Thesis (M.A. in Sociology)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2006. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Studies on mixed race and/or ethnicity families have tended to focus on the child’s struggle with identity. Although this topic is very important, in order to better understand how mixed families function as a whole, and how mixed children are socialised, my thesis explored the entire family, with a focus on the parents and kin. Specifically, I looked at the negotiations that take place between the Japanese mothers’ and British fathers’ differences, and the way in which culture, including customs, beliefs, and preferences, are then shared and transmitted to the mixed children. This qualitative, ethnographic study focused on twelve Japanese/British families in Edinburgh. Because socialisation and the transmission of culture tend to happen in the midst of doing mixed family, the following areas of the mixed families’ lives were explored: everyday lived culture, language choices, and food habits. When examining the foods eaten and the languages spoken by the mixed families, it seems that the mixed families are attempting to transmit both their linguistic and culinary heritages to their children, with their aspiration being to raise bilingual, bicultural children. In addition, this study explored the role that extended family and friends play in the lives of the mixed families as they attempt to form their new mixed family culture. The data collection was the result of 26 months of fieldwork consisting of participant observation at three local Japanese mother/toddler playgroups, interviews with both parents and extended family members, and home observations. Some major findings from the study were that, while mothers still tend to carry a heavier burden when it comes to everyday parenting, particularly in the domestic sphere, the fathers were also found to be involved in many aspects of everyday parenting. Additionally, both maternal and paternal kin were also found to offer the mixed families various types of support, with the most frequently mentioned types of support being practical and emotional. Further, mixed families were found to complicate this idea of ‘national culture’ because nationality is not tied to a culture. In this way, the transmission of culture becomes more fluid, allowing the British man to transmit “Japanese” customs and the Japanese woman to share her “British” interests with her children. Finally, while focusing on the intergenerational transmission of culture from parent to child, we find that children do indeed have agency in the transmission of culture, as they are the ones who ultimately decide whether their cultural heritage is a gift or a burden. The study thus offers a nuanced picture of mixed family lives in contemporary UK.

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A common goal in medical research is to determine the effect that a treatment has on subjects over time. Unfortunately, the analysis of data from such clinical trials often omits several aspects of the study design, leading to incorrect or misleading conclusions. In this paper, a major objective is to show via case studies that randomized controlled trials with longitudinal designs must account for correlation and clustering among observations in order to make proper statistical inference. Further, the effects of outliers in a multi-center, randomized controlled trial with multiple layers of clustering are examined and strategies for detecting and dealing with outlying observations and clusters are discussed. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Computational Mathematics / MS; / Thesis;

My work investigates both the objective and the subjective nature of my intimate relationship with nature. I explore my embrace of both art and science, the realistic and the abstract in my search for the immanence of goodness in creation. From a grain of pollen to a beautiful blossom to a decaying pod, the natural world celebrates life’s insistence on recreating itself. All around me, nature is quietly dancing to a peaceful song of restoration and balance that offers me hope of a continuance and beauty in spite of the neglect I sometimes offer in return. My recent work, in paintings, prints, and mixed media, features the unassuming forms of plants from backyard gardens and neighborhood walks, both those that are cultivated and those that spring up as weeds.

Blank space in western Art History and visual culture is something that has tended to be either explained away, or ignored. Pictures that do not depict challenge the visual basis of the ego and its others, confronting what I call the 'Phallic reader' (who sees according to the logic and rules of the Phallogocentric system he inhabits) and potentially disturbing his sense of the visible. The Phallic reader, the visible and the seeing ego's sense of how to see, meet in what I call the 'psychic surface'. Deploying this notion of a 'psychic surface' allows for readings which move on from the potentially confining logic of the Phallus. Paradoxically, the psychic structure of monochrome's liminal blankness is homologous to the indeterminate Mixed Race subject, whose body transgresses not only the foundational historical binarism of 'Black/White', but also Lacanian psychoanalysis. This thesis aims to concentrate on exploring blank spaces, with particular reference to the monochrome within western Art History. Building on the considerable work since at least the 1960s that critiques the binary logocentrism of Eurocentric, Hegelian-originated Art History, this thesis aims to explore the specific ways monochrome evades, undermines and tricks commonly accepted 'groundrules' of Art History. The Phallic reader is severely restricted in understanding that which falls outside of the signifying logic of a particular system of Art History that follows a binary, teleological and Phallogocentric course. Both monochrome and the Mixed Race subject fall outside of this logic, as both contain the structure of the trick. In each case, the trick is activated in the tension between the prychica nd the opticals urfaces. I suggestt hat monochrome's psychic space is pre-Phallic, a space of eternal deferral of meaning, a space that playfully makes a nonsense of binary structures. Psychoanalysis is largely used here as an analytic tool, but also appears as an object of critique. Art History provides an anchor for the optical surfaces under discussion. Theories of 'radical superficiality' both contradict and complement these ways of theorising the psychic surface. The trick/ster is a significant/signifiant means of deploying interdisciplinary methodologies to negotiate this difficult terrain between Black, White and monochrome. An interdisciplinary approach also enacts the psychic structure of indeterminacy of my objects of study. I hope that by proposing a potential transgressive power for those indeterminate things that continue to confound the binary systems that aim to contextualise and confine them, I will contribute to the areas of Visual Culture and 'Race' Theory.

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / There is widespread agreement that language skill underpins reading comprehension (e.g. Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopoulos, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Snow, 1991), and empirical work over the last 20 years has shown positive effects of dialogic instruction on student literacy outcomes. This suggests the importance of the engagement with others in the learning process as a scaffold for academic literacy skills (Wells, 1999). Research in this area has shown a number of important features of dialogic instruction to be positively correlated with literacy skills, but it is still not well understood how teachers guide and support students in developing language abilities for reading comprehension. Drawing on dialogic theories of language and the simple view of reading model (Hoover & Gough, 1990), and using a convergent mixed method analysis, the study explores how features of dialogic instruction relate to students' reading comprehension outcomes, and identifies themes within the patterns and variations of these features during instruction. Multilevel modeling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) and case study analysis (Merriam, 1998; Stake, 2006; Yin, 2009) are used to identify significant talk moves for reading comprehension and to qualify the content and function of these moves in their instructional contexts. Quantitative analyses showed five significant talk moves predicted reading comprehension achievement, including the rate of uptake questions, teacher explanations, and low-quality evaluations. High rates of student explanations and high-quality questions were predictive of lower reading outcomes. Case study analyses show a preponderance of teacher talk, a lack of quantity and quality to student talk, and an efferent stance (Rosenblatt, 1994) toward reading. These findings indicate a lack of dialogic practices across the grades and classrooms. However, there were opportunities for dialogic practices that support students' linguistic comprehension. Overall, this analysis showed mixed results for the importance of dialogic instructional moves, and indicates the importance of teacher talk to facilitate linguistic comprehension, as well as the promise of talk moves that incorporate student attention and participation around texts. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.