See Dick Run: Developing Literacy in Kindergarten

Literacy has become an issue of great importance in our country. Many children have reached middle and high school without the ability to read fluently. Educators have therefore earnestly sought the best method of teaching literacy. Children in younger grades are now being taught beginning language arts skills. Standardized tests have been developed to measure the extent of these skills. Parents are also inquiring about the most effective means of preparing their children for school

“So how Reaganesque exactly are these Republicans?”: Strategic invocations of collective memory about Ronald Reagan during the 2015-2016 Republican Primary Presidential debates

My thesis explores the implications of the references to President Ronald Reagan in the 2015-2016 Republican presidential primary debates. I conducted a rhetorical analysis of the references to Reagan throughout these debates, while also considering their relation to public and collective memory theory. In order to analyze the different ways in which Reagan was mentioned, I divided the analysis into the undercard debates, mainstage debates, and the mainstage debate that occurred at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. In the undercard debates, candidates often utilized attention-grabbing strategies in order to aid their chances of moving up to the mainstage debates. The mainstage candidates referenced Reagan to support different goals than the undercard candidates, often focusing on policy rather than personal qualities. In the Simi Valley debate, or “Reagan debate,” the candidates were inspired by the location at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and competed to claim Reagan’s legacy. Through my analysis, I discovered that the candidates referenced Reagan in order to support a wide range of ideologies and goals. Therefore, due to the prevalence and centrality of references to Reagan in the 2015-2016 GOP presidential primary debates, and the way in which his name was utilized to support candidates’ arguments, I concluded that Reagan’s legacy had affected and will likely continue to affect the communication of the modern Republican Party in primary debates, which scholars, candidates, and campaign teams would benefit greatly by systematically analyzing and exploring

Ready to Disport with You: Homosocial Culture amongst the Wool Merchants of Fifteenth-century Calais

In late summer 1478, a dozen married merchants challenged their bachelor brothers to an archery match. The surviving invitation, found amongst the papers of the wool merchant Cely family, provides rare evidence for mercantile socialising outside of formal feasts, and is particularly notable for its use of a sporting event as a corporate activity. As Raewyn Connell argues in her seminal book Masculinities, the ‘institutional organization of sport embeds definite social relations: competition and hierarchy among men, exclusion or domination of women…. The performance is symbolic and kinetic, social and bodily, at one and the same time’. Synthesising and expanding on the work of other prominent sociologists, she claims that organised sports play a key role in male identity formation – not just in allowing men to demonstrate individual physical prowess, but more significantly in establishing collective masculine experiences that form a keystone of hegemonic male culture

Intra-individual reaction time variability in sustained attention

PhD ThesisBACKGROUND: Sustained attention, assessed using the Continuous Performance Test (CPT), is impaired in ‘normal’ ageing and, to a greater degree, in a number of clinical disorders. There are many variants of the CPT, each with different task parameters (e.g., target frequency), and theoretical cognitive demands (e.g., executive functioning). It is unclear how the associated cognitive load of CPTs contributes to measures of attentional impairment, such as intra-individual variability (IIV) in reaction time (RT). There is potential clinical utility in measures of IIV, due to its relationship with increasing age, and brain white matter. Variability can be modelled using the ex-Gaussian distribution, and consists of three parameters: mu (mean RT), and IIV, decomposed into variability across the entire RT distribution (sigma), and characterised by infrequent and long RTs (tau). This thesis aims to examine how the multiple cognitive demands of CPTs contributes to attentional RT/IIV, and how this relationship interacts with age, as well as pathology. The thesis aims are explored in healthy and clinical populations characterised by sustained attention impairment associated with increasing age (‘normal’ ageing and Parkinson’s disease (PD)), or in theoretical ‘accelerated ageing’ (Bipolar disorder (BD) while depressed and in remission). METHODS: Sustained attention was assessed in five cross-sectional studies, using variants of the CPT. Secondary neuropsychological measures of executive functioning, processing speed, and verbal memory were administered. Ex-Gaussian distributional parameters (mu, sigma, and tau) obtained from CPT RTs were analysed. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were examined. RESULTS: (1) In ‘normal’ ageing, better performance on the secondary neuropsychological measures was associated with faster RT (mu) and more consistent responding (sigma, tau), but this varied across CPT. Similar results were obtained for the effect of age on RT and IIV. (2) In PD, better executive functioning was associated with consistent responding (tau), whilst age was associated with slower (mu) and inconsistent (tau) responding. (3) In BD (while depressed), better executive functioning was associated with slower responding (mu), and better processing speed with consistent responding (tau), whilst age did not explain variance in RT or IIV. (4) In BD (in remission), the secondary neuropsychological measures examined did not explain variance in RT or IIV, nor did age. vi CONCLUSIONS: Attentional RT and IIV in ‘normal’ ageing and in clinical populations such as PD and BD, may be supported by secondary neuropsychological processes theorised to be involved in CPT variants. The neuropsychological profile underpinning attentional RT and IIV may reflect secondary cognitive scaffolding mechanisms, engaged depending on the age of participants, rather than the cognitive load of the task per se. The results have implications for our understanding of attentional RT and IIV in ‘normal’ ageing and pathology. Future research would further our understanding on the use of cognitive scaffolding in relation to the CPT, as well as the stability, reliability, and neurobiological origins of RT and IIV

Model Selection for Hierarchical Poisson Modeling in Disease Mapping

In disease mapping where predictor effects are to be modeled, it is often the case that sets of predictors are fixed and the aim is to choose between fixed model sets. In this dissertation, I focus on this dimension reduction objective by applying the Poisson data model commonly used for disease mapping of small area health data. I begin with a software comparison of the recently developed R package INLA (Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation) to the MCMC approach by way of the BRugs package in R, which calls OpenBUGS. This software comparison leads to choosing the appropriate platform for carrying out the second portion of this work: a methodology comparison of my proposed non-spatial and spatial approaches of Bayesian model selection to Bayesian Model Averaging. Following that, for the third and final aim, I extend my Bayesian model selection methodologies to the spatio-temporal setting and evaluate the benefit and usefulness of four different modeling approaches. These explorations demonstrate the importance of altering the defaults in INLA and the flexibility of the BUGS software. Additionally, they offer a novel way of determining appropriate linear predictors in the context of non-spatial, spatial, and spatio-temporal small area health data in disease mapping

"And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts": Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance

In Middle English romances, public and semi-public displays of emotion are used by elite men to strengthen and promote hegemonic masculinity. This article examines how male fainting, as an act witnessed and sometimes replicated by an audience of men, serves to reinforce homosocial bonds, and to highlight the heroic qualities that make these characters capable of such deep, public sorrow. Late medieval patriarchy is dependent upon the homosocial bonding of elite men, and as such lionizes not only friendship between individual men, but also their collective unity as a body bound by social, political, and emotional ties. Fainting, as a performative act, provides a physical representation of both this collective identity and of specific virtues associated with male nobility

Mitigating dilemmas in postgraduate researcher mental health and well-being project implementation: critical reflections from three former implementers.

Purpose: This paper aims to present the critical reflections of three women implementers formerly working in projects that seek to support the mental health and well-being (MHW) of postgraduate researchers (PGRs), which has become a recent focus for UK researchers and policymakers. The paper offers an experience-based perspective on tensions in PGR-MHW project implementation by providing personal accounts of several social dilemmas the authors encountered. From reflecting on experiences, the authors derived recommendations for mitigating such dilemmas when designing and delivering future projects. Design/methodology/approach: First, the experiences of dilemmas as female project implementers of PGR-MHW projects were recalled, listed and discussed and identified broad overarching themes. Second, one dilemma for each of the three themes was fleshed out according to the ones that carried meaning for how the role was personally experienced. Third, what the accounts of dilemmas meant for project implementation and outcomes was analyzed. Then the findings to existing literature where similar tensions were identified were linked, including how these could be mitigated. Findings: The dilemmas experienced as implementers in PGR-MHW projects fit among three interconnected themes: identity, values, and motivations and relationships. It was showed that, although they may be hard to see, the dilemmas presented in this paper impede project’s success, outcomes for PGRs and implementers’ well-being. Mitigating such dilemmas when designing, funding, implementing and evaluating future projects is not straightforward, and the findings in this article open avenues to tackle this problem. Originality/value: Focusing on reflections of female implementers, the paper provides an original perspective on PGR-MHW project evaluation. Using reflective writing as a research tool allowed us to identify overlooked dilemmas in project implementation. Honest and critical accounts of implementers’ experiences revealed important lessons such as different framings of project success, the intersection between the personal and the professional and individual responsibilities in project networks

Erratum to: The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe

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Pre-Service Elementary School Teachers’ Perceptions Of Themselves As Learners Of Mathematics And Science

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here. This study investigated how prospective elementary teachers view themselves as learners of mathematics and science during their last year in a teacher preparation program at an American university. Using drawing and reflections as the method for collecting data, prospective teachers were prompted to draw themselves and reflect on learning mathematics and draw themselves and reflect on learning science prior to and after their mathematics and science methods courses. Drawings (n = 147) were coded according to the presence or absence of several themes including physical objects, teachers, students, and environment. The drawings and reflections indicated that the experience of participating in mathematics and science methods courses taught from a social constructivist perspective positively impacted prospective teachers’ conceptions of themselves as learners and in ways consistent with current research-based pedagogies. The research study described here proposes that prospective teachers’ learning experiences in mathematics and science methods classes might impact how they will teach mathematics and science in their future elementary classrooms