Effects of the Master Principal Program on Perceived Principal Leadership Effectiveness in Arkansas

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the perceptions of stakeholders of principals who were participating in the Master Principal Institution to determine principals’ leadership effectiveness in regard to the ISLLC 2008 Standards. This study surveyed stakeholders of principals who were participating in the Master Principal Institute. A quantitative, causal-comparative strategy was used in this study. Hypotheses 1-5 were tested by 2 x 2 factorial between-groups designs. The independent variables were level of school (Elementary or Secondary) and Master Principal Program phase (Phase I and II) for each of the hypotheses. The dependent variables for the hypotheses were the six ISLLC standards, respectively, as measured by the LEADS survey. The study used stakeholders of principals enrolled in Phase I and Phase II of the Master Principal Program facilitated by the Arkansas Leadership Academy. LEADS surveys were administered to stakeholders in schools of principals that were enrolled in the Master Principal Program. The surveys were administered within 72 schools in Arkansas. The data collected were from surveys given during 2015-2016 school year. A 2 x 2 factorial ANOVA was used to analyze the data collected for each of the six hypotheses. In all six hypotheses, no significant interaction effect existed. The main effect for Master Principal Phase was not found to be significant for any of the six hypotheses involving principals’ leadership effectiveness. The main effect for School Level was found to be significant for Hypotheses 1 and 2. There was a noticeable difference in teachers’ perceptions of their principals’ leadership effectiveness in ISLLC Standards 3, 4, 5, and 6, but these differences were not statistically significant in this study. The results of this study coincide with research from similar studies showing that elementary teachers hold a higher perception of principal leadership effectiveness compared to secondary teachers

Early Childhood Inclusion: Teacher Perception of the Supports Needed to Fully Include Children with Special Needs

Inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood settings remains a goal for many early care and education centers and professionals. In this study, the perceptions of supports needed to accomplish this goal were examined. Early childhood teachers from a university-based child care center, which is inspired by the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, were interviewed and asked to explore their feelings and thoughts on fully including children with disabilities in their classrooms. An examination of their perceptions led to the identification of four major themes: a) everyone is valuable in the classroom community, b) additional training is needed, c) support from administrators, peers, specialists, and therapists, d) experience fosters success. From these themes the researcher found that teachers felt support from administrators(staffing, policies and procedures, time for meetings), peers, and on-site consultants, additional training, and an over arching philosophy of accepting differences were crucial to successful inclusion. The participants also indicated that all new teachers, whether in pre-service or through in-service should have access to these supports and be provided with information about the benefits and positive experiences of others who have included a child with a disability into their classroom. This study will add to the continuing discussion of early childhood inclusion and provide additional information for programmatic decision making within a particular setting

The Dangerous/Endangered Modern Woman in Four Interwar Spanish Novels (1917-1936)

The Modern Woman was a figure perpetually discussed in the early twentieth century, as she embodied the increasingly public role and greater mobility of women in industrialized cities. A century later, historians and literary critics still explore the significance of this female archetype, who was at the center of debates regarding feminism and changing gender dynamics, because the Modern Woman’s defiance of social conventions opened the way for the independent lifestyle and freedoms of women today. Yet, still left unexplored is the image of the Modern Woman as both dangerous and in danger and what this contradictory depiction reveals about beliefs regarding the right of women to access spaces and employment traditionally reserved for men, which continue to manifest in prohibitive practices like sexual discrimination and harassment. Through the analysis of four novels—La rampa by Carmen de Burgos, La Venus mecánica by José Díaz Fernández, Eva Libertaria by Rafael López de Haro, and Cristina Guzmán, profesora de idiomas by Carmen de Icaza—this study elucidates the dichotomy of the dangerous/endangered Modern Woman in literature of Interwar-era Spain, between the end of World War I and the start of the Spanish Civil War. Representations of the Modern Woman exposed to danger often served as literary proof of her unsuitability for employment and the need for male protection to usher her back into the domestic realm. Less commonly, these depictions served to raise awareness of the exploitation, unfit work conditions, and insufficient wages that women experienced in the city, in works like La rampa and La Venus mecánica, which call for social and economic reforms, or revolution, to oppose patriarchal, capitalist institutions. In contrast, the frivolous Modern Woman is an agent of disorder who threatens to dismantle the traditional family structure in Eva Libertaria and Cristina Guzmán, profesora de idiomas. Furthermore, male anxieties about androgyny, unrestrained female sexuality, and the women’s emancipation movement are evident in La Venus mecánica and Eva Libertaria, in which female characters manipulate or emasculate men. These conflicting images reflect fears of rapidly changing gender roles and illustrate the difficulties that women faced in Spanish urban centers

Normative Disruptions: The Diegetic Reading of Anachronism in Twentieth-Century American Novels

Much of the discourse on literary anachronism remains fixated on questions of error and intent: Anachronisms are assumed to be flawed attempts to recreate the historic real, and scholars who deal with them tend to insist an anachronism can only be meaningful if it was placed intentionally by an author for a specific purpose. This is not only a reductive understanding of what anachronisms are, it limits the range of critical and theoretical approaches by which an anachronism can be discussed. This dissertation addresses this problem by asserting a new way of approaching anachronism that bypasses the question of authorial intent entirely. This dissertation contends that anachronisms should be read, not as errors in history, but as wholly accurate depictions of a different history which, instead of being subordinated to the historic real, can be compared to it as a distinct reality. The first chapter demonstrates the process of reading an anachronism diegetically by applying it to William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! Subsequent chapters complicate the same process by exploring anachronisms that deviate from our understanding of anachronism in key ways. Chapter Two uses Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake to examine the potentials for an anachronism that does not depend on historicism to reveal its divergence. In Chapter Three, anachronistic racial attitudes in Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South allow us to consider how the discussion of anachronism is complicated by an absence of agreed-upon historic facts. Finally, Chapter Four reads Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind as the narrative of an attempt to construct an anachronism, and consequently analyzes the effects of an anachronism that is attempted by the characters, within the diegesis of a work. This dissertation represents the beginning of a larger project, considering new articulations and applications of a misunderstood temporal paradox.English, Department o

USING GIS TO DELINEATE HEADWATER STREAM ORIGINS IN THE APPALACHIAN COAL-BELT REGION OF KENTUCKY

Human activity such as surface mining can have substantial impacts on the natural environment. Performing a Cumulative Hydrologic Impact Assessment (CHIA) of such impacts on surface water systems requires knowing the location and extent of these impacted streams. The Jurisdictional Determination (JD) of a stream’s protected status under the Clean Water Act (CWA) involves locating and classifying streams according to their flow regime: ephemeral, intermittent, or perennial. Due to their often remote locations and small size, taking a field inventory of headwater streams for surface mining permit applications or permit reviews is challenging. A means of estimating headwater stream location and extent, according to flow regime using publicly available spatial data, would assist in performing CHIAs and JDs. Using headwater point-of-origin data collected from Robinson Forest in eastern Kentucky along with data from three JDs obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), headwater streams in the Appalachian Coal Belt were characterized according to a set of spatial parameters. These characteristics were extrapolated using GIS to delineate headwater streams over a larger area, and the results were compared to the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD)

Economic Analysis of Flood Detention Storage by Digital Computer

The objective of this study was to develop a digital computer procedure for preliminary analysis of the economic justification of reservoir detention storage for flood control and to present a sample study illustrating its application. A computer program called the University of Kentucky Flood Control Planning Program III was developed and tested on the flood plain of the South Fork of the Licking River in northeastern Kentucky. Given a specified reservoir site and a downstream flood plain divided into planning units, Program III selects the economically efficient combination of reservoir detention storage and the associated combination of channel improvement, flood proofing, land-use management, and residual flooding for each downstream planning unit. The Program does not attempt final measure design but isolates those combinations of measures for which detailed data collection and analysis is warranted. This study presents a description of the basic Program logic and the results of its application along the South Fork, Licking River, as well as a FORTRAN IV listing of the computer program and a listing of the input data used in the South Fork, Licking River analysis

Predictors of coronary artery calcium and long-term risks of death, myocardial infarction, and stroke in young adults

Background Coronary artery calcium (CAC) is well-validated for cardiovascular disease risk stratification in middle to older-aged adults; however, the 2019 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines state that more data are needed regarding the performance of CAC in low-risk younger adults. Methods and Results We measured CAC in 13 397 patients aged 30 to 49 years without known cardiovascular disease or malignancy between 1997 and 2009. Outcomes of myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE; MI, stroke, or cardiovascular death), and all-cause mortality were assessed using Cox proportional hazard models, controlling for baseline risk factors (including atrial fibrillation for stroke and MACE) and the competing risk of death or noncardiac death as appropriate. The cohort (74% men, mean age 44 years, and 76% with ≤1 cardiovascular disease risk factor) had a 20.6% prevalence of any CAC. CAC was independently predicted by age, male sex, White race, and cardiovascular disease risk factors. Over a mean of 11 years of follow-up, the relative adjusted subhazard ratio of CAC \u3e0 was 2.9 for MI and 1.6 for MACE. CAC \u3e100 was associated with significantly increased hazards of MI (adjusted subhazard ratio, 5.2), MACE (adjusted subhazard ratio, 3.1), stroke (adjusted subhazard ratio, 1.7), and all-cause mortality (hazard ratio, 2.1). CAC significantly improved the prognostic accuracy of risk factors for MACE, MI, and all-cause mortality by the likelihood ratio test

Communicating During Crisis: A Case Study of the 2010 BP Gulf Oil Spill

Crisis communication is an integral aspect of public relations that can have either positive or negative repercussions based upon the action that an organization responds. The manner in which an organization handles a crisis determines financial implications that may ensue, public perception and reputation of the organization, as well as the overall success or failure of the organization in the future. Consequently, Timothy Coombs asserts that the best crisis communication practice is to respond quickly, accurately, and consistently (Coombs, 2010: 28). Other scholars concur and add supplementary techniques which emphasize preparedness and responsibility. The present study was conducted to identify models of best practices for crisis management and to apply these models to analyze the effectiveness of BP’s response to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. A content analysis of 164 articles from three newspapers, The Times Picayune, The New York Times, and The Herald (United Kingdom), was conducted to examine how BP responded to the crisis in the Gulf, as well as to compare differences in coverage of the crisis and response among the three newspapers. Results reveal that BP’s response incorporated both best practices of crisis communication, as well as crisis responses that could be categorized as unethical. Such unethical responses included evasion of responsibility, denial, and scapegoating, while effective crisis communication tactics consisted of updating the public in a clear, concise manner. Further results and implications for international crisis communication practices will be described