Inquiry-oriented teaching is a specific form of active learning gaining popularity in teaching communities. The goal of inquiry-oriented classes is to help students in gaining a conceptual understanding of the material. My research focus is to gauge students’ performance and conceptual understanding in inquiry-oriented linear algebra classes. This work is part of a broader NSF funded project; Teaching Inquiry-Oriented Mathematics: Establishing Support (TIMES) (Grant # 1431393), and TIMES project was designed to support instructors to shift towards inquiry-oriented instruction/teaching. Being part of the TIMES team, a broader goal of my dissertation is pragmatic to the project that is to measure the effectiveness of inquiry-oriented teaching on students learning of linear algebra concepts. Through my research, my contribution to math education field is the development of a valid and reliable assessment instrument for instructors teaching linear algebra concepts in their classes. My dissertation is a mixed method research and follows a three-paper format, and in these papers I discuss (1) the development and validation of a reliable linear algebra assessment tool, (2) comparison of performance of students in inquiry-oriented classes with the students in non-inquiry-oriented classes by using the tool developed in the first paper, and (3) development of research-based choices and distractors to convert the current open-ended assessment into a multiple-choice test by looking into students’ ways of reasoning and problem-solving approaches. The first paper is a quantitative study in which I establish the validity of the linear algebra assessment, and I also measure the reliability of the assessment. In the second paper, I use the linear algebra assessment to measure students’ conceptual and procedural understanding of linear algebra concepts and to compare the performance of students in inquiry-oriented classes with the students in non-inquiry-oriented classes. In the final paper, I focus on the analysis of patterns in student responses, particularly to open-ended response items, to inform the multiple-choices and distractors for the open-ended questions on the linear algebra assessment. This analysis will help me to convert the existing linear algebra assessment into a multiple-choice format research tool that linear algebra researchers can use for various comparisons to gauge the effectiveness of interventions. Additionally, the multiple-choice format of the assessment will be easy to administer and grade, so instructors can also use the assessment to measure their students’ conceptual and procedural understanding of linear algebra concepts. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Teacher Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2018. / October 18, 2018. / Assessment Validation, Inquiry-Oriented Teaching, Linear Algebra / Includes bibliographical references. / Christine Andrews-Larson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Giray Ökten, University Representative; Ian Whitacre, Committee Member; Russell Almond, Committee Member.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a vocabulary tutoring intervention with defining key vocabulary terms and algebraic problem-solving skills of students who struggle with mathematics. Literature shows that there is a need to further explore how students with mathematical learning difficulties learn mathematics vocabulary at the post-secondary level. The participants for this study included five college-aged students, 18 years or older, who self-identified as struggling with mathematics. Each participant completed two vocabulary tutoring sessions each week and complete layered-look books during each session. The layered-look books included the vocabulary word, definition, an example, and non-example. The dependent variable was the percentage of correct answers on a six-question test. Each test will contain three vocabulary short answer questions and three multiple-choice algebraic exercises. The researcher used a multiple probe across behaviors, replicated across participants design to determine what effect mathematics vocabulary tutoring has on a student’s ability to define vocabulary terms and what effect mathematics vocabulary tutoring has on a student’s algebraic problem solving. The study included three phases: baseline, vocabulary tutoring (intervention), and maintenance. The researcher followed a modeling and guided practice teaching strategy to tutor the student. Based on the results of this study, it was concluded that the vocabulary tutoring intervention did help students learn the vocabulary. Three of the five participants showed a functional relationship between the vocabulary intervention and defining key vocabulary words. However, the vocabulary tutoring intervention did not help participants with the algebraic problem-solving examples. None of the five participants had three demonstrations of effect. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Teacher Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2019. / March 7, 2019. / Mathematics, Tutoring, Vocabulary / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth M. Jakubowski, Professor Directing Dissertation; Robert A. Schwartz, University Representative; Kelly J. Whalon, Committee Member; Jenny Rose Root, Committee Member.

In this dissertation I explore performances of Algerian sha‘bī music in Paris as affectively powerful experiences for the Algerian migrant community. Literally meaning “popular,” sha‘bī developed as a modernized form of colloquial sung poetry among the working class of mid-twentieth century Algiers and has remained a significant mode of cultural expression in the twenty-first century. By comparing a range of formal and informal contexts of performance, I consider the interdependency of place and intimacy in the expression of authority, morality, ecstasy, tradition, and communal belonging in sha‘bī praxis. I eschew dyadic constructions of home and exile and instead explore the idea of place in multiple guises, both real and imagined, as it either constrains or enables shared ecstatic experience among listeners. During successful sha‘bī performances, participants transform physical spaces into places of intimacy by entraining with one another’s emotional states. This state of shared heightened emotion is vested in the role of the shaykh, who moves the audience through skillful execution of sha‘bī’s musical conventions and his demonstration of textual knowledge through a convincing interpretation of the musical poetry. Central to this experience is the voice of the shaykh, which imbues the text with affective power and establishes the singer as the embodiment of tradition. As evoked metaphorically in the sung refrain of a well-known song, “Come, ask my heart to share with you its news and you’ll see that you own it and you know what you’ve done to it,” the singer invites the audience into a shared ritual of ecstatic, musical interaction in which bodily co-presence and emotional entrainment bring listeners together in collective effervescence. Perhaps most importantly, singers are imbued with moral virtues by adoring devotees, which allows them to shape the emotional experiences of individual performances. Informed by interviews and participant observations, I examine how the sha‘bī singer comes to embody the weight of tradition and joins with musicians and audiences to facilitate intimacy across a range of Parisian environments. In the process, I seek to illuminate why sha‘bī continues to be such a dynamic, meaningful mode of cultural expression for France’s Algerian diasporic community. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2019. / March 29, 2019. / Algeria, Diaspora, France, Ritual, Sha‘bī, Voice / Includes bibliographical references. / Margaret Jackson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Adam Gaiser, University Representative; Frank Gunderson, Committee Member; Michael B. Bakan, Committee Member.

This thesis examines the geology, history, law, policy and environmental effects of drilling for oil and gas in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. Annually, the Gulf supplies approximately 25% of the United States' oil and gas supplies. The U.S. Department of the Interior has divided the Gulf into three Planning Areas, the Eastern, Central, and Western. Historically, the Central and Western have had significantly more exploration and production activity than the Eastern due to lesser resources and Florida law and policy. Florida bases its restrictive policy toward drilling off its shores on the state's fragile ecology, economic dependence on tourism and military operations conducted in the Eastern Planning Area (EPA). Additionally, there are significantly fewer estimated petroleum reserves in the EPA. Currently, there is some exploration in the EPA on 1.5 million acres adjacent to the Central Planning Area and 100 miles from Florida's coast. Florida's government helped reduce the size of the area, known as the Lease Sale 181 area by 75% and continues to fight to maintain no leasing within 100 miles of Florida's unique shores. Environmentalists have recognized the decrease in size of Lease Sale 181 area is one of the most significant environmental victories by a state administration. Florida should continue to aggressively protect its fragile coastline, groundwater and biologic resources in all three branches of government. / A Thesis submitted to the Program in American and Florida Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2003. / Date of Defense: November 7, 2003. / Government, Energy, Petroleum, Gulf Of Mexico, Coastal / Includes bibliographical references. / Dennis D. Moore, Professor Directing Thesis; Terrell K. Arline, Committee Member; Joseph F. Donoghue, Committee Member.

This thesis examines the ways in which the underground newspapers of the late 1960s corroborated the growing sentiment that movement women were not considered as valuable to the revolution as movement men, thereby helping the then-burgeoning women's liberation movement to justify a full split from the rest of the leftist counter-culture. The late 1960S marked the height of the underground press's popularity as well as the beginning of the independent women's liberation movement. While women were banding together through consciousness-raising to expose their common dissatisfaction with patriarchal social structures, the underground press, mostly run by movement males, continued to allow mainstream, sexist concepts of gender to inform their papers' depiction of women. Women were used as sex objects (under the guise of being "sexually liberated"), icons of the revolution, helpmates, earth mothers, and in other symbolic ways, but were denied the voice and agency granted to men. As the women's liberation movement became more sophisticated in its goals and demands, this hypocrisy came into focus and became the subject of discussion. In the four-year period of this study, 1967-1970, important issues of sexual determinism, freedom of speech, and gender relations within the counter-culture came to a head and were expressed and discussed through the pages of the underground press. / A Thesis submitted to the Program in American and Florida Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2004. / Date of Defense: June 24, 2004. / Women, Underground Press, Second-Wave Feminism, 1960s, Alternative Press, Free Press / Includes bibliographical references. / Neil Jumonville, Professor Directing Thesis; John J. Fenstermaker, Committee Member; Ned Stuckey-French, Committee Member.

Generations of Americans believe that black political activism materialized in the decades of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Since this overwhelming view prevails, the history of local African Americans who made a means of not giving into racism in spite of the violent and recalcitrant oppression that had existed since the days of slavery is often overlooked. But blacks fought for, and at times secured, small victories on an individual or community level, although setbacks and challenges to those gains also occurred. The mis-impression that activism merely manifested itself in the days following either Emmitt Till’s murder or the Brown decision leaves generations of people missing, or erased, from the annals of history, and simply ignores the reality of making a movement on the ground. By expanding the parameters beyond the typical definition of the Civil Rights Movement, black activism from each successive generation after the Civil War emerges and provides a better understanding of race in America. Approaching the Southwest Georgia Movement through the lens of a longer evolving fight for racial equality, it becomes apparent that most of those involved were fighting against the ghost of Reconstruction. It was during this tumultuous episode that blacks had lost all gains garnered after the fall of the Confederacy (the Freedom Generation). Moreover, southerners found ways of restricting or erasing these liberties as the country transitioned into the Jim Crow era (the Terrorist Generation). The modern leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and Ralph David Abernathy, for example, rose to prominence by fighting against these segregation statutes, but their ultimate goal was to reclaim many of the gains of Reconstruction (the Protest Generation). / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / May 1, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Maxine D. Jones, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine Montgomery, University Representative; Andrew Frank, Committee Member; Katherine Mooney, Committee Member.

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The main goal of the study was to investigate high school advanced placement calculus teachers' subject matter and pedagogical perceptions by examining the following questions: What are the teachers' perceptions of the concept of limit, the role of limits, and the teaching of limits in calculus? Additionally, the sampling technique used shed some light on the question: Are these teachers' perceptions associated with their participation in a calculus reform project focused on staff development? A multi-case study approach involving detailed examination of six teachers (three had participated in a calculus reform project and three had not participated in any calculus reform project) was used. The data collected and analyzed included questionnaires, interviews, observational fieldnotes, videotapes of classroom instruction, journals, and written instructional documents. Upon completion of the data collection and analysis, detailed teacher profiles were created with respect to the questions above. The results of this study were then generated by searching for similarities and differences across the entire sample as well as comparing and contrasting the group of project teachers and the independent teachers. The teachers in this study perceived calculus as a linearly ordered set of topics in which the concept of limit formed the backbone for appreciating and understanding all other calculus topics. The teachers felt the intuitive understanding of limits was essential to further understanding of calculus. Nevertheless, little classtime was devoted to developing an intuitive understanding. Furthermore, little emphasis was given to drawing connections between limits and subsequent calculus topics. The independent teachers devoted considerable time to discussing formal epsilon-delta definition and arguments. The complex relationship between teachers' perceptions and classroom practice appeared to be affected by the significant influence of the teachers' goals of preparing students for the advanced placement exam and college calculus and the authority given to the calculus textbook. Differences between the group of independent teachers and the group of project teachers were found related to the following factors: (a) commitment to the textbook, (b) planning, (c) use of multiple representations, (d) attitude toward graphing technology, (e) classroom atmosphere, (f) examinations, (g) appropriate level of mathematical rigor needed for teaching calculus, and (h) the stability of perceptions. These factors, however, were not fully attributed to participation in the calculus reform project. / Graduation date: 1995

<p>&quot / This MA thesis investigates the decision to marginalize History in C2005 at a time when there were expectations of the importance of the discipline in a democratic South Africa. It argues that the marginalization of the discipline in C2005 was not solely based on pedagogical reasons, but that it might have been influenced by political agendas. My research provides support for this view with evidence of the procedures inside the relevant government education policy committees. In addition, it explores the debates and processes that led to the reinstatement of the discipline in the Revised National Curriculum Statement for schools that was approved in April 2002 by the South African Cabinet...&quot / </p>

This teaching guide consists of unit plans for the various divisions of earth science. The plans are, as the title suggests, a guide for the teacher and could be used In conjunction with any number of earth science textbooks; the writer has elected to use Modern Earth Science as a text reference because it was judged that this text covers the material presented better than any other book available, Unit Fourteen, however, is not covered by the text and so will be presented by means of outside readings from current popular magazines.The units need not be presented in the order written. Alternate arrangements could be employed in order that student Interest In the topics might be met.Material In this guide consists of original thoughts derived from college earth science sources plus ideas culled from existing texts and guides.