Analysis of Nominalization in Elementary and Middle School Science Textbooks

The research in this capstone examines the existence and implications of nominalizations through a text analysis of first through fifth grade and middle school science textbooks. This study utilizes various tools based on Systemic Functional Linguistics to determine the quantity and types of nominalizations found in various text levels, to reveal how frequently nominalizations are modified by a prepositional phrase that shows agency or force, to uncover how nominalization might affect the syntax and semantics of a text, and to deduce how nominalization might contribute to lexical density. The author also compares the results to address what nominalizations look like across grade levels. Results indicate that nominalizations may contribute to sentence and noun phrase complexity

The Waiting House

The poems in this collection, The Waiting House, use techniques associated with an evolving elegiac tradition in their portrayal of anticipatory grief born of terminal illness and impending loss. Like the melancholic mourning of modern elegies described by Jahan Ramazani, my poems often resist consolation even as they borrow from elegiac conventions like poetic substitution and repetition. Additionally, they utilize strategies and patterns of literary anger outlined by Alicia Suskin Ostriker as common in postwar American women’s poetry, to express anger that is also anticipatory grief. Finally, this collection uses illness metaphors to question the well being of a larger body, house, and ecology

The Lived Experience of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Physical Activity

This study attempted to discover the actual lived nature or lived experience of motivation in physical activity, focusing on intrinsic and extrinsic factors. This was done by phenomenologically analyzing intrinsic, extrinsic and general motivation, doing a self-study of motivation as experienced in physical activity, and studying other\u27s motivation through an interview process. Focus centered on six areas: the motivation responsible for initiating and continuing activity, the pattern of motivation within an activity, the effect of past experiences on future motivation, whether a hierarchy of motives exists, whether intrinsic and extrinsic motives are additive, detractive or both, and the role of play, great moments, flow experiences, and peak experiences in the process of motivation. The phenomenology was used to analyze the interview material and self-study in regard to these six areas. Based on this analysis, conclusions were drawn. The primary motivation for initiating or continuing activity may be either intrinsic or extrinsic. No definite pattern of motivation was found. The past experiences of subjects seemed to have some effect on their present and future doing. A hierarchy of motives seemed to exist in most cases. However, this ranking was seldom clear and often changing. Intrinsic and extrinsic factors may be additive or detractive or simply co-exist. Finally, play, flow and peak experiences were seen to be primarily intrinsic, while great moments fell into either an intrinsic or extrinsic category depending how they were perceived. This study supports the belief that reference to involvement in a physical activity as being intrinsically or extrinsically motivated is too simplistic, misleading and often incorrect

Sense of place among New England organic farmers and commercial fishermen: How social context shapes identity and environmentally responsible behavior

Given the prominence of sense of place in new environmental education curricula, this study aims to strengthen the conceptual and empirical foundations of sense of place, and to determine how sense of place may be linked to environmentally responsible behavior. For this study, five commercial fishermen and five organic farmers from the New England Seacoast region participated in a series of in-depth phenomenological interviews and observations. The data was systematically coded in order to allow themes and categories to emerge. The results indicate that aspects of the existing conceptual framework of sense of place, such as place attachment, ecological knowledge, and public involvement, do in fact describe the relationship between people and place. However, the results also indicate that two conceptual elements---attention to social context and awareness of moral theory---are missing from the current conceptual framework in EE theory. These results suggest that the current framework should be expanded to emphasize the role of human and non-human communities: the development of a sense of place and the learning of environmentally responsible behavior must be situated within a social context. This study lends support to the view that for sense of place to move people to ethical action, it is crucial for them to recognize, and to participate in, a community of support and care

Corn and Culture: The Influence of Zea mays across Cultural and Historical Boundaries

Corn\u27s status as a critical food crop, and its location within indigenous new world cosmographies, illustrate the important sociocultural role the plant has played for millennia. However, modern society has elevated Zea mays far above the status of mere plant, fashioning it into a commodity intimately connected to systems of control and capitalism. Consequently, corn has played an essential role in colonization, industrialization, and the advent of overproduction. The beliefs and literature of numerous new world cultures, along with the literatures of modern Western cultures, offer a striking analysis of corn\u27s current position in western society. The far-reaching impacts that corn has on our socioeconomic and subsistence systems reveal a great deal about globalization, commodification, and dominance. This paper examines corn through a cultural studies lens, documenting the influence of this iconic foodstuff and analyzing its effects over historical and cultural boundaries

Sexlight

I began writing this collection of poetry one summer, after planting a wild patch of herbs, vegetables, and flowers. It was a summer full of moths; they clung to window screens, danced past my face, flew among grasses and trees. In my worry that they represented something ominous, I began researching moths and (re)discovered poetry. What I learned has now become the shape of this manuscript. The poems in the first section explore how in girlhood we believe in so many myths, view them as real and living truths that breathe. There is the myth of love providing warmth. There is the myth that the intentions behind actions are enough when we cannot imagine outcomes. There is the myth that being a girl in the world is filled with happiness, when in fact our gender brings us much pain. There is the myth of safety when the dangers before us are in truth too big to eat. There is the myth that our bodies are our own. The poems in section II explore how young women struggle with the loss of girlhood myths, even resign themselves to uglier truths for a time. Because many of us refuse to accept the reality unveiled by the loss of girlhood myths, we begin taking risks to create change. The poems in section III narrate this active (re)discovery of grief, love, self, history, and female identity. From myth, to struggle, resignation and finally rediscovery, these pages explore a journey toward living fully. They travel wide across our damaged life sky and remind us to pick ourselves up. While these poems are undoubtedly infused with where they sprung from, my greatest hope is that they prove open to their readers and to their own place in the world

Types of greenspace and adolescent mental health and well-being in metropolitan London

The evidence suggests a link between greenspace and adolescent mental health. One limitation is the typically crude measure of greenspace quantity or greenness. We explored the roles of different types of greenspace in the mental health of 10- to 15-year-old adolescents living in London, using data from Understanding Society, a UK household longitudinal study. We used data on 1,879 adolescents from waves 1-8 (2009-2018). As some adolescents had observations at multiple waves, 4,217 observations were included. Mental health and well-being measures were Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire scores, self-esteem, and happiness. Proportions of green land cover, parks & gardens, natural & semi-natural urban greenspaces, outdoor sports facilities, and total green land use were measured in 500 m around postcodes. We ran linear regressions, stratified by age, adjusted for confounders, and accounting for Understanding Society’s complex sampling design. We did not find consistent results across analyses, but we identified patterns worth exploring further: older adolescents (13-15 years) seemed to ‘benefit’ more from greenspace than younger adolescents (10-12 years); and parks & gardens and outdoor sports facilities seemed to be most ‘beneficial’. Overall, however, no clear conclusions can be drawn, and findings need to be confirmed in future studies

Outdoor play areas in childcare settings and children’s physical aggression: A longitudinal study of Norwegian kindergartens

We investigated the role of physical characteristics of kindergartens’ outdoor play areas in teacher-rated physical aggression (PAgg) among 423 children followed annually from ages two to four years. We used data from the Behaviour Outlook Norwegian Developmental Study which follows children from southeast Norway, a country where almost all two- to fouryear-old children attend kindergartens. Nesting children in kindergartens, we found two significant associations after adjustment for family selection. First, children in kindergartens with more ‘secret places’ in their outdoor play areas (where they could play undisturbed) had more PAgg at baseline. Second, children in kindergartens with more adult supervision of their use of outdoor play material showed a less steep decrease in PAgg over time. If causal, these associations would suggest that children in kindergartens should not play completely unmonitored but also that teachers should not control children’s outdoor play excessively

Advancement Via Individual Determination Graduates’ Applying Instructional Strategies In Post-Secondary Education

The problem in a suburban school district in a northwestern state is that fewer socioeconomic disadvantaged and minority students are graduating high school and attending post-secondary education than their White and economic middle-class counterparts. The disparity continues to expand the achievement gap between minorities and Whites within the education system and continues a cycle of poverty for the poorest and minority students. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory guided the study. The purpose of this bounded qualitative exploratory case study was to explore the advancement via individual determination (AVID) instructional strategies high school graduates used in their transition to post-secondary education. The research questions addressed which instructional strategies the AVID graduates learned and how they used the strategies in post-secondary education. The participants were 13 AVID high school graduates from a suburban northwestern school district who entered post-secondary education in 2014–2018. Data collected through one-on-one interviews were analyzed thematically using descriptive and axial coding to allow themes to emerge using the constructs of the framework. AVID students suggested that focused notetaking, collaboration, and self-regulatory behaviors assisted them in their academic success. Based on the findings, a 3-day professional development was created for high school teachers to design content area lessons featuring student collaborative groups, self-reflection, and notetaking strategies. This endeavor may contribute to positive social change when administrators provide teachers with grouping, social emotional, and instructional strategies for AVID enrollees, which may result in increased AVID graduates and post-secondary students