Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Observing emotional responses is recognized as a valuable clinical skill in a variety of professions, including applied behavior analysis. Emotional responses can flag possible contingencies thereby guiding a behavior analyst to better select valid measures, goals, and procedures. Additionally, emotional responses can be goals in and of themselves. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of a workshop on the observation and description of emotional responses by behavior analysts-in-training. The procedures included instructions, modeling, practice, discussion and feedback. The workshop included a blend of trainer presentation and interteaching strategies. The effects of the workshop were evaluated using a single-subject A-B design with multiple probe measures across four students. During probe assessments participants watched short video clips of family interactions and wrote a descriptive narrative in response to several questions. This created a permanent record for quantitative evaluation and analysis. The study resulted in an increase in the number of descriptions of emotional responses among all participants. The participants also increased responses tying the emotional response to external environmental events more often in the post-workshop assessment than the pre-workshop assessment. Results are discussed within the context of training applied behavior analysts, the analysis of verbal behavior, and the role of emotions in clinical practice.

Development of the Jordan Performance Appraisal System (JPAS) was completed in 1996. This study examined the factor structure of the classroom observation instrument used in the JPAS. Using observed classroom instructional quality ratings of 1220 elementary teachers of Grades 1-6 in the Jordan School District, this study estimated the factor structure of the data and the rater effect on relevant structural parameters. This study also tested for measurement invariance at the within and between levels across teachers of two grade-level groups (a) lower grades: Grades 1-3 and (b) upper grades: Grades 4-6. Factor structure was estimated using complex exploratory factor analysis (EFA) conducted on a subset of the original data. The analysis provided evidence of a three-factor model for the combined groups. The results of multiple confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) conducted using a different subset of the data cross-validated EFA results. Results from multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) indicated the three-factor model fit best at both the within and the between levels, and that the intraclass correlation (ICC) was high (.699), indicating significant rater-level variance. Results from a multilevel multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MLMG-CFA) indicated that the ICC was not significantly different between groups. Results also indicated configural, metric (weak factorial), and scalar (strong factorial) equivalence between groups. This study provided one of the first examples of how to estimate the impact of cluster-level variables such as rater on grouping variables nested at the within level. It provided an example of how to conduct a multilevel multigroup analysis on count data. It also disproved the assumption that counting classroom teaching behaviors was less subjective than using a categorical rating scale. These results will provide substantial information for future developments made to the classroom observation instrument used in the JPAS.

Submitted by Geandra Rodrigues (geandrar@gmail.com) on 2018-04-04T18:53:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ricardoferreiralopes.pdf: 21783775 bytes, checksum: d202d27c32690c024b328c305f3f6b79 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2018-04-05T11:17:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ricardoferreiralopes.pdf: 21783775 bytes, checksum: d202d27c32690c024b328c305f3f6b79 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-05T11:17:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ricardoferreiralopes.pdf: 21783775 bytes, checksum: d202d27c32690c024b328c305f3f6b79 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-12-18 / PROQUALI (UFJF) / Esta tese tem por objetivo investigar possíveis alternativas estratégicas para o ensino do desenho de observação na arquitetura e urbanismo à luz da Fenomenologia da Percepção. Constata-se uma significativa mudança no pensamento e no comportamento das novas gerações de alunos ingressantes nas universidades, inseridas em uma cultura cada vez mais tecnológica e imagética, afetadas incessantemente por imagens visuais. As experiências vivenciais necessárias ao amadurecimento cognitivo estão se fundindo à velocidade e simultaneidade. A mudança no paradigma representacional implica em novas atitudes no âmbito da docência do ensino superior, o que incide no exercício de reflexão sobre outros caminhos para o ensino desta competência. Em oposição ao pensamento representacionista, argumenta-se a favor de um ganho cognitivo no aprendizado do desenho, ao promover atividades que primam pela produção de “imagens multissensoriais”, i.e. tomadas tanto na sua dimensão do sensível, quanto no campo da interpretação e da construção de novos significados possíveis. Emerge, pois, um desenho proveniente de sensações mediadas pelo corpo, memória e imaginação, sem se limitar à representação do quadro perspectivo abstrato, exterior e unicamente compromissado com a realidade visiva. Com efeito, priorizou-se por uma conduta de suspender preconceitos estéticos nos discentes, entendendo que estes, naturalmente associam a prática do desenho ao compromisso de descrição gráfica mimética do real. O desenho é compreendido como um meio dinâmico e ativo de se afetar, interagir e construir um sentido de mundo. A metodologia adotada envolve uma revisão teórica, histórica e filosófica, bem como estabelece uma análise fenomenológica, a partir de discursos apreendidos por meio da pesquisa-ação. A fim de confrontar o ensino do desenho tradicional com a abordagem pretendida, algumas experiências foram realizadas na Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (FAU-UFJF), Minas Gerais-MG, Brasil. Por fim, são aventadas algumas proposições embasadas na abordagem proposta, de forma direcionar os alunos para uma visão mais sensível em relação aos espaços arquitetônicos, urbanos e paisagísticos. / This thesis aims to investigate possible strategic alternatives for the teaching of observational drawing in architecture and urbanism in the light of the Phenomenology of Perception. It is noticed a significant change in the thinking and behavior of the new generations of students entering universities, inserted in an increasingly technological and imagetic culture, incessantly affected by visual images. The lived experiences necessary for cognitive maturation are merging with speed and simultaneity. The change in the representational paradigm implies new attitudes in the scope of higher education teaching, which focuses on the exercise of reflection on other ways to teach this competency. In opposition to Representationalism thinking, it is argued in favor of a cognitive gain in drawing learning by promoting activities that focus on the production of "multisensory images", ie. taken both in their dimension of the sensitive and in the field of interpretation and construction of possible new meanings. Thus, a drawing emerges from sensations mediated by the body, memory and imagination, without limiting itself to the representation of the abstract perspective picture plan, external and only committed to the visual reality. In fact, it was prioritized by a behavior of suspending aesthetic prejudices in the students, understanding that they naturally associate the practice of drawing with the commitment of mimetic description of the real. Drawing is understood as a dynamic and active way of affecting, interacting, and building a sense of the world. The methodology adopted involves a theoretical, historical and philosophical revision, as well as it establishes a phenomenological analysis, from discourses seized through action research. In order to compare the teaching of traditional drawing with the intended approach, some experiments were accomplished at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (FAU-UFJF), Minas Gerais-MG, Brazil. Lastly, some propositions based on the proposed approach are raised, in order to direct the students to a more sensitive view in relation to the architectural, urban and landscape spaces.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Dean Zollman / As part of a collaborative study of the science preparation of elementary school teachers, we investigated the quality of students’ reasoning and explored the relationship between sophistication of reasoning and the degree to which the courses were considered inquiry oriented. To probe students’ reasoning, we developed open-ended written content questions with the distinguishing feature of applying recently learned concepts in a new context. We devised a protocol for developing written content questions that provided a common structure for probing and classifying students’ sophistication level of reasoning. In designing our protocol, we considered several distinct criteria, and classified students’ responses based on their performance for each criterion. First, we classified concepts into three types: Descriptive, Hypothetical, and Theoretical and categorized the abstraction levels of the responses in terms of the types of concepts and the inter-relationship between the concepts. Second, we devised a rubric based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy with seven traits (both knowledge types and cognitive processes) and a defined set of criteria to evaluate each trait. Along with analyzing students’ reasoning, we visited universities and observed the courses in which the students were enrolled. We used the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) to rank the courses with respect to characteristics that are valued for the inquiry courses. We conducted logistic regression for a sample of 18 courses with about 900 students and reported the results for performing logistic regression to estimate the relationship between traits of reasoning and RTOP score. In addition, we analyzed conceptual structure of students’ responses, based on conceptual classification schemes, and clustered students’ responses into six categories. We derived regression model, to estimate the relationship between the sophistication of the categories of conceptual structure and RTOP scores. However, the outcome variable with six categories required a more complicated regression model, known as multinomial logistic regression, generalized from binary logistic regression. With the large amount of collected data, we found that the likelihood of the higher cognitive processes were in favor of classes with higher measures on inquiry. However, the usage of more abstract concepts with higher order conceptual structures was less prevalent in higher RTOP courses.