The purpose of this study was to examine how second graders use writing and language when they are learning to add multidigit numbers in mathematics class. Second grade students were taught addition conceptually with a focus on sharing their strategies and thought processes with each other during the mathematics lesson. Two social norms were established with students so that sharing information and asking for clarity when they did not understand would be natural and expected. Students kept a daily mathematics journal to answer the class's Problems of the Day. Patterns found in student journals indicated three stages of multidigit learning. In Stage One, students used little or no words to explain their solution, illustrations show students using counting by ones strategies. Stage Two represents students using appropriate mathematics strategies and vocabulary to explain their solutions in detail. Lastly, Stage Three consists of students solving multidigit problems with little or no word explaining their solution process and illustrations are few. Results of the study indicated that students' oral explanations of solutions to addition problems included more detail compared to students' written justification of similar problems.

There is minimal research on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (GBTQ) dating violence on college campuses. This qualitative study was facilitated using focus groups that included students that identified as being GBTQ at the University of Central Florida (UCF). The focus group questions were open ended in a discussion format. Participants were recruited from student organizations like the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Student Union (GLBSU) and Knight Allies on campus. There were a total of 10 students that participated in 2 different focus group sessions. Student's attitudes, thoughts and opinions about dating violence on college campuses in GBTQ relationships were collected. Additionally, participants provided their own definitions of the term dating violence. The students were most comfortable discussing dating violence among heterosexual couples, but did provide their thoughts about this issue in the GBTQ community. The results show that students had differing ideas on what constitutes a dating relationship, and behaviors that are positive and acceptable in GBTQ relationships, but are not considered socially acceptable. One example of this was public displays of affection. In addition, students identified negative behaviors in violent relationships that seem to follow some of the common themes that were found in the current literature. Participants were not aware of current efforts at UCF to address college campus dating violence from a prevention standpoint, but were familiar with intervention services offered on campus. They provided ideas on social messages that would be effective on campus to raise awareness about dating violence in the GBTQ community.

Research on learning to teach mathematics reveals that mathematics teaching is a complex process (Lerman, 2000) and classroom teaching and learning is a “multifaceted, extraordinarily complex phenomenon” (O’Connor, 1998, p. 43). Moreover, research reveals that the mathematics reform agenda has had an impact on what happens in the mathematics classroom, however, the impact has been superficial (Kazemi & Stipek, 2001) with teachers often retaining their pre-reform habits and attitudes in regards to mathematics teaching and learning (O’Connor, 1998). This study examined the reform discourse practices that three novice teachers, who had been enrolled in a reform based methods course during their preservice teacher education program, adopted, adapted, or ignored as they attempted to engage students in mathematical conversations. Data sources included interviews, field notes, artifacts, and transcripts of videotaped classroom lessons. The primary research questions guiding this study included: 1) What reformoriented discourses practices do novice teachers, who participated in a reform-based mathematics methods course adopt? What practices do they adapt? What practices do they ignore as they engage students in mathematics conversations? and 2) What issues and challenges surface as novice teachers begin to enact reform-oriented discourse practices? Results indicated that despite holding beliefs that reflect the basic tenets of mathematics reform, theses novice teachers represent a continuum of practices ranging from traditional to reform. Evidence suggests that adopting the reform-oriented practice of eliciting different solutions was critical in the development of social norms that reflect mathematics reform. Eliciting different solutions served to focus classroom conversations on meaningful student generated explanations and justifications. Moreover, evidence suggests that enacting the practice of eliciting different solutions was instrumental in enacting other reform-orientated practices associated with the development of reformoriented socialmathematical norms. Lastly, results indicate that the pressures of teaching in an underperforming school, as defined by state standardized high stakes tests, can impact a novice teacher’s ability and willingness to adopt mathematics reform practices.

What does it mean to act morally? This research is part of normative ethics, which studies the formation of moral judgments and whether such judgments are able to motivate people to act in accordance with them. The gap between the dimension of the common good and the private life of each citizen has led to questioning whether there are moral norms whose content may constitute, per se, a sufficient reason for action. More specifically, when a norm, collectively chosen and shared, succeeds in self-imposing without any intervention of external authority.The interest for this theme arises from the urgency of defining conditions under which a group of interdependent agents, can organize themselves to obtain long-term collective benefits, find in collective action, a motivation, a commitment and a responsibility that decrease the temptation of opportunistic behaviour in distribution contexts. The main goal of this inquiry is trying to propose a normative solution of a problem of distributive justice in the following terms of: how can a norm generate a motivational causal force that induces compliance with what it asserts, in contexts where selfish rather than prosocial behaviour would be expected? This problem, approached from different perspectives, economic, psychological, sociological, also requires a philosophical reflection. Within this framework, the issue of compliance might be reread as a motivational problem: thus, the aim of this thesis would be to try to clarify the relationship between an impartial ethical point of view and what kind of real motivations people have to act in accordance with some specific ethical principles – namely, what reasons people have for acting in alignment with principles of distributive justice. Thus, the dissertation provides evidence from laboratory experiments that supports John Rawls’s Kantian constructivism as a method that allows subjects to evaluate different distribution criteria in production situations, making them reach an agreement on the liberal egalitarian principle. The Rawlsian method would rationally justify the ex-ante collective choice on that principle and it gives real motivations to comply ex-post, as it provides the conditions for creating a rationally justified joint commitment.

Due to societal and economic costs caused by compulsive consumption behavior, specifically problem drinking and overeating, a search has been launched for a cognitive explanation for the ‘deviant’ behaviors and the motivations that cause these behaviors to continue. This dissertation attempted to develop a better understanding of continued compulsive consumption behavior by investigating consumers’ use of the techniques of neutralization theory. Based on methodological concerns in neutralization research, the development of reliable and valid measures of the five techniques of neutralization theory were described and used to examine their moderation of compulsive consumption behavior and its relationship with social norm commitment and guilt. The dissertation resulted in developing four reliable and valid neutralization technique scales. The results of the structural model suggested a negative relationship between social norms and compulsive consumption behavior and a multiple regression indicated a partial moderation of certain neutralization techniques of this relationship. This dissertation has provided a better understanding of the cognitive process surrounding a consumer’s compulsive consumption behavior, the techniques used to allow the behavior to continue, and marketing applications to entice consumers to stop the behavior.

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This thesis sets out to investigate the representation of smartphones by one of the biggest English daily newspapers of the world – the New York Times – and further sheds light on the potential influence the newspaper has on the norms of smartphone behavior. The research is conducted in two parts. For the first research question through a quantitative and the second research question a qualitative content analysis of New York Times articles about smartphones from the years 2007 and 2016. For the content analysis as well as the analysis of the results three different theoretical frameworks are applied: Stuart Hall’s (1997b) representation theory, McGuire’s (2001) media effect factors and social norms theory, mainly according to Cristina Bicchieri (2017). Since assumptions on the outcome of research question one exist on the grounds of previous research conducted in the field, two hypotheses were formed:H1 – In 2007 the coverage of smartphones will be mainly positive and focus on technological aspects.H2 – In 2016 the coverage will be more critical about the consequences of the pervasion and influence of the smartphone in society.The main findings of the thesis are, for research question one, a validation of the hypotheses through the quantitative content analysis and application of the representation theory through which a distinction in the representation of the smartphones denotation and connotation could be made. And for research question two, that the strongest potential of influence on norms of smartphone behavior lies in conveying and updating and thus sometimes changing of empirical and normative expectations together with further intertwined factors.

This dissertation consists of three essays studying the determination and evolution of labor supply in China. The analysis especially focuses on the labor market behavior of the wage workers with urban registration (Hukou). The first chapter outlines the dissertation by briefly discussing the motivations, methods, and main findings in each of the following chapters. Chapter two examines the evolution of female labor supply in urban China. Female labor force participation rate in China has been declining rapidly over the last three decades. Using a time series of cross-sections from the Chinese Household Income Project Series (CHIPS), this chapter attempts to systematically relate the decrease in female labor force participation to the socio-economic changes happening in China during the same period, and assess their respective contributions. Adopting both linear and non-linear decomposition techniques, the results show that during 1988-1995, changes in population age distribution and family size both contribute, during 1995-2002, age effect dominates, and during 2002-2007, non-labor income effect dominates in explaining the decreasing trend in female labor force participation. Chapter three investigates the impact of social norms on married women's labor supply decision in China. Using data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS) and the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we find a strong and robust positive correlation between the labor supply behavior of a married woman and the former work experience of her mother-in-law. Our estimation results indicate that being raised by a working mother influences both a man's attitude toward gender roles and his household productivity, and therefore married women whose mothers-in-law were not working are themselves significantly less likely to participate in the labor force. The last chapter evaluates the labor market consequence of rural-to-urban migration in China. Starting from the mid-1990s, there is a remarkable increase in the number of migrant workers in cities, from around 39 million in 1997 to 145 million by 2009 (Meng et al. 2013). Chapter four intends to explore how does this important economic event affect the labor market conditions of urban residents. Specifically, we estimate the possible employment and earnings displacement effects of rural-to-urban migration on urban residents by exploiting regional variation in the rural migrant share of education-experience cells. We use multiple sets of instrumental variable to address the potential endogeneity problems associated with the rural migrant ratio in a city. The estimation results are consistent with the predictions of the textbook model of a competitive labor market, indicating the inflow of rural migrants reduces the wage and labor supply of competing urban residents. / Ph. D.