Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Middle School Teachers’ Experiences Implementing The Workshop Model In Their Classroom, Patience Ndidi Onyegwara

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Due to the increasing diversity in U.S. schools, there is a need for differentiated and individualized educational models for these learners to be successful in the future. However, little is known about innovative educational models allowing differentiation and individualized education. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand the experiences and perceptions of middle school teachers implementing the innovative Workshop Model (WSM) of teaching and learning. The conceptual framework for this study included the diffusion of innovation, sociocultural, and andragogical theories, and the principles of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). The participants were 10 middle school teachers …

Coalition Sustainability After Federal Funding Is Expended: A Case Study, Shawnee Marie Seese

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Community coalition sustainability has been a focus of scholars as community coalitions deliver vital programs and services for communities in need. Despite the value coalitions bring to U.S. communities, they often become vulnerable after federal funding is expended. Researchers acknowledge the need to build understanding of coalition sustainability and have identified factors that contribute to the sustainability of programs, but studies on the topic remain quite limited. Federal funding requirements are more stringent than in previous years, requiring evidence of sustainability planning, which increases the urgency to identify those elements that ensure sustainability. The purpose of this study was to …

Alternative Therapy For Veterans Diagnosed With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shannon Rae Hill

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

An increasing number of veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has led to an increased demand for treatment within the Veteran Affairs health care system. Presently, veterans diagnosed with PTSD receive psychotropic medications and intermittent therapy sessions. Nurses are challenged to educate veterans about other health care issues based on verbalized side effects from prescribed PTSD medications limiting veterans’ ability to focus. Identifying alternative treatment options may improve treatment choices, reduce side effects, and promote positive outcomes for veterans with PTSD. This systematic review provided evidence-based practice information by addressing whether alternative therapy such as biofeedback would improve the …

Juvenile Recidivism After Release From A Juvenile Detention Center In Atlanta, Georgia, Jacquelyn Monique Nelson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

After undergoing a form of rehabilitation (i.e., youth detention centers in Georgia), statistics show that juveniles have a 65% chance of reoffending within 3 years after being released. The Georgia Juvenile Justice System’s $300 million annual budget raises concerns about the acts of juvenile recidivism. The purpose of this research was to understand why juveniles reoffend after being in a juvenile detention center in Atlanta, Georgia. The conceptual framework for this study was centered on the alternative to youth detention centers. The research question addressed factors that led juvenile delinquents to reoffend after receiving an alternative treatment. This study had …

Optimizing Body-Worn Camera Usage For Desired Outcomes And Solutions, Andre Rodriguez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Body-worn camera (BWC) use in the application of the law enforcement function has become a novelty during the last few years in the United States. BWCs are being implemented in localities without adequate research about community perceptions. Moreover, very few studies have been conducted about the perceptions of community members in a particular area about these devices. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to better understand the perceptions and beliefs of community members from different backgrounds about BWCs. The research questions entailed learning about current perceptions regarding BWCs and how these devices impact trust, safety, and accountability. Social …

First Responders' Perceptions Of Diversity Training Practices To Assist At-Risk Populations, Sara Parry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

New York State first responders, including police, fire, and emergency medical personnel, often lack consistent awareness and diversity training to assist at-risk populations, which can pose challenges to preparedness and response strategies during disasters and emergencies. The purpose of this study was to assess the awareness and diversity training practices among first responders across New York State in assisting people with at-risk characteristics during disasters. Punctuated equilibrium theory provided the framework for the study. Data from interviews with 15 participants and from historical and legal documents were coded and analyzed to identify themes. Findings indicated that that there had been …

The Relationship Between Organizational Culture And Profitability Of Small, Nonprofit, Private, Higher Education Institutions In Georgia, Walter V. Murray

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small, nonprofit, private, higher education institutions (SNPHEIs) are facing economic challenges that threaten their existence. This threat represents a public policy problem because 28% of all higher education in America is delivered by SNPHEIs. The purpose of this study was to investigate any correlational relationships that may exist between the organizational culture (OC) in SNPHEIs and their financial sustainability. Based on the competing values framework, a causal relationship between OC and organizational profitability within the SNPHEI was posited. In this study, both descriptive and comparative research questions were used; they focused on the OC types identified in the competing values …

2020 Icrcc Proceedings Table Of Contents, Conference Organizers

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

These proceedings are a representative sample of the presentations given by professional practitioners and academic scholars at the 2020 International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference (ICRCC) held March 9-11, 2020. The ICRCC is an annual event that takes place the second week in March in beautiful sunny Orlando, Florida. The conference hosts are faculty and staff from the Nicholson School of Communication and Media. The goal of the ICRCC is to bring together prominent professional practitioners and academic scholars that work directly with crisis and risk communication on a daily basis. We define crisis and risk broadly to include, for …

A Communication Ethics Response To “Communication Under Siege”, Jeanne M. Persuit

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Presented as a response to the keynote speaker at ICRC 2020, this essay considers the communication ethics implications to crisis communication informed by the work of philosopher Hannah Arendt and communication scholar Ronald C. Arnett.

Sorry Is Not Enough: Apology As A Crisis Management Tactic, Amiso M. George

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Public admissions of personal or professional misdeeds, followed by apologies by high profile individuals and organizations are strategies and tactics of image restoration when a reputation is damaged. Although the ritual of an apology is an expected societal norm sometimes, they can make matters worse. Apology is effective depending on the offense, the place, time, language, tone of apology and if the recipient of the apology is willing to accept it. Another important element is the cultural factor. Apology that does not adhere to perceived cultural norms may not be received positively; thereby worsening the crisis situation. In 2018 and …

Communication Under Siege: The Example Of Steven Sotloff, Frank Smyth

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

The kidnapping and murder of Steven Sotloff is one of the most horrific examples of brutality against a journalist in memory. Sotloff was captured in 2013, ending up in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. After remaining in captivity for over a year, Sotloff was executed in September 2014 by beheading a month after another captured journalist, James Foley, was also beheaded. Since Steven Sotloff’s loss, his parents have supported Hostile Environments and Emergency First Aid Training (HEFAT) for young aspiring journalists not unlike their son. The original presentation of this keynote was enhanced by …

Mind The Gap: Understanding Stakeholder Reactions To Different Types Of Data Security, Audra Diers-Lawson, Amelia Symons

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Data security breaches are an increasingly common problem for organizations, yet there are critical gaps in our understanding of how different stakeholders understand and evaluate organizations that have experienced these kinds of security breaches. While organizations have developed relatively standard approaches to responding to security breaches that: (1) acknowledge the situation; (2) highlight how much they value their stakeholders’ privacy and private information; and (3) focus on correcting and preventing the problem in the future, the effectiveness of this response strategy and factors influencing it have not been adequately explored. This experiment focuses on a 2 (type of organization) x …

Crisis Communication Strategies Of Police Organizations Subsequent Negative Public Perception And Media Framing, Alexia Knox

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

This research task examines crisis communication strategies of police organizations acting as spokespersons, subsequent negative public perceptions of police organizations, while attempting to understand how external and some internal variables, particularly, human processes of emotions and behaviors of police officers, victims of violence and minority groups, might contribute to negative crisis outcomes, as described in the regenerative crisis model, as the crisis becomes more prevalent and persuasive through media framing.

Turning Mismanaged Crisis Into Opportunity: Developing A Municipal Emergency Communication Plan For Puerto Rico, Mariely Valentin-Llopis

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Three years after Hurricane Maria, rural municipalities of Puerto Rico find themselves as vulnerable as before the category 4 storm dwindled the Island’s resources. The town of Aguas Buenas is among the rural municipalities struggling to prepare for the next natural disaster. This pilot study provides a plan for activating the community with the purpose of forming the first community emergency management team (CEMT) in coordination with local officials. Through in-depth interviews with the people living in Aguas Buenas, the study presents a situation analysis followed by recommendations on how to train the community leaders and turn the crisis into …

Building Resilience For Stronger Communities, Barbara Gainey

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Much of the early research in crisis management and crisis communication centered on the core competencies of crisis response: why do we need to plan for crises; what are the stages of effective crisis planning; what theoretical perspectives are helpful to scholars and practitioners; and what are the steps of an up-to-date crisis plan. Delineation of these core competencies goes on. Among these competencies, the crisis stage meriting the least attention arguably is post-crisis, the critical days and weeks immediately following the formal resolution of the crisis. Research attention has often focused on recovery and learning, positioning the organization for …

Simulating Medical Isolation: Communicatively Managing Patient And Medical Team Safety, Elizabeth L. Spradley, R. Tyler Spradley

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Reducing hospital acquired or associated infections (HAIs) is a national public health priority. HAIs pose risks to patients, visitors, and medical personnel. To better understand how to communicatively manage safety in medical isolation, data was collected with nursing students simulating medical isolation in a high-fidelity simulation with a medical mannequin with C. difficile. Observations of nursing students and faculty revealed four distinct communication practices: social support, patient education, humor, and storytelling. Conclusions include recommendations to intentionally design these communication practices into high-fidelity medial isolation simulations and scale up these communication practices in routines of safety.

Using The Idea Model To Analyze Messages Used In Hepatitis B Vaccination In Uganda, Ann Mugunga, Angella Napakol

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

This research analyzed the messages that both the Government of Uganda and the National organization of persons living with Hepatitis B use to communicate to at-risk populations in order to enable them take up the vaccination against Hepatitis B. Content analysis was carried out on two electronic fliers circulated from the ministry of health’s program in charge of Hepatitis control and treatment, and one hard copy flier from the National organization of persons living with Hepatitis B. The study assessed how the publications made use of the IDEA concepts of internalization, distribution, explanation and action in getting the audience to …

Constituting Safety In Hunter’S Education: An Analysis Of Safety Messages In Texas Hunter’S Training Discourse, R. Tyler Spradley

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Risk communication includes safety messages to reduce the likelihood of hazard and increase the likelihood of reliability. Hunter’s education in the state of Texas uses safety messages to reduce fatal or injurious incidents and to promote a positive image of hunting as a safe, leisure sport. Analysis of Texas’ hunters education training materials and messages related to safety reveals that safety messages construct an image of hunters as practicing safety first, conservationists, ethical, law abiding, and other-oriented. Given Texas safety record, much is to be learned about safety messaging that adopts a positive or ideal image that the trainee identifies.

Is All Publicity Good Publicity? Ask Peloton, Rodney Andrew Carveth

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Controversial ad campaigns from companies such as Nike have suggested that “any publicity is good publicity.” This case study of a controversial 2019 advertising campaign by Peloton, where one its ad not only was critically panned, but resulted in Peloton losing nearly $1 billion in market value. The case shows that not only was Peloton tone deaf about the message the company is putting out there, it defended itself by insulting its consumer base.

The Role Of Organizational Culture For Creating Understanding And Trust Through Internal Crisis Communication, Albena Björck, Petra Barthelmess

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Understanding and trust are major goals of the internal communication in general. In a crisis situation with its inherent uncertainty and lack of time their importance is elevated to a new level. The crisis communication theory lacks a cultural contextualization and a long-standing tradition for including the influence of organizational culture. The purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of corporate culture as a key factor for internal crisis communication and its effectiveness. It investigates how the visible and less visible levels of culture manifest themselves in the internal crisis communication practice and identifies organizational culture patterns that …

When Microcredit Doesn’T Empower Poor Women: Recognition Theory’S Contribution To The Debate Over Adaptive Preferences, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay proposes recognition theory as a preferred approach to explaining poor women’s puzzling preference for patriarchal subordination even after they have accessed an ostensibly empowering asset: microfinance. Neither the standard account of adaptive preference offered by Martha Nussbaum nor the competing account of constrained rational choice offered by Harriet Baber satisfactorily explains an important variation of what Serene Khader, in discussing microfinance, dubs the self-subordination social recognition paradox. The variation in question involves women who, refusing to reject the combined socio-economic benefits of patriarchal recognition and empowering microfinance, dissemble their subordination to men. In this situation, women experience …

Climate Refugees: Can States Survive The Changing Climate?, Caroline Sisson

Featured Research

No abstract provided.

Synergies And Competition: Export Survival In Africa And Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Jesse Mora, Michael Olabisi, James E. Prieger

All Faculty Open Access Publications

Using firm-level export data from six African (Burkina Faso and Senegal) and Latin American (Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay) countries, we examine factors that determine the survival of export flows. We explore the effects on export survival of changes in the number of home-country exporters serving the same destination, firm-level export diversification, and country-level factors. Unlike previous studies, we find that export survival rates decrease with the number of co-exporters selling the same product to the same country. We also find that the relationship between firm-level product diversification and export flow survival is hump-shaped: firms that do not diversify or …

Connection Between Tutoring Format Type And Reading Scores Of Elementary Aged Children, Emma T. Moates, Theresa M. Nowak, Jonathan S. Gore

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Extant research shows that response to intervention (RTI) individual and small group interventions increase children’s reading skills; however, little information is available that investigates whether the type of intervention format makes a difference in learning to read. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten class (ECLS-K) database was used to identify third-grade children who received individual, small group, or combined individual and small group tutoring, to increase their reading skills. The current study compared reading scores associated with each intervention type to determine which reading intervention format was most beneficial. The results from this study showed that children receiving small group …

The Relationships Among Body Appreciation, Self-Esteem, Academic Self-Efficacy, And Academic Achievement, Alicia Camille Latty

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Because poor body image is correlated with poor academic outcomes, it is possible that body appreciation may be associated with improved academic outcomes. The problem that was addressed in the current investigation was the lack of research on the potential relationships between academic outcomes and positive body image, conceptualized as body appreciation. Accordingly, this study leveraged a positive psychology approach to examine the ways body appreciation and self-esteem predict academic self-efficacy and self-reported GPA. The framework combined Bandura’s (1977) theory of self-efficacy and Higgins’ (1987) self-discrepancy theory with Seligman’s (2000) positive psychology approach. This quantitative study followed a non-experimental correlational …

Volunteer Programs & Service Learning Annual Report 2019-2020, Volunteer Programs & Service Learning

News, Magazines and Reports

It has been another extraordinary year for the Office of Volunteer Programs & Service Learning! Beyond welcoming a record-setting number of first-year students to campus, VP&SL collaborated with students, faculty and staff in all colleges across the university on advocacy, direct service and philanthropic initiatives. We are proud to share that Volunteer Programs & Service Learning has been selected for the 2020 Best of Fairfield Awards in the category of Colleges & Universities!

Level Up! Library Orientation With A Phone-Based Exploration Game, Beth Jane Toren

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This self-paced, reasonably priced, and imaginatively blended activity provides an effective, customizable, and scalable alternative to in-person tours. The Green Door Labs EdVenture Builder is specifically targeted to libraries and museums and has an interface with game mechanics built in on menus, allowing users with no programming experience to independently create games. Students learn about the library in an engaging way and instructors can be provided with game scores to provide credit for the activity.

Individuals or teams new to the library play an exploration game on their mobile phone while exploring library physical and/or virtual locations, services, and resources. …

The L In Glam: Libraries As Strategic Art Venues Through The West Virginia University Art In The Libraries Program, Sally Brown, Alyssa Wright

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

As galleries, archives and museums navigate their way into the future with new ways of interaction and display, libraries, too, seek innovative ways to engage and evolve learning. As library content becomes increasingly digital and learning becomes more social, exhibitions can provide new ways of engaging the user’s intellect and creativity. Exhibitions also encourage an environment of contemplation that library users seek. Libraries are evolving into a new sort of space--still a space for research, learning and study--but also for community engagement and collaboration, presenting a unique opportunity for both collaborating exhibitors and guests. Ideas are protected and encouraged in …

Ecio Input-Output Relationships Generating Expected Output Series, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Regional Research Institute Technical Documents

Generating expected output series is a critically important step in building Conway-type hybrid econometric input-output models. Because the RRI most often uses a modeling method that takes advantage of Jackson's Rest-of-World industry mechanism for representing imports in the Supply (Make) table rather than in final demand, we must insure that this method for generating historical expected output series will be consistent with the way in which future expected output is estimated (Jackson, 1998). This brief TechDoc lays out the relevant mathematical foundations. In so doing, we also identify the appropriate corresponding impacts assessment formulation.

Solar Bait: How U.S. States Attract Solar Investments From Large Corporations, Jed J. Cohen, Levan Elbakidze, Randall Jackson

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

Past solar adoption literature has focused primarily on households without significant attention to the potential of commercial properties as sites for solar generation. We examine firms’ decisions to install solar panels on their properties using state and firm level data from the U.S. We are interested in the effects of state level characteristics, including policies and regulations, on firm decisions regarding solar investments. We find that state characteristics that influence the return-on-investment from solar installations, most notably solar intensity, are important for commercial adoption decisions. Further, the results suggest that certain state level policies, including solar carve-outs in renewable portfolio …