This dissertation offers an ethnographic exploration of higher education sexual violence prevention initiatives through the perspectives of professional staff whose mission is to counter what many call a pandemic of sexual violence. Central to my examination are the emic theories and language ideologies underlying prevention professionals'…

The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has resulted in research on treatment efficacy, lending itself to quantitative analyses. In contrast, ethnographic studies have offered the benefits of analyzing lived experiences and exploring the uniqueness of ASD individuals. Using the Linguistic Ethnography (LE) perspective, this case study…

Successful reference relies on being appropriately informative for listeners. What factors influence informativeness? For example, what factors influence the decision to refer to a ball with the less informative phrase "it," as opposed to the more informative phrase "the red ball"? The present dissertation proposes and…

Teaching and learning require a conducive environment that supports social interactions. With the mandate to include all students in the general classroom setting, challenging behaviors have been a problem in the classroom. Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) has been developed to counter the behaviors. The problem addressed in this…

This work examines how social media users learn language alongside their progression of becoming active participants in online social spaces. Using an ecolinguistic view, it explores how the process of posting and commenting on Reddit (one of the world's most popular social sites) is both afforded and constrained by the unique sociocultural…

Research shows that sojourning L2 learners are often eager to speak with their native-speaker peers, but they may not realize how these interactions differ from their experiences in the L2 classroom. Using the Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles & Ogay, 2007) as a guiding principle, this mixed-method study aims to, at two different time…

Engagement in online classes can promote student success but can be met with challenges associated with students feeling isolated from their peers, their instructors, or the course when learning online. Building opportunities for student interaction is one way to combat this isolation. A common activity in online courses that allows for student…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the Zones of Regulation program, as a tier II intervention for elementary age students who were identified by their teachers as struggling with self-regulation. Minimal research has been dedicated to the Zones of Regulation program. Nonetheless, educators are using the program regularly…

The purpose of this study was to examine social interactions across three high school concert band classes and to describe how these everyday practices might engender student contributions during full ensemble rehearsals. Language is a medium for human action, and a key resource through which students and teachers might establish classroom norms,…

Emotions are ubiquitous in education. However, most discussion of emotional learning and development is focused on the student. Yet, teachers are human and experience strong emotions in their work. This research sought to look at the emotional skill sets of emotionally intelligent educators. The framework for emotional skill sets consisted of…

Design science research (DSR) is one of important research paradigms in information systems (IS) that focus on addressing business problems by building and implementing design artifacts. Recently, predictive analytics has become one major stream of DSR thanks to the improvement of computational power and methods and the increase in available…

Excessive drinking is commonplace among college students and can lead to numerous negative consequences. Alcohol expectancies are a well-studied correlate of alcohol consumption, and greater understanding of expectancies in relation to drinking behavior and alcohol-related consequences could inform future assessment and intervention. Past research…

The purpose of this study was to describe faculty member experiences related to identifying and addressing prohibited speech in the classroom. The researcher studied faculty members at University of North Carolina (UNC) system institutions using a multiple case study research approach based on the constructivist paradigm. For the purposes of this…

This study examined the ways in which White teachers talk about facilitating conversations about race in their classrooms. Through semistructured interviews of eight teachers in a suburban school district in Central California, information was gathered about how teachers talk about race or avoid talking about race in their classrooms and what…

This small-scale pilot study explored the effectiveness of proposed research instruments in measuring the outcomes of the prosocial and global education curriculum, "Journey Around the World" ("JAWD"), regarding attitudes toward school, affective language, prosocial motivation and behavior of second-grade school students.…