The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore through the lens of culturally responsive instruction (CRI) the development of teachers’ sense of efficacy, as defined by Bandura (1995), to address the literacy learning of diverse first, second, or third grade (i.e., primary grade level) students. In this process, I purposively selected the location and the participants because answering my research questions required that I conduct the investigation within learning settings where culturally and linguistically diverse students in the primary grade levels (i.e., first, second, or third grade) receive literacy instruction. My time in the field and my comprehensive focus on the participants and their teaching practices allowed me to gather rich descriptive data concerning the participants’ perspectives, experiences, and teaching practices through multiple traditional case study data collection means. Four overarching themes emerged from within, between, and across case analysis as significant in the development of teachers’ sense of efficacy to address the literacy learning of their pluralistic student populations in a culturally responsive manner. The themes include: (1) Perspectives shaping literacy instruction provision, (2) Understanding what constitutes CRI, (3) The impact of establishing a collaborative teaching community on the development of teachers’ sense of efficacy, and (4) Foundations of culturally responsive teachers’ sense of efficacy. I base my recommendations for the development of inservice teachers’ sense of efficacy to address the literacy learning of their students using CRI and my recommendations for future research on my study findings.

State and national standards, including the Common Core State Standards, state that students should be expected to learn to discuss and analyze texts, comprehend ideas in increasingly complex texts, and justify their thinking. Literature circles are an instructional practice suggested by many educational writers as an instructional practice that can help students meet these standards; however, research examining the impact literature circles have on students and their teacher in the classroom is needed. The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation of literature circles in a classroom by examining how students engage in the literature circle process and the instructional practices that contribute to the level of engagement that is experienced by the students during literature. Vygotsky’s socio-cultural learning theory provides a context to understand the impact that literature circles and learning with and through others have on students. The data revealed that students engaged in the literature circle process by participating in discussions, through purposeful collaboration, and by thinking critically. The data also revealed that the level of student engagement was influenced by several practices the teacher had in place. These included (a) purposeful tasks and learning; (b) choice, (c) questioning; (d) argumentative reading and writing; and (e) role sheets. This research demonstrates the ways that using literature circles supported authentic literacy in a 5th grade classroom. Implications include instructional practices that supported engagement including purposeful tasks and learning, choice, and questioning. These instructional practices helped students learn to think critically, have evidence-based discussions, and justify their thoughts and ideas about texts. Additionally, this research has specific implications for the use of role sheets. Role sheets are frequently recommended as a practice for scaffolding student engagement, although little empirical research supports their use. Data from this study suggest that using role sheets as a conversation scaffold and as a means to train students to participate in discussion can support engagement but that discontinuing their use once students are comfortable having text-based conversations and tracking their thinking may be beneficial.

Traditional help services have problems reaching out to people with substance abuseproblems. Some individuals choose to seek help for recovery from anonymous others online.This study examines the social support within an online support group for individualssuffering from drug abuse, specifically, the drug rehabilitation forum on the Internetcommunity Flashback forum. By looking at the social support in the forum through aqualitative content analysis nine forum threads have been examined. To seek help from otherswithout the pressure of going straight edge as well as an easily accessible tool for differentstages of the process of recovery, the Internet community and forum is an alternative helpchannel and/or complement to traditional services and support. The study also shows that, aswell as social learning theory can explain how individuals begin drug abuse, the theory canalso shed light on how individuals learn to stop their drug abuse.

No description available.

Formal instructional design (ID) theories, intended to guide instructional designers' decision-making and design practices, have grown in abundance in recent years. These ID theories are based on learning theories that form the foundation for applied work in the field. However, researchers are concerned that these theories may not be applicable to the day-to-day practice of instructional designers. While some studies investigate the application of ID process models, studies of learning theory and ID theory in practice are rare. Consequently, there is little information about the nature and extent of the gap between our field's theory and its practice. This qualitative study investigated whether theory is actually being used by practicing instructional designers and why. Researchers interviewed seven practitioners on three occasions and examined the artifacts of their work. Drawing upon hermeneutic, phenomenological, and ethnographic traditions of inquiry, results were analyzed, generating eight themes and four suggestions. These themes highlighted that these practitioners generally valued learning and ID theory, but also found theoretical ideas from other disciplines applicable. Few referenced theory regularly and most did not spend much time updating themselves on the theory of the field. Most said they rely on intuition to make design decisions in their work, and that theory is one among several significant influences that impact their decisions. Most said that their training in theory would have been more useful if it was more practice oriented. The four suggestions were (a) to create reference implementations of new theories in multiple context via industry partnerships, (b) to create theories that adapt to practical pressures, (c) to allocate significant time for learners in ID training programs to apply theory in practical settings under expert theoretical guidance, and (d) to expand professional development opportunities for practitioners that focus on exemplary implementations of theory in practical settings. The overarching implication of this study is that the relevance of theoretical work to practitioners is directly impacted by the practicality of the theory in the hands of typical practitioners and that more measures can be readily implemented by theorists and by those who train and mentor practitioners to bring this about.

<p>Real-world datasets are rarely clean. This causes the discrepancy between the claimed performance of machine learning algorithms on paper, and their actual performance on real-world problems. When dealing with missing or hidden information in a dataset, researchers have been using heuristic imputation methods since the first day of machine learning. However, it is known that many imputation methods do not have theoretical guarantees in various machine learning tasks, including clustering, community detection, sparsity recovery, to name a few. On the other hand, theoretical machine learning papers often follow simplistic assumptions, which are rarely fulfilled in real-world datasets. My research focuses on developing statistically and computationally efficient learning algorithms with provable guarantees under novel incomplete and latent assumptions. We consider problems with arguably more realistic incomplete and latent assumptions.We provide analysis to community detection in various network models, inference with latent variables in an arbitrary planted model, federated myopic community detection, and high-order tensor models. We analyze the interaction between the missing or latent structures and the inference / recoverability conditions, and proposed algorithms to solve the problems efficiently. <br> <br> Our main contributions in this thesis are as follows.<br> </p> <ol> <li>We analyze the information-theoretic limits for the recovery of node labels in several network models. We analyze the information-theoretic limits for community detection. We carefully construct restricted ensembles for a subclass of network models, and provide a series of novel results. </li> <li>We analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for exact inference of a latent model. We show that exact inference can be achieved using a semidefinite programming approach without knowing either the latent variables or their domain. Our analysis predicts the experimental correctness of SDP with high accuracy, showing the suitability of our focus on the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions and the spectrum of a properly defined matrix.</li> <li>We study the problem of recovering the community structure of a network under federated myopic learning. Under this paradigm, we have several clients, each of them having a myopic view, i.e., observing a small subgraph of the network. Each client sends a censored evidence graph to a central server. We provide an efficient algorithm, which computes a consensus signed weighted graph from clients evidence, and recovers the underlying network structure in the central server. We analyze the topological structure conditions of the network, as well as the signal and noise levels of the clients that allow for recovery of the network structure. Our analysis shows that exact recovery is possible and can be achieved in polynomial time.</li> <li>We study the problem of exact partitioning of high-order models. We consider two different high-order assumptions, and show that exact partitioning of high-order planted models is achievable through solving a convex optimization problem with a novel Carathéodory symmetric tensor cone in one case, and with a tensor nuclear norm constraint in the other.</li> <li>We study the problem of inference in high-order structured prediction tasks. We apply a generative model approach to study the problem of high-order inference, and provide a two-stage convex optimization algorithm for exact label recovery. We also connect the performance of our algorithm and the hyperedge expansion property using a novel hypergraph Cheeger-type inequality.</li> <li>We study the problem of partial recovery through semidefinite programming. We are interested in the scenarios in which the SDP returns a solution that is partially correct without any rounding. We analyze the optimality condition of partial recovery and provide statistical and topological guarantees. </li> </ol>

Background: The growing importance of online mode as an effective alternative was accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Considering the differences of experiences that teachers and students of online Business education of in developed and developing countries faced during the pandemic, there is a need for a comparative study of the experiences in this field to point out the challenges and opportunities in using online Business education during crisis like Covid-19 and guide countries. The significance of sensemaking in online education during crisis and the role of Experiential Learning in making sense of online education and its lack of emphasis in Business discipline calls for discussing the role of Experiential Learning in sensemaking of the online educational experiences of teachers and learners of Business programs in countries of different developmental context, identifying the best practices to provide them with necessary guidelines and help use online mode effectively during crisis. Aim: The main purpose is to compare between developed and developing countries regarding the role of Experiential Learning in the sensemaking of the experiences of teachers and learners in online business education during crisis in order to provide guidelines to for using online mode effectively during crisis. Methodology: This is a qualitative study conducted through semi-structured interviews for primary data collection. Primary data was collected by interviewing teachers and students of Business programs of Linkoping University in Sweden and University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. 13 interviews were conducted from Linkoping University and 12 interviews were conducted from University of Dhaka. Thematic analysis method was used to analyze the findings. Findings: Findings indicate that teachers and students of Business Programs can effectively use online Business education during crisis by adapting Experiential Learning Cycle for retrospective learning when no knowledge or resource is available, Converging learning when knowledge is available and accommodating style when support for resource skill or knowledge is insufficient. The main difference in experience between developed and developing countries are the availability of resource, training and knowledge. / <p>The presentation was held online as the author of the thesis was in Dhaka, Bangladesh at that time. </p>

Research has unearthed an abundance of objectification and hypersexualization of female characters within video games. However, the recurring element of the damsel in distress trope is also harmful to the medium. This cliché of a helpless princess in need of a man to save her is a recurring element of The Legend of Zelda series. This experimental design tested the effects of a prototypical œsave the princess mission on players agreement to sexist statements on gender roles, objectification, and female dependency, and examined the factors of self-efficacy and gamer status as potential mediators. Participants played a modified version of a classic Legend of Zelda game, where the genders of the hero protagonist and damsel are manipulated. This 2 x 2 study included male and female heroes rescuing male and female victims in the four different cells. Immediately following the experiment, participants then took a post-test survey to gauge if there was any difference on their agreement to sexist statements. These results were also compared to their previous responses on their self-efficacy scores and their gamer status.

Late adolescence and early emerging adulthood are important developmental time periods during which transitions to adulthood begins including independence from one's parents. While adolescents spend more time away from their homes, especially as they start attending college, the influence of their parents is still salient. Parental psychological control has been shown to impact adolescents' developmental outcomes, including their engagement in relational aggression. While past research has focused mostly on children and young adolescents, the current study seeks to explore the bidirectional associations between parental psychological control and relational aggression among late adolescents and early emerging adults. It also seeks to explore adolescent sex as a potential moderator. Using the Flourishing Families Project data, the results revealed that across ages 16-19, there were significant bidirectional associations. However, there were no sex differences. Several important implications as well as suggestions for future studies are drawn.

Primary care within the United States’ health care system is evolving to address increases in chronic conditions across the lifespan that impact individuals’ daily lives, and the health care system’s performance and cost. Even as interprofessional primary care teams aim to manage a large majority of health needs over time, these teams often lack the skilled professionals necessary to address function in daily life. Occupational therapy’s distinct value as experts in evaluation and intervention for health-related occupational development, adaptation, prevention and management can address this problem. However, continued education and additional tools are necessary in order for occupational therapists to increase their knowledge of the profession’s role in primary care, increase self-efficacy in promoting occupational therapy to stakeholders, and increase self-efficacy to utilize resources for research and establishing occupational therapy in primary care settings. The proposed online course "Occupational Therapy in Primary Care: What, Why, Where, & How?" is specifically targeted to occupational therapists to addresses these outcomes. Theoretical and historical evaluation of occupational therapy in primary care in the United States and Canada supports understanding the problem and mechanisms that can help navigate efforts to include occupational therapy in primary care. Diffusion of Innovations and Adult Learning Theory guide the course’s two-phases of development and dissemination. This project is a timely contribution to the emerging area of occupational therapy in primary care that supports the Institute for Health Care Improvements’ (IHI) Triple Aim to improve the individual experience of care, health of populations and reduce per capita cost of care.