teachers. The study explored the following question: Does knowledge and practice of Ubuntu pedagogy help to improve teachers' cultural competencies in an urban school? The research documents how knowledge and practice of the three pillars of Ubuntu pedagogy help to transform the perspective of urban teachers. The three pillars are (1) Humanism and Ubuntu Competency, (2) Collaboration and Partnership, and (3) Relationship and Learning Community. Data were collected using multiple techniques, which included semi-structured interviews, book study, reflective digital journal notes, observations and a focus group. Seven participants, who were interviewed, were selected using convenience sampling (Creswell, 2013). Transformative learning and Ubuntu pedagogy are constructs in the conceptual framework that guided the process of the research design. For the data analysis procedures, the description of the interpretation of the cultural-sharing group provided more insights about teachers' experiences in an urban school. Recommendations were made based on the data collected, which provided evidence of how the knowledge and practice of Ubuntu pedagogy helped to improve teachers' cultural competencies. The teachers' focus group, book study reflections and classroom observations revealed that all the teachers experienced levels of a disorienting dilemma, a shift in frame of reference that was more inclusive and self-reflective.

Studies have indicated that intergenerational relationships can assist children to learn more efficiently by providing support. As new forms of media have emerged and become pervasive in our society, it is important to understand how children use them to learn. Just as television coviewing has been observed by past researchers to aid youths to learn with parents and grandparents, three-dimensional virtual learning environments (VLE) are being investigated for their potential. This study seeks to examine the potential learning impact on children, ages 8 to 13, encountering a three-dimensional virtual learning environment with their grandparents. The primary research question this study examines is whether children exploring a 3D VLE with a grandparent learn the information being conveyed within the environment more effectively. A second aspect of the study considered if the grandparent-child pair would spend a greater amount of time in the virtual environment compared to a child exploring alone. Additionally, this research seeks to determine if there are other benefits a child could gain while interacting with a grandparent while using a VLE. This study used ChronoLeap: The Great World's Fair Adventure, an educational VLE developed at the University of Central Florida under a National Science Foundation Informal Science Education grant. ChronoLeap permits children to explore a virtual representation of the 1964-65 New York World's Fair where they can discover the roots of current technology in their 1960s form and its evolution to the present. This environment affords a child a unique opportunity to encounter a virtual recreation of an era in which their grandparents would have firsthand memories potentially eliciting the grandparent's personal reflections.

Background and objectives - Addressing ethical issues in health technology assessment (HTA) can increase transparency and accountability of the HTA process and lead to better-informed healthcare decisions. Despite its importance, integration of ethics into HTA remains challenging. The objective of this thesis was to develop a process-based framework to support ethical evaluations in HTA and increase their applicability. Methods - Project 1: A systematic literature review was conducted with the purpose of identifying and mapping the methodological features of the existing frameworks for ethics in HTA. Project 2: A systematic literature review and an international survey of HTA agencies were conducted to explore how ethical evaluations may be encouraged or discouraged in the HTA practice. Project 3: A procedural framework was drafted based on the operational features of the identified guidance documents as well as barriers and facilitators for incorporating ethics into HTA. Project 4: The framework was applied to a hypothetical case study, with the aim of helping HTA practitioners touch on key points of the steps outlined by the proposed framework. Results - Project 1: The identified ethical frameworks vary in their purpose, philosophical approach, structure, and comprehensiveness. The review results suggest that the choice of a method for collection and analysis of ethical data depends on the context, purpose of analysis, and availability of resources. Project 2: The results of this study emphasize the importance of simplification of ethics methodology and development of good practice guidelines in HTA, as well as capacity-building for engaging HTA practitioners in ethical analyses. Project 3: The proposed framework consists of an algorithmic flowchart, showing different steps of an ethical evaluation throughout the HTA process; a stepwise guide, which focuses on the tasks and potential questions that are required to be addressed at each step; and a list of some commonly recommended tools to facilitate the evaluation process. Project 4: The case study outlines the key tasks, recommended by the framework, and provides examples of process outputs that could be considered when attempting to perform an ethical evaluation. Conclusions - The outputs of this thesis can be used to support and promote a more consistent practice of ethical evaluation among HTA professionals. However, further validation of the proposed framework is required to establish its utility for HTA practice. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

High-dimensional data has a wide range of applications in research, such as education, health, social media, and many other research fields. However, the high dimensionality of data can raise many problems for data analyses. This study focuses on commonly used techniques of dimensionality reduction for machine learning models, which play an essential and inevitable role in data prepossessing and statistical analysis. The main issues of high-dimensional data for machine learning tasks include the accuracy of data classification and visualization in machine learning models. Therefore, in this study, machine learning algorithms are used to predict and classify datasets to evaluate the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score of results, which are evaluated and compared by mean, variance, confidence intervals, and coverage. This study focuses on data mining issues, comparing and discussing different dimensionality reduction techniques with different dataset features. Eight dimensionality reduction techniques (Principal Component Analysis, Kernel Principal Component Analysis, Singular Value Decomposition, Non-negative matrix factorization, Independent Component Analysis, Multidimensional Scaling, Isomap, and Auto-encoder) are compared and evaluated on simulated datasets. Specifically, this study evaluates and compares the performances of the commonly used dimensionality reduction techniques by exploring the issues about features and characteristics of different techniques through Monte Carlo simulation studies with four machine learning classification models: logistic regression, linear support vector machine, nonlinear support vector machine, and k-nearest neighbors. The results of this study indicated that the DRTs decreased the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores compared with results without DRTs. And overall, MDS performed dramatically better than other DRTs. SVD, PCA, and ICA had similar results because they are all linear DRTs. Although it is also a linear DRT, NMF performed as poorly as KPCA, which is a nonlinear DRT. The other two nonlinear DRTs, Isomap and Autoencoder, had the worst performance in this study. The results provided recommendations for empirical researchers using machine learning models with high dimensional data under specific conditions.

This document only includes an excerpt of the corresponding thesis or dissertation. To request a digital scan of the full text, please contact the Ruth Lilly Medical Library's Interlibrary Loan Department (rlmlill@iu.edu).

This document only includes an excerpt of the corresponding thesis or dissertation. To request a digital scan of the full text, please contact the Ruth Lilly Medical Library's Interlibrary Loan Department (rlmlill@iu.edu).

Action research (AR) is a form of systematic inquiry by which practitioners address their own problems of practice. Professional development (PD) is a means by which teachers contribute to school improvement and student achievement. Too little research has gathered the qualitative perceptions of former participants in action-oriented professional learning programs, particularly in the realm of single-sex independent schools. This study’s goal, therefore, was to gain insight into how teachers recall experiencing action research as professional development. Two evaluation questions guided the study: (1) To what degree does the Saints Action Research Program reflect an effective model of professional development as evidenced by each of the five levels of Guskey’s model for evaluating professional development? (2) What are the perceptions of program alumni and the instructional leadership team regarding the advantages and limitations of participating in the Saints Action Research Program? To answer both questions, I generated data from four sources: (a) a participant survey, (b) semi-structured participant interviews, (c) a document review process of participant research briefs, and (d) a group interview with the instructional leadership team. Collectively, their experiences revealed that they practice action research as a multi-step process. However, the process is not ongoing, nor does it account for student learning outcomes. Instead, action research is time-consuming because the program requirements do not sufficiently differentiate based on participant needs. Ultimately, these findings offer strong support for discontinuing the current iteration of the evaluand; fill a qualitative gap in action-oriented teacher-led projects; and offer facilitators of professional development insight into how these teachers understand and practice action research as professional development.