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Public-facing statements about anti-racism and linguistic justice have become common tools for educational organizations to promote values of criticality and openness. Such statements often explicitly reject practices that equate language difference with deficit and continue to harm marginalized groups that speak languages or use pronouns that fall outside of the "mainstream." As with all language policies, enacting such statements is far from straightforward as individual social actors bring to bear their own experiences and interpretations of the policy. Drawing on the methodological framework of nexus analysis and theoretical foundations regarding the re-entextualization of language ideologies, this dissertation examines one US university writing center's language statement as it seeks to decenter English-dominant standard language ideologies and to promote inclusive language practices in the center. In particular, this study highlights how four writing center consultants interpreted and appropriated the statement in diverse ways. Data sources included documents related to onboarding and training, extended semi-structured interviews about consultants' prior experiences with language difference and consulting practices, audio-recorded observations and field notes of hour-long writing consultations, participant journals, and post-observation reflection interviews. A poststructural, multi-scalar discourse analysis revealed tensions between policy and practice, as well as several profiles of ideological negotiation within the consultants. Discourses valuing competition, excellence, and expertise at the university level came into tension with discourses of relationality and collaboration within the writing center. In response to requests to correct clients' grammar, consultants developed and revised practices that re-entextualized their past experiences with language diversity as well as the center's policies about language. The choices to accept or challenge expertise positioning and agree or refuse to make direct edits on clients' writing were identified as key moments where consultants (re)created discursive relationships between their actions and institutional discourses about language use. Educational institutions seeking to support linguistic diversity through such value-laden language policies should also develop reflective and collaborative tools to assist its members in navigating these ideological tensions. The study lends continued support to using language ideology as an invaluable conceptual tool for administrators and educators interested in grappling with complex social problems. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This narrative inquiry was designed to bring to life the storied experiences of registered nurses who have transitioned from paper to electronic nursing documentation and to provide a foundation for others who may be preparing to implement electronic documentation and wish to consider the significance of these nurses' stories of change in their own contexts. The study was guided by one research question: what does it mean for registered nurses to transition from paper to electronic nursing documentation? Eight registered nurses, working in the North Texas area and representing a cross section of ages, nursing experience, and gender; as well as hospital sizes and locations within the study's geographical setting were interviewed for this study. Their storied experiences of transitioning to electronic documentation are retold here, using the metaphorical narrative inquiry three-dimensional space as an analytical tool for placing participants' stories at the convergence of interaction, space, and temporality or continuity; a point named in this study as the "narrative moment". Education, support, and the environment of care were identified as major themes within the contextualized stories told by registered nurses. Sub-themes included generational differences in learning, communication, and patient safety. Findings support the notion that nurses desire systems that provide for patient safety, clear and accurate documentation, real-time and simultaneous access to patient information, quality care consistent with best practice and evidence- based research, ease of learning and use, and time savings. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the process by which culturally responsive school leaders (CRSL) become CRSL in secondary public schools. Although there is a clear need for leaders trained in culturally responsive practices, little is known about high school leaders' journey to become culturally responsive school leaders (CRSL). This study sought to acquire greater detail on the formative experiences and seminal moments that occurred for leaders, which led to the school leaders self-identifying as CRSL. Research Methods: This study utilized a qualitative research methodology through narrative inquiry to answer the research questions. Interviews were conducted to collect participants' narrative stories. Participants met three criteria to be a part of this study: 1) school leader in a public high school, 2) five years of educational experience and 3) an interest in inclusion as it relates to culturally responsive school leadership in their screening questionnaire. High school leaders described the events, people, practices and/or policies that brought them to believe that they are culturally responsive in their school communities. Discussion and Implications: The analysis of the data revealed that personal experience in life and education and equity training were the major factors that led these leaders to become CRSL. This paper provides reflections on these findings and future research needs. This paper also discussed implications for policy and practice based on these findings. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

As science becomes increasingly computationally intensive, the need for computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS) practices in K-12 science education is becoming paramount. Incorporation of CT/CS practices in K-12 education can be seen in national standards and a variety of allied initiatives. One way to build capacity around an emerging educational practice is for a team of researchers to partner with a local school or district in a Research-Practice Partnership (RPP). Over the past four years, our team has worked with a local middle school via a RPP to help support a school-wide STEM ecosystem that aimed to integrate computational thinking concepts throughout all elements of the school day (core curricula, electives, after school activities, etc.). Throughout this partnership, we have worked closely with science teachers to develop and implement computational modeling units that aim to develop both computational thinking skills and scientific knowledge. This research considers the far-reaching impacts of this RPP by examining science teachers' infusion of CT/CS into their science curricula, the development of a scientific computational modeling unit, and students' understanding of both metamodeling and scientific concepts after participating in the implementation of the computational modeling unit. The first paper in this dissertation is written for a practitioner journal. It discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic led to the rapid revision of a previously utilized disease transmission modeling unit in order to reflect the current scientific consensus regarding the behavior of the coronavirus. The paper details what a middle school science computational modeling unit about COVID-19 using the Use-Modify-Create (UMC) instructional strategy looks like in the classroom, and how the pandemic may have impacted student understanding of disease transmission through the use of computational modeling. This work demonstrates the efficacy of engaging in agile curricular revision and instruction to capture salient, emerging real-world events that can help contextualize student learning around what might otherwise be experienced as abstract science concepts. The second study is a qualitative study that utilizes a combination of modeling theoretical frameworks to investigate eighth grade science students' understanding of the nature, purpose, and revisability of the same computational model depicting the spread of COVID-19. Student exit-ticket responses, student interviews, and multiple-choice responses were analyzed to determine students' levels of understanding of metamodeling concepts. This work also compares student descriptions of what they learned using the computational model to student responses from before the pandemic, when students used a more generalized epidemics modeling unit. The results suggest that the unique context of engaging students in SSI-centered scientific modeling that is directly related to a natural phenomenon that they are directly experiencing could increase their level of understanding of metamodeling components, and even add additional complexities to their comprehension rooted in the socio-scientific nature of the content and context. The third paper is a case study that examines the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of seven middle school science teachers at the magnet middle school engaged in the CT-focused RPP. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews, a CT self-efficacy survey, and lesson plans, themes regarding the relationship between the variables being studied are presented. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation comprises three cross-disciplinary essays on information systems, marketing, and financial outcomes research for nonprofit service organizations. In our first essay, we explore service quality impacts on the constructs of positive and negative word of mouth, developing and validating a new measurement scale, testing it empirically, and finding support for our hypotheses that the quality of the digital services experience has a significant impact on positive and negative word of mouth. In a new branch of service-oriented word-of-mouth research, we find the opinion of the unrestricted use of generative artificial intelligence also affects positive word-of-mouth. In essays two and three, we examine online reputation, exploring how internet footprint and reputational constructs of prominence and perceived quality impact operational revenue and philanthropic donations. In both essays, we find a significant impact of online reputation on strategic financial outcomes for nonprofit service organizations. Our research uses a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate our hypothesized relationships comprehensively. This approach allows us to explore these relationships in both explanatory and confirmatory manners, enabling us to evaluate new variables and relationships while also exploring potential emergent impacts. We aim for a robust analysis that intentionally seeks completeness, expansion, and triangulation in assessing the effects of our hypothesized relationships on our dependent variables. By integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches, we enhance our empirical statistical findings with a deeper understanding of the underlying causal mechanisms, which provides evidence of consistent patterns that facilitate robust and non-accidental generalizations. Essay One: From Experiences to Advocacy: Exploring Service Quality and Word-of-Mouth Recommendation for Nonprofit Service Sector Organizations. Service quality excellence may lead to a competitive advantage for nonprofit services firms. This study examines nonprofit higher education services and their impact on driving positive and negative word-of-mouth recommendations. We develop and validate a new scale to test the relationship between service quality and positive and negative word of mouth. Importantly, we test positive and negative word of mouth as separate constructs, as neither a mirror image of one another nor mutually exclusive. Additionally, this research stakeholder opinion of unrestricted generative artificial intelligence in higher education. Through empirical analysis, we confirm our hypothesized relationships, finding digital service quality positively and significantly impacts both positive and negative word of mouth. This research explores student opinion on emerging broad student, faculty, and administration use of generative artificial intelligence and is, at the time of writing, the only academic paper that considers generative artificial intelligence use as a significant driving factor in positive and negative WoM sharing. Finally, we present a validated instrument and theoretical framework to study digital service quality and WoM in any service industry, not just higher education. Essay Two: "Exploring Financial Resilience in the Nonprofit Service Sector During Times of Crisis: The Role of Online Reputation." Online reputation is an important intangible asset that nonprofit services firms can leverage to increase demand and drive revenue. During disruptive times of crisis, online reputation alone may not be enough to sustain financial performance; however, it may afford protection, and serve as a buffer to negative financial impacts. First, our research empirically tests and finds support for new online reputation variables and internet signaling antecedents as they impact financial performance. Second, our study explores these relationships and their financial impact during the global COVID-19 pandemic, finding online reputation alone was not enough to protect from financial loss due to the pandemic. We also find nonprofits with stronger online reputations financially fared better than those with lesser online reputations, providing evidence a strong online reputation may afford financial protection and can be leveraged to minimize financial loss. Finally, to better understand the underlying mechanisms at work in our constructs and explore phenomena identified in our empirical analysis, we use semi-structured expert interviews and thematic coding to gather and analyze qualitative response data, resulting in insight, justifications, and boundaries for our reputational relationships. Essay Three: Inspiring Generosity: The Influence of Online Reputation on Philanthropic Giving for Nonprofit Service Sector Organizations During Times of Crisis. Furthering our research into online reputation, we explore how online reputation impacts philanthropic giving for nonprofit service organizations. In a cross-disciplinary exploration of information systems and broadened marketing, our research examines the constructs of online reputation and how it impacts charitable giving to U.S.-based higher education institutions before and after the onset of the COVID-19 global health crisis. Through quantitative analysis, we find a significant positive impact on the strategic financial outcome of donations using new quality- and awareness-signaling antecedent internet footprint variables, and reputational prominence and perceived quality variables. Through qualitative analysis, we explore the underlying mechanisms of our empirical relationships, using expert case studies to understand how online reputation positively impacts strategic financial outcomes, both during times of normal operations and crisis. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The purpose of this study was to understand K-12 school department chairs' lived experiences with burnout, a condition caused by chronic workplace stress that manifests as exhaustion, cynicism and mental distancing from one's work, and a sense of ineffectiveness (World Health Organization, 2019). Semi-structured interviews conducted over Zoom with eight K-12 school department chairs provided the data for this phenomenological study, set in the theoretical framework of job demands-resources theory, to answer the following question: What are the lived experiences of K-12 school department chairs who self-report experiencing burnout in their roles as department chairs? Four themes emerged from this study. First, "spectrum" of burnout, reveals that participants' burnout experiences ranged in degrees of severity based on cyclical patterns of stress or significantly challenging events in their personal or professional lives. Second, "death by a thousand paper cuts," refers to the ever-increasing demands that most participants had been experiencing throughout their careers. Third, students matter most, shows how the relationship dynamics between department chairs and their students appeared to bring their biggest sense of accomplishment and greatest challenges. Finally, creating space, involves participants' efforts to set healthy boundaries between themselves and their work at school. The study's findings suggest that school administrators support K-12 school department chairs by establishing clear expectations for their department chair responsibilities, adopting best practices for addressing student misbehavior and apathy, and exercising caution when imposing additional demands on teachers. Furthermore, the study's findings also suggest that educators create personal space away from work to prioritize their physical and mental well-being. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Adult science entertainment events (ASEEs) constitute a new mode of engagement with science defined by their focus on adult audiences and the use of social venues to create low-stakes environments for learning. ASEEs vary widely in format, ranging from science-at-the-bar events, where patrons can enjoy a drink while listening to presentations, to museum after-hours events, where adults can explore exhibits outside regular visiting hours. The sheer number of these events represents a significant field-wide effort being put into these programs. I conducted a comparative case study of three ASEEs, using observations, interviews, and document analysis. In the first paper, I defined ASEEs as a unique subfield of informal science education and created a research agenda for these programs. In the second paper, I created an empirically derived framework for understanding how design and implementation decisions shape engagement. In this framework, I defined how the structure and framing of an event establish an interactional genre and explain the relationship between these elements and how people perform facets of their identities. This framework demonstrates that event genres can be evoked, and therefore can be altered. As part of this paper, I explore how elements of the structure and framing of these events evoke the carnivalesque (Bahktin, 1984) or subvert the traditional norms of science. In the third paper, I applied this framework to address gender equity at these events and found that female-presenting people's expertise was more frequently contested than male-presenting people's, even when drawing on equivalent resources. Additionally, I found that even in genres where expertise was less salient, the gendered landscape still skewed to favor male-presenting people's experience. Looking across the three papers, it appeared that the carnivalesque elements of these events might be what makes them low-stakes and fun; however, it also seems that these elements may introduce risk for some groups; therefore, what makes these programs fun needs to be examined. ASEEs are worthy of further research to ensure these programs are equitable spaces for science learning. The structure, framing, genre, and performativity framework appears to be a promising approach for examining equitable engagement in these programs. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The concept of precision medicine aims to provide additional context to patient data for healthcare providers. Precision medicine overlays three additional layers of patient data on top of standard patient information: environmental exposure, personal lifestyle and behavior patterns, and information gleaned from their genome. While precision medicine promises to provide physicians and their patients with increased levels of customization for preventative and primary care, there is evidence that preparation relating to the genomic pillar of precision medicine is not yet adequate to ensure successful deployment. Aim 1 in this dissertation explored the knowledge gap between primary care physicians and genetic experts via a validated survey instrument and compared these two group's ability to interpret genetic tests and their self-efficacy when working with genomic data. Results found the correct interpretation rates for the two groups were relatively high (74.4% for providers, 83.4% for specialists). Additionally, higher correct interpretation rates were associated with age, prior genetic test consultation experience, and level of trust assigned to the reports. Aim 2 mapped out the ideal educational techniques to help increase patient comprehension of genetic testing results by conducting a scoping review; 26 manuscripts were selected in this review. The papers were categorized into three themes that emerged: education interventions, curriculum development, and review papers. Finding from this review established that there is a need to develop web-based educational tools designed with active learning methodologies, additional randomized controlled trials are needed to develop more robust evidence, and clinical outcomes need to be linked with educational interventions. Aim 3 captured the development of a mhealth telehealth app; a proxy software solution to assist healthcare providers with a artificial intelligence driven clinical decision support as a method to assist with genetic data education and interpretation. AI driven CDSS was found to have some significant hurdles still yet to overcome. Precision medicine has moved from theoretical and planning stages into real world initiatives and there are now large amounts of resources being invested. It is critical to investigate solutions and continue identifying future roadblocks while they remain manageable. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The 2007 Head Start Reauthorization Act mandated that all Head Start teachers have at least an associate degree and 50% of teachers within each Head Start program should have a baccalaureate degree in early childhood education. The problem addressed in this study was that Head Start teachers from a Midwestern region encountered barriers as they pursued higher education to meet mandated requirements to continue employment. The purpose of this study was to explore the life experiences, barriers, coping strategies and views of support needed by Head Start teachers who were completing their degrees. Tinto's academic and social integration model and Cookson's interdisciplinary sequential specificity time allocation comprised the conceptual framework for this study. Research questions focused on life experiences, barriers, coping strategies, and support Head Start teachers need as nontraditional higher education students. A basic qualitative research design was used, and data were collected through interviews with nine Head Start teachers pursuing higher education. Data were analyzed in an iterative coding process and synthesized into five themes. Findings indicate that Head Start teachers use their life experiences, various types of support from family and colleagues, and various coping strategies to overcome the financial and life barriers they face while pursuing a higher education degree. The resulting project consisted of a white paper with recommendations for Head Start leaders focusing on the potential development of specific programs to support Head Start teachers in successfully pursuing a higher education degree. This project contributes to positive social change by enhancing awareness about the supports needed by Head Start teachers to successfully overcome life barriers and build effective coping strategies while pursuing higher education. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Continued professional learning and development of school leaders is a way to improve schools and promote positive organizational change (Andreoli et al., 2020; Kim, 2020; Rieckhoff & Larsen, 2012) as well as and a way to support sustainability in a profession with high rates of turnover (Levin et al., 2020). Although principals and assistant/associate principals (APs) are not the only leaders in a school (Leithwood & Mascall, 2008), their positional influence is significant (Leithwood et al., 2020). As organizational leaders, the development of principals and APs warrants attention, particularly since there is reason to believe that as these administrators continue to learn, their practices become more effective (Bickmore, 2012; Kim, 2020). Authentic learning opportunities for school leaders has been connected positive student outcomes; however, as Darling-Hammond et al. (2022) noted in their recent report, most administrators encounter obstacles in their professional development. Authentic learning opportunities are essential for principals and APs because they are in positions that benefit from further learning and training require after assuming their roles (Armstrong, 2015; Peters et al., 2016; Oleszewski et al., 2012) and throughout the duration of their administrative careers (Cardno & Youngs, 2013; Duncan, 2013). Without well aligned professional learning support from school districts and university partnerships, research has shown that school leader development can be stifled (Barnett et al., 2017); leaders can have detrimental gaps in their knowledge (Acton, 2021), and their personal motivation to pursue professional growth may lessen (Honig & Rainey, 2014). A lack of attention towards school leader learning has undesirable outcomes, yet research has not focused on continued principal and AP learning and development to the extent that it attends to teacher professional development (Ford et al., 2020). In response, this multi-article study examined the topic of school leader learning and development in three independent, but conceptually connected, papers. Through a systematic literature review and two narrative studies, this research aimed to explore and document the professional learning preferences, needs, and experiences of school leaders, with a focus on principals and APs at distinct stages in their careers. Article one showed the characteristics of selected empirical studies published between 2011-2021; it revealed how school leaders learned and which approaches were effective or meaningful, as well as how school leader learning has been supported and hindered. This study identified learning topics offered to leaders and addressed the alignment between what was offered and what school leaders wanted and needed to learn. Article two explored the perspectives and experiences of ten experienced principals in Alabama and showed that established school leaders desired ongoing, social learning opportunities that offered applicable content and was led by experts who were relatable and transparent. Although they described a lack of time, money, and district support as hindrances to their professional learning, experienced principals believed their further development was connected to overall school improvement. Article three explored the perspectives and beliefs of 5 APs in Alabama and showed that novice APs desired local level, context specific learning opportunities as they navigated their transition into formal school leadership. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation researches the barriers encountered and resiliency learned for Black administrators on their path to becoming superintendents in California. Using critical race theory as the lens of the conceptual framework, this research used a qualitative method. The research questions inquired about how the barriers of mentorship, career pathways, and anti-Blackness affected their career trajectories. The study used interviews with Black California superintendents. This research shed light on how the barriers impacted the journey to the seat of superintendent. The paper concludes with evidence-based recommendations to reduce barriers. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) in writing classes is fundamental to interactions between teachers and students about students' writing and to help students further improve their writing. As one of the main feedback sources, teachers' cognition (e.g., teachers' thoughts, knowledge, and beliefs) needs to be probed to properly understand teachers and their teaching (Borg, 2006). Currently, there is little research regarding teachers' cognition and their practice of offering WCF in mainland China. The purpose of this study was to explore ESL teachers' knowledge of, experience with and practice of WCF, and to investigate the connection among these aspects. The participants were teachers of English from a major normal university. The phenomenological methodology was used to explore teachers' cognition and practice of WCF when teaching writing to undergraduate and graduate students. The study employed a triangulated approach that included a questionnaire administered to 55 teachers, interviews with two teachers and a study of the two teachers' feedback responses to 68 students' papers/journal entries, which were collected to further explore the interviewees' practice of WCF. Questionnaire data was statistically aggregated and tabulated. The interview data was analyzed using Hycner's 15 steps. The teachers' responses on students' papers were analyzed according to WCF types (direct CF, indirect CF, metalinguistic, focus of feedback, electronic CF, and reformulation) and error types (organizational errors, stylistic errors, and linguistic errors) and the results were tabulated. Findings indicated that ESL teachers possessed different levels of knowledge concerning WCF and used a varying number of WCF types to target error types. Most teachers were not well trained or provided with opportunities to be equipped with the necessary skills, to further improve their cognition and practice of providing feedback. Differences existed between teachers' perceptions of the employment of WCF and their actual practice of it. The findings are an indication that administrators should consider employing multiple strategies to better equip teachers of writing to teach and provide feedback more effectively and efficiently. The future of providing WCF on writing in mainland China is dependent upon a workforce that excels in feedback cognition and practice. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Electronic medical record (EMR) use has improved significantly in health care organizations. However, many barriers and factors influence the success of EMR implementation and adoption. The purpose of the descriptive qualitative single-case study was to explore health care professionals' perceptions of the use of EMRs at a hospital division of a major medical center. The study findings highlighted the challenges in transitioning from paper records to EMR despite the many benefits and potential improvement in health care. A description of the 16 health care professionals' perceptions of EMR use emerged by adopting the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model and NVivo 10 computer software to aid with the analysis of semi-structured, recorded, and transcribed interviews. Themes emerging from the analysis were in five categories: (a) Experience of health care professionals with a subtheme of workflow, (b) Challenges in transition from paper to EMR, (c) Barriers to EMR acceptance, with a subtheme of privacy, confidentiality, and security, (d) Leadership support, and (d) Success of EMR. The findings of the case study may inform health care industry decision makers of additional social and behavioral factors needed for successful EMR strategic planning, implementation, and maintenance. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Field education is the signature pedagogy of a social work education. Successful field placements rely on the willingness of social workers in the field, referred to as field instructors, to provide education and guidance to social work students with little to no compensation for this service. This paper reports the results of a survey of 648 field instructors for students in BSW, MSW, site-based and distance education social work programs in the United States. The research reports the rewards, motivations and supports that are important to the field instructors as well as their satisfaction with these factors, and compares the responses of field instructors working with BSW and MSW students, and the responses of those working with students from a site-based program to those working with students from a distance education program. The responses reveal several significant differences between the BSW group and the MSW group and many significant differences between the site-based field instructors and the distance education field instructors. This study also compared differences in the experiences of field instructors who have supervised both a student from a site-based program and a student from a distance education program at both the BSW and MSW levels. The findings revealed statistically significant differences in all eight of the factors presented, with greater levels of satisfaction reported for the site-based experiences. The results of this study provide information for field directors that will guide them in recruiting field instructors and in providing appropriate training and support to them throughout the experience, taking into account the different rewards, motivations and supports that were identified based on the type of program they have (BSW, MSW, site-based, or distance education) and in developing incentives and supports to attract and retain quality, committed field instructors for both site-based and distance education social work programs. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the impacts of social service data collection and use on the lives of young people and those that serve them, and to offer ways for youth, nonprofits, and funders to positively evolve these systems. It grew from three simple questions without clear answers: what's happening, how's it working, and what's possible? My colleagues and I have the privilege of sitting in many gatherings - with young people, staff in youth-serving organizations, and non-profit organizational leaders. In all of these organizations, we heard the ripple effects of these questions, but never the questions themselves. We witnessed organizational leaders being pitched database systems that would double revenues and algorithmic analysis that would improve youth outcomes "and" save money. One message became clear to me: data is "in" -- as in, in fashion, in vogue, in-spiring. But data for what? For what purpose? In service of whom? Why now? Why being sold by a shiny corporation? We tried asking these questions. In some places we engaged in productive conversation. In other places we were ignored. But as we peeled back the curtain (and yes, it often seems there's a Wizard of Oz figure lurking somewhere in the shadows), the too-good-to-be-true promises often turned out to be just that. Or, were at least unproven. Perhaps worse, the significant costs of these new technologies -- including the human costs -- were often untallied. This dissertation aims to provide answers to these questions. It is a summary of three papers on the subject, addressing these questions from the lenses of young people, staff working in youth-serving organizations, and at the organizational level. "Real Big Data: How We Know Who We Know in Social Service Work" asked youth how they experienced data in their institutional lives (school, after-school, etc.) and how they feel data could be used to support them. Their answers are enlightening and provide a significantly different, though not infeasible, alternative framework for data use in youth-serving organizations. "Surfacing Data Use Practices in Youth Work: Present State of the Field and Next Steps" discussed this same question with youth and social service workers. Their answers offer examples of the ways organizational drives for data collection and use are changing how work gets done -- for better and worse. Combined, they form a framework for better data use. "Bigger Data, Less Wisdom: The Need for More Inclusive Collective Intelligence in Social Service Work" examines trends in data collection/use and identifies the importance of more inclusive efforts toward data in youth-serving organizations. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This three-paper format dissertation explores three topics relevant to participating in a short-term model Sports Education Camp for youth with vision impairments. The three papers are independent studies, yet build upon each other by first measuring physical performance in certain skills, then exploring their levels of self-perception, body mass index, and level of physical activity in their local communities, and finally describing the population of participants at various points over a 25-year period. Papers one and two examined differences in pre- and post-camp measures for first-time and repeat participants, with the first paper focusing on physical performance, and the second paper looking at self-perception, level of physical activity in participant's local communities, and body mass index. Papers one and two also compared the state with the largest number of participants to the total number of participants from all other states. Paper three provides an examination of selected characteristics of those who attended various Sports Education Camps for the first time compared to those who repeated attendance, and also made comparisons of the 12 states where data were available. Results from the first study indicate that first-time attendees demonstrated significant improvement between pre- and post-camp measures of physical performance in three of the four skills being measured (over and under arm throw, and standing long jump). The second study revealed similar results for first-time attendees, who demonstrated significant growth in their positive attitudes of themselves between pre- and post-camp measures in three out of four areas of self-perception ("I love sports," "I am better at sports than most kids my age," and "I consider myself a good athlete"). Results from the third paper indicate that participants of Sports Education Camps are representative of national datasets for gender and level of vision in that the majority were males with low vision. The level of Caucasian participants attending Sports Education Camps in this study, however, was overrepresented in our sample. Implications of the effectiveness of the Sports Education Camp model for teaching basic body mechanics and sports skills in increasing physical performance and self-perception of students with vision impairments are discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The electronic medical record (EMR) is an information technology tool supporting the examination, treatment, and care of a patient. The EMR allows physicians to view a patient's record showing current medications, a history of visits from health care providers with notes from those visits, a problem list, a functional status assessment, a schedule of preventive services, contact information for family caregivers, guidelines for proper care, and clinical decision support. A qualitative Husserlian, descriptive phenomenology research design was chosen to understand how urban Alabama physicians experience using the EMR after having used the paper chart. The participants were chosen through purposive sampling and ten physicians from one urban hospital in Alabama that had implemented the EMR were recruited for the study. Semi-structured, open-ended interview questions served as the method of data collection. Central themes were identified that expressed the overall essence of the participants' experiences with the EMR such as: (1) physicians' perception of how the EMR is beneficial in the workplace, (2) features of the EMR perceived to help with workflow, (3) physician's perceptions that the EMR does not change quality of care, and (3) the EMR is perceived to have issues in terms of output and functionality. Common themes also emerged from the participants' experiences with the EMR after having used the paper chart. Implications for practice were discussed. Recommendations for future research were presented. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The phenomenon of interest in this exploratory case study was the self-reported leadership skills of first-generation college students who were actively participating in intramural sports. Specifically, the purpose was to describe participants' reports of engaging in behaviors or actions, during intramural sports, that are aligned with the leadership practices described by Kouzes and Posner (2014). Kouzes and Posner's (2014) "Student Leadership Challenge: Five Practices for Becoming an Exemplary Leader" served as the lens for this investigation. Kouzes and Posner (2014) identified Five Practices of exemplary leaders: (a) Model the Way, (b) Inspire a Shared Vision, (c) Challenge the Process, (d) Enable Others to Act, and (e) Encourage the Heart. Practices, as defined by these authors, are behaviors and actions that are developable and available to anyone who wants to take on the challenge of leading. The participants in this study included 12 first-generation college students who were actively participating in intramural sports at a public four-year institution in the Northeast United States. Students who volunteered to participate in the study completed a paper and pencil version of the Student Leadership Practices Inventory (S-LPI; Kouzes & Posner, 2013). Each student also submitted a research-driven photograph and participated in a semi-structured interview focused on his or her personal-best leadership experiences related to intramural sports participation. The data were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative procedures. This generated 47 notable findings related to the self-reported leadership skills of first-generation college students who were actively participating in intramural sports. Conclusions were drawn and recommendations for practice and future research are presented. Overall, findings from the survey, photographs, and interviews revealed that students most often reported engaging in leadership behaviors or actions related to Enable Others to Act followed by Encourage the Heart, Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, and then Challenge the Process. Additionally, students explained that they acquired the leadership skills they described during the interviews by being nurtured early on by family members, participating in sports and recreation, and work and school experiences. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Students and their parents/guardians rely on school counselors to provide counseling services based on ethically sound principles. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence about what influences a school counselor's ethical decision making. Ethical decision making for this study was defined as the degree to which decisions pertaining to confidentiality, parents' rights, and diversity and values align with professional codes of ethics and fundamental ethical principles. This study investigated the relationships between the dependent variable, school counselor ethical decision making, and the independent variables of (a) personality traits, (b) level of professional association membership, (c) level of involvement in professional associations, and (d) years of experience. Data were collected through a mixed-mode (online and paper-and-pencil) self-report survey distributed to school counselors in three states. A total of 167 school counselors, both with or without professional membership affiliation, participated in the study. Respondents provided data relative to demographics, the "Keirsey Temperament Sorter II" (Keirsey, 1998), and ethical scenarios developed by the principle researcher. Ethical scenario topics common in school counseling--confidentiality, parents' rights, and diversity and values--were utilized and specifically developed to be compatible with differing legal statues and school policies across the three states in the study. Correlation and ANOVA statistical analyses were used to determine relationships between the factors and school counselor ethical decision making. Results indicated differences in ethical decision making regarding confidentiality and parents' rights based on years of school counselor experience. Late career counselors showed ethical decision making more closely aligned with ethics codes on issues of parents' rights, however, less aligned on issues of confidentiality. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

In 2010 Washington State's persistently lowest performing public schools were identified and published by the superintendent of public instruction. However, no research has described the lived experiences of teachers and administrators who work in those schools. Guided by the combined frameworks of Van Manen and Moustakas, this qualitative study examined the lived experiences of 5 teachers and 5 administrators in the identified schools. Open-ended interviews with these staff were transcribed, reduced, coded, and analyzed for common thematic structures and essences to understand their lived experiences. Five thematic elements were identified in the data analysis: resiliency and agency; reflective teacher-student dialogue; lexical and neurological triggers; physical and emotional stress; and a continued effort to understand the impact of political, economic, social, and cultural values on teaching, learning, and testing. These key results of the study are significant for teachers, administrators, and policy-makers who want to support professional staff in low performing schools. The project, an online "Journal of Title I Schools," facilitates positive social change through peer-reviewed papers, news stories and commentaries, and real-time social media collaboration which includes a student perspective. These outcomes will deepen the public's knowledge of the challenges inherent in these educators' experiences, and in turn, will further the support these educators need to enhance the learning of their students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This paper explores how Black women who work in senior level administrative positions at community colleges were able to establish successful career paths. The literature review draws from the theoretical framework of critical race theory, the Black feminist thought, and critical race feminism. The use of counter-stories establishes a platform for Black women community college administrators to share their lived experiences. They share experiences of marginalized treatment, challenges and career development advice. They also reveal their perceptions of critical race theory and how their experiences align with its assertions. This research solidifies the value of sharing lived experiences and provides direction for overcoming challenges, coping with adversity, and professional approaches to challenges. This information is valuable to institutions and will allow them to gain a better understanding of the experiences of their women leaders who are Black, as well as provide insight to strategies that assisted in the development and growth of these leaders. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that promote the transformative learning experiences of international graduate-level learners. This study was conducted to analyze how international graduate students experience transformative learning through educational and non-educational experiences. Identification of factors unique to international graduate students could enhance the curriculum in American universities addressing the learning needs of international graduate students. Participants included international graduate students from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America in the two Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. Mezirow's theory of transformative learning (1978) was used as the theoretical framework for this study. A paper version of the modified "Learning Activities Survey" instrument was used to collect data for this study. A pilot study was conducted to establish the integrity of the data collection methods, evaluate the viability of the interviews, and assess the performance of the modified instrument for data collection. Of the 560 surveys that were distributed, 421 of them were completed and returned. Overall, 79.6% of the participants reported that they had experienced transformative learning while 20.4% reported that they had not experienced transformative learning. Among participants who experienced transformative learning, 32.3% of the transformative experiences were associated with education, 29.4% reported both educational and non-educational transformative learning experiences, while 17.9% were non-education. Nine participants who experienced transformative learning were selected for follow-up interviews. These individuals were randomly selected to ensure representation across gender, age group, continent of birth, and college. This group identified classroom activities as the educational transformative learning and factors related to major life changes as non-educational. The majority of the participants experienced transformative learning as a result of both educational and non-educational experiences. The categories from the open-ended response questions were similar to the educational and non-educational factors (mentoring, classroom discussions, new life experiences). This research demonstrated that classroom discussions, mentoring, and major life changes emerged as the major factors across all three data sets. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Despite implementation of electronic medical record (EMR) systems in the United States and other countries, there is no organizational development model that addresses medical professionals' attitudes toward technology adoption in a learning organization. The purpose of this study was to assess whether a model would change those attitudes toward use of an EMR system. The research questions examined whether EMR experience, age, job role, years in specialization, and learning culture influence technology adoption. Organizational learning, sociocultural model, fifth discipline model, and the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire[R] model theories were used to guide the study. The research methodology was a mixed-method electronic and paper survey. The unit of analysis was 1576 medical professionals at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. After data collection, the resulting information was analyzed using correlation analysis, two-sample t tests, and analysis of variance. A significant positive correlation was found between technology adoption and learning culture. A clear recommendation is that executive management planning to implement an EMR should focus on human factors, group relations, and learning cultures, in order to reduce barriers for those most likely to adopt it. EMR should enhance positive social change by accelerating the diffusion of complete, accurate, and timely medical knowledge that will benefit not only the organization but the patient. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Researchers have noted the persistent challenges that underrepresented faculty still encounter in higher education. For example, female and ethnic minority faculty members continue to experience barriers in achieving tenure and promotion. In spite of efforts to increase their presence and visibility, structural barriers account for the continued under representation of these minority faculty. Within this context, this study investigated the perceptions of underrepresented faculty regarding their participation in annual national conferences conducted by the leading professional association for Educational Leadership faculty. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What are the perceptions of underrepresented Educational Leadership faculty members regarding their experiences at their Association's annual national conferences? (2) How do these perceptions relate to their career advancement and professional development as professors of Educational Leadership? (3) What differences, if any, are reflected in the perceptions of assistant, associate, and full professors; and what factors are associated with these differences? Participant observations and open-ended interviews during two of the Association's annual conferences were the primary data collection methods. Conference activities included governance meetings, general assemblies, scheduled meetings, roundtable discussions, paper presentations, symposia, and informal evening receptions. Data were gathered from 18 participants: nine underrepresented Educational Leadership faculty and nine nonunderrepresented faculty [i.e., Anglo male]. The professorial rank of participants ranged from pre-tenured assistant professor to full professor. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological approach that enabled the researcher to explore in depth the lived experiences of participants. Results are presented in the form of three "composite" personal narratives representing a synthesis of perceptions of underrepresented faculty members at the assistant, associate, and full professor levels. One "amalgamated" portrait is of a young African-American male who recently received his Ph.D.; another is of a 45-year-old White female tenured associate professor; and the third is of a nationally known Latina full professor. Results suggest that issues of inclusion, exclusion, status, recognition, gender, identity construction, reference groups, specialized development and treatment, and racial diversity were challenges faced by the participants. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

his research project firstly considers what is known about Queer women's experiences of minority stress, and the ways they respond. Then a qualitative project explores and seeks to understand the impact of minority sexual orientation for UK clinical psychology trainees who identify as female and gay or lesbian. Section A: This literature review presents the current theoretical models and empirical data for Queer women and minority stress. It then uses a meta-ethnographic approach to extract primary and second order concepts from thirteen qualitative papers which describe Queer women's experiences of minority stress and their various responses. Third-order constructs of 'threat', 'response' and 'position' are extracted from this data and a model of how these interact for Queer women is described. Implications of how minority stress may present in Queer women, and the interaction between mental health and responses to minority stress are discussed. Section B: This empirical paper explores the experiences for lesbian/gay women on clinical psychology training, and the impact of minority sexual orientation on personal and professional development. Eight interviews are analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Three super-ordinateand nine subordinate themes emerged relating to psychological, relational and theoretical processes trainees engaged in largely in the absence of a shared reflective practice around sexuality and gender. Implications for training and practice are discussed.

This thesis uses a qualitative design to explore the experiences of adolescents with type 1 diabetes (AT1D) regarding their diabetes management. The literature review involved a systematic review of the literature on adolescents' experience of diabetes management, and a meta-synthesis of their findings. Adolescents described barriers to diabetes management including a lack of knowledge, skills, support and resources to feel equipped to manage their diabetes. They reported becoming overwhelmed by the complex regime and levels of responsibility, which was enhanced when parents intermittently took over control. This sometimes led to resentment and rebellion, resulting in deliberate mismanagement. Non-deliberate mismanagement included adolescents' belief that they could intuitively determine their blood glucose levels without monitoring them as per their regime. Implications include researching the concept of intuitively monitoring blood glucose levels and increasing knowledge and resources for adolescents to feel self-efficacious. Five adolescent-caregiver dyads were interviewed about their experiences of using a blood glucose monitor in the empirical paper. Thematic analysis of this data found themes of: Practicalities of using the device, where participants evaluated the device and it's impacts on diabetes outcomes; Emotional consequences relating to mostly reduced anxiety yet the potential for guilt and shame; Choice/Control regarding their diabetes management practices; Social responses, where participants described the device as allowing them to be discreet to maintain social relationships and feel like a 'normal teen'; and Responsibility, whereby participants described the need for responsible use of the device and the potential for conflicts with caregivers when this is not achieved. Future implications include research into those with issues managing their diabetes or the newly diagnosed and providing supportive communication training to service providers and family members. The final paper examines contributions to theory development and clinical practice and summaries areas requiring further research.

Immigration worldwide is at an all-time high resulting in significant changes in school populations internationally. Schools have a key role in the resettlement of International New Arrivals (INA) and the perspectives of INA pupils can play an important part in the development of provision which effectively meets their needs. The first paper is a systematic literature review exploring the secondary school experiences of INAs. Using the PRISMA framework, 35 potentially relevant studies were identified of which 10 met the inclusion criteria. A thematic synthesis of the studies identified the following key themes: sense of belonging, acquisition of the English language and lack of acceptance. Findings also highlight similar perceptions across different INA groups relating to the importance of social inclusion of pupils into schools. Implications for school practice are considered. The second paper is an exploratory qualitative study exploring the experiences of three male adolescent INAs as they transferred into secondary school in one local authority in the UK. Two interviews using interpreters were carried out with each participant and analysed using thematic analysis. Key themes generated from the data included navigating the learning context, the school transition experience and developing a sense of belonging. Findings also reflected the role of INA pupils as active agents in shaping their own experiences in school. Implications for school practice and future research are considered. The third paper outlines the dissemination of evidence to professional practice within the context of educational psychology. An overview of the literature on evidence-based practice, practice-based evidence and effective research dissemination is given. This is followed by a summary of the research implications from Paper One and Two and concludes with a strategy for dissemination.

Literature is one of the primary means through which God has revealed Himself to the world. Christian writers, therefore, should be bold to portray their God in and through the religious experiences of their characters. Evaluating classic and contemporary literature, four distinct methods of portraying religious experience may be described, each with varying levels of flexibility and faithfulness. Works of literature such as fantasy fiction may include any and all of these methods, even while that literature pursues other themes. In this thesis, an Artist Statement describes the included work of fiction, with its literary context, impetus, and personal significance. A Critical Paper follows, studying and describing the four types of religious experience in literature. Finally, the Creative Manuscript attempts to put these four types into practice in the context of a coherent story, using the beginning of a longer novel.

The thesis sought to explore the experience of caring for an individual with an eating disorder. It is comprised of three standalone papers. Paper one and two have been prepared for submission to a journal and in accordance with the journal guidelines. Paper one is a systematic literature review synthesising qualitative studies relating to the experience and impact of caring for, or living with an individual with an eating disorder. Databases were systematically searched and twenty studies were included in the review. Nine core themes emerged from the meta-synthesis. Eating disorders were found to have a pervasive impact on family members mediated by a number of factors. Cognitive appraisals affected the caregiving experience and responses to the individual. The experience of caregiving was continually reappraised leading to a process of adaptation over time. Paper two is a qualitative study which sought to examine caregivers’ accounts of managing Anorexia Nervosa with an emphasis on accommodation responses. Eight participants were interviewed and transcripts were analysed using a grounded theory approach. A theory of the processes by which accommodation responses operate was developed which emphasised the importance of caregivers’ emotional resources in mediating responses. Difficulty managing anorexia nervosa led to low perceived efficacy and diminished resources. Subsequently caregiving aims shifted in line with accommodation responses. Carers recognised accommodation as counterproductive to recovery and experienced internal conflict (dissonance) which was reduced using a number of cognitive and behavioural strategies. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed with reference to existing literature. Paper three is a critical review of the research process, focusing on the experience of undertaking qualitative research. Personal reflections of the process, as well as the implications of the research for the researcher’s professional practice and for the wider profession are discussed.

Section A is a systematic literature review, examining possible factors which may impact on the risk of experiencing postnatal mental health difficulties for women who had an unplanned pregnancy. Sixteen papers were found to be relevant for inclusion in the review. Findings are summarised under six key themes; pre-existing mental health difficulties, sociodemographic factors, mother's perception of the pregnancy, obstetric factors, social factors and paternal factors. Findings are discussed in relation to their clinical relevance, and recommended further research is outlined. Section B is an empirical study using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore the experience of a pregnancy that was not planned, for women postnatally. Eight first time mothers who had a baby aged between six and twenty-four months were interviewed. Five subordinate themes, with subthemes, are discussed in the findings. These include unique considerations for women who had a pregnancy that was not planned. Limitations of the study and research and clinical implications are considered.

With the improvement of living standards and the construction of public transportation, many people travel more frequently. They want to record those experiences and get more enlightenment when they look back upon the memory. Additionally, many people have eagerly requested to share their travel experiences due to the development of social media and the information explosion era. Less than a decade ago, people would travel without a smart device. They tended to take photos along the way with a film camera, and stick them on a physical photo album to share with friends and family. The other traditional method of documenting the journey includes keeping a paper journal, creating a scrapbook, using a sketchbook, and sending postcards home. Those are the epic handmade styles of building a solid connection between owners and their traveling memory, but hard to survive from heavy-duty trips and future preservation. After I deep dive into the problem area, I found out that nowadays, people are willing to record digitally by using phone notes, becoming vloggers and bloggers, posting photos on Instagram, and making Tiktok Videos. However, the fast-paced domestic lifestyle and existing tools can hardly meet people’s demand for systematic documentation of travel events. Therefore, organizing information structurally and visualizing the experience could help them get more pleasure when reflecting on these memories and sharing them with others. My deliverable is designing a mobile-based application that will make travel-record easier and build the emotional connection between users and their travel stories. The document method of this app would be diverse, which includes taking photos, notes, voice memos, mood marks, and footprints.

Music has long been an important medium for fulfilling and expressing emotional needs. In fact, music can become a powerful tool to create emotional responses in humans, such as happiness, sadness, awareness, as we see in recent decades in cinema, social media and advertisement. Today, a combination of different media is used to arouse our emotion and feeling, but often music has been used to accompany a visual realization, rather than vice versa. In my work I explore new modes of communication between people and sound by transfiguring music notation to a visual graphic. The scope and scale of my work ranges from miniature individual components to artworks the size of a room. Through my realization, the technique that I use permits me to play with images in the way that musicians play with sounds. In this paper, I introduce this new language, which is an art form based on unlimited combinations of simple elements that are capable of expressing a broad range of human emotion and experience.

The research that forms this thesis is a portfolio of seven published papers together with a critical review, set out below, which gives a general overview of all the work. The work covers a period from the 1990s until 2008, with publication dates spanning a decade. The research has developed from an early interest in exploring the nature of landscape experience, responses to past and contemporary landscape designs, and what benefits people might gain from engaging with such landscapes. It has also reflected a desire to raise standards of scholarship and research in landscape architecture. The portfolio of work addresses three broad themes, interconnected but requiring different approaches in terms of method: the distinctiveness of place and design responses to it; design of public open space for the 21st century; and understanding people’s engagement with the natural environment. The research addresses the following questions and is presented under these headings, each representing a different strand or focus of attention. a) History, prototypes and local distinctiveness: what is the role of historic design prototypes in contemporary landscape architecture and how can an understanding of them enhance sensitivity to local distinctiveness in new design? b) Urban open space: how can an understanding of the history of landscape design inform the way urban open space is designed, planned and managed in the 21st century and what new paradigms might there be? c) Experiencing the landscape: how do people perceive, use and respond to green landscapes in their local environment, and what factors influence engagement with and benefit from such natural environments? The outputs in this portfolio are shown to have influenced other researchers as well as policy makers and practitioners; they are reflected in citations of the work and in government agency initiatives to develop new approaches to accessing the landscape. Finally, a conceptual framework is offered for understanding and responding to people’s diverse experiences of landscape.

Through curated space and abstracted sculptures that reference the viewer’s body, Gut Feeling, acknowledges the viewer’s experience as the focal point of the exhibition. I designed the whole gallery as an art object using both positive and negative space. The sculptures act as one unified system that guides the viewer through the exhibition in a counterclockwise rotation inward. The viewer follows the forms as they puncture through the walls of the gallery, while considering their own body’s relationship to the forms being seen. The viewer directly engages with the scale of the forms, sculptural placement, and sensory experience; these elements stir humbleness in the viewer by tugging on the string that connects all of us despite our difference, our abject bodies. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part seeks to address the systems and historical factors that make up the museum’s authority such as architecture, archives, rituals, and the viewer’s role as a visual consumer. Part two focuses on my thesis exhibition Gut Feeling how it was developed and draws connections to the metaphorical body of the gallery and the viewer’s own body. As an artist I believe it is important to critique the artwork in the space it is presented in, while reflecting on how artwork is developed, constructed, and conceptualized.

The rise in popularity of farmers markets in the United States reflects consumers’ negative response to more traditional food distribution systems. Farmers markets provide consumers with a more local and often more personal food purchasing experience. This paper examines consumer motivations to attend farmers markets in Minnesota using the concept of embeddedness. Values of social embeddedness, spatial embeddedness, and natural embeddedness are used as a framework to analyze the range of non-economic motivations and values sought by patrons of farmers markets. This work contributes to existing literature on non-economic motivations to patronize farmers markets and support local food systems.

The estranged relationship with landscape exhibited by contemporary cultures has been well documented by prominent theorists. Design professionals can begin to reconcile culture and landscape by proposing interventions in everyday landscapes which embrace uncertainty, acknowledge the temporal nature of phenomena, and introduce elements of ambiguity while simultaneously creating pleasing, functional environments. Such interventions encourage meaningful, imaginative experience, encourage multiple readings, and suggest renewed ways of dwelling in landscape. The methodology for this thesis is a two part examination of contemporary approaches to the production of space in significant cultural landscapes. Part one, a position paper, reviews relevant literature and outlines a position to guide design proposals. Part two tests the principals and theories developed in the position paper through proposals for interventions at two sites. The context for the design component is the Crooked Road Musical Heritage Trail. The Crooked Road is an ideal setting in which to explore the potential of interventions that seek to reconcile culture and landscape. It offers participants a framework for the experience of both regional landscape and culture in the form of traditional music rich in landscape themes. Proposals are developed for an abandoned homestead on Shooting Creek and the Floyd Country Store, both in Floyd County, Virginia, along the Crooked Road. The approach to intervention developed in these proposals is intended to guide the development of additional sites along the Crooked Road with the goals of enriching the landscape experience of participants, strengthening regional sense of place, and reconciling estranged relationships with landscape.

In Books with Bodies: Experientiality in post-1980s Multimodal Print Literature , I examine contemporary British and North American authors’ use of books as platforms for multimodal narration. “Multimodality” refers to the concurrent use of several semiotic systems (such as writing, maps, charts) for communication. The pointed juxtaposition of different semiotic systems in a literary text requires a combination of perception processes on the reader’s part. My dissertation charts the ways in which multimodal literary books published in response to the proliferation of electronic reading and writing interfaces from the 1980s onward prompt metacognitive awareness about "reading" as an experience that is grounded in bodily interactions and sensory contact with the modes and the platforms that mediate literature. I term this metacognitive awareness about the readers’ embodied engagement with the text’s material form "presence," by revising Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s notion of "presence-effect." The theoretical framework for this dissertation comes from three fields: I combine approaches to multimodality that originated in the study of social semiotics, insights from the cognitive sciences--the “second-generation” models of cognition--and twentieth century philosophies of experience, particularly those of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Serres, and Gumbrecht. By analyzing multimodal fictions, poetry, and lyrical essays such as Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper (2005), Anne Carson’s Nox (2010), Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes (2010), and Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams’s S. (2013), among other texts, Books with Bodies subverts the distinction between higher-order mental abilities (such as language processing) and lower-order perceptions (like touch) which underlies prior scholarship on the cognitive impact of literature. Indeed, I argue that the tendency to unpack the literary experience primarily in terms of how the mind processes language persists due to the equation of cognition with computation in first-generation artificial intelligence (AI) researches that influenced cognitive literary studies. Drawing on insights from queer and disability studies, I show that when we take cognition as analogous to information processing, we pathologize behavioral or cognitive differences. Thus, at a time when AI researches are finally moving beyond language processing to consider embodiment, my dissertation demonstrates the manner in which contemporary literature can contribute to the understanding of embodied, enactive intelligence.

The field of English Language Arts has a long history of valuing students’ experience and placing it at the center of curriculum and instruction. However, the means of making experience educative for students has proved to be a challenging conceptualization, especially within the realities of classroom life. This dissertation addresses this issue by exploring how a particular school used an 18-week experiential program called “Walkabout” to create opportunities for students’ experiences to become educative individually and collectively through narrative performance. In Walkabout, students reflect upon the educative value of their experiences through multiple oral and written narrativizations of experiences over time. I frame the practice of making experience educative in two ways. First, I build upon Dewey’s (1938) notions of continuity and interaction. Second, I rely upon sociolinguistic scholars who conceptualize narrative according to its situated function as manifested by language-in-use. The larger ethnographic research project from which this study is taken was a two-year study tracing the writing experiences of two senior classes involving 18 case study students. This study was the focus of the second year of the larger study. I use the methods of case study and interactional ethnography to trace students’ participation with narrativizations of experience according to Rogoff’s (1995) three planes of activity—apprenticeship, guided practice, and participatory appropriation—to structure my discussion of students’ sociocultural participation with narrativizations of experience over time on institutional, interactional, and individual levels. Students were apprenticed into making experience educative over time through three primary moves: (1) making immediate evaluations tellable (2) constructing identities through narrativizations and (3) engaging in reflective meaning making on previous and ongoing narrativizations. These moves were evident in the students’ evolving language in use in how they narrativized their experiences over time in different narrative environments such as journals, class discussions, class papers, and public presentations. These moves were also influenced by the historical, institutional, and interactional forces that shaped the Walkabout program and its teachers, including an emphasis on individual and community growth and readiness to transition from adolescence to adulthood. By addressing student-generated narrativized topics over time, teachers were able to transform students’ immediate narrativized evaluations of experience into more complex topics. Three case study students demonstrated both resistance and acceptance of teachers’ attempts to engage them in reflective meaning-making but in all cases students did engage in robust dialogues where they at least considered alternate constructions of meaning regarding their narrativizations of experience. This study offers narrativizations of experience as a way to realize Dewey’s (1938) argument that experiences can be made educative through continuity and interaction and carries theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications for the value of using students’ experience as heuristic for teaching and learning.

August Cieszkowski is one of the greatest philosophers of Polish philosophy of nation and history. He was also a thinker for whom religion played a formidable role in his philosophical system. If it had not been for religion, this system would not have existed at all. The present paper shows the importance of religious thinking in the whole historiosophical system of Cieszkowski. It underlines the fact that while the developing science was striving to “disenchant the world”, Cieszkowski as a philosopher wanted to “enchant the reality” afresh. However, this “enchanting” was not being performed “against science”. Quite to the contrary, this Polish thinker was employing scientific achievements to demonstrate that “religion is everything”. Divinity is not placed in the mysterious and isolated sacred any more but constitutes our daily life and action.

For many consumer-intensive (B2C) services, delivering memorable customer experiences to maximize customer satisfaction can be a source of competitive advantage since firms that deliver outstanding customer experience achieve greater customer satisfaction, and therefore greater customer loyalty. Yet, there is no clear methodology available for service encounter design that accounts for customer behavior. This dissertation shows how experiential services should be sequenced and timed to maximize satisfaction of customers who are subject to memory decay and acclimation. The objective of the problem addressed in this thesis is to maximize the total remembered utility of customers from their experience of the service encounter. We consider service encounters where the service provider can alter either the sequence or the duration of activities across the encounter. In particular, we consider three stylized models of service encounters, (i) variable sequence and fixed duration (VSFD), (ii) fixed sequence and variable duration (FSVD), and (iii) variable sequence and variable duration (VSVD). The thesis is organized as follows. The first chapter introduces the motivation behind the research question and the assumptions made to model the problem. The rationale for addressing the specific behavioral phenomena of memory decay and acclimation is also explained in this chapter. This thesis draws on research from multiple disciplines. The second chapter provides an extensive literature review, spanning the areas of psychology, behavioral economics, decision theory, marketing, and operations management. In chapter three, a mathematical model of customer satisfaction that includes the effect of acclimation and memory decay is introduced. Several empirical research papers have studied the satisfaction obtained from experiences by people subject to the effects of memory and adaptation. Our analytical model for total remembered utility is further validated by comparing its outcome with the reported results obtained from these experiments. Chapter four discusses the three scenarios of service encounters mentioned above, (i) VSFD, (ii) FSVD, and (iii) VSVD. Analytical results indicate that memory decay favors positioning the highest service level near the end, whereas acclimation favors maximizing the gradient of service level. Although memory decay and acclimation lead to the same design individually, they can act as opposing forces when considered jointly.Taken, together, they maximize the gradient of service level near the end, which mayresult in (i) sequencing activities in a U-shaped fashion and (ii) lengthening the duration ofactivities with the lowest service levels.Chapter five discusses three heuristics for sequencing and duration allocation to design the service encounter. These heuristics are based on the analytical characterization of the optimal sequence and timing of activities derived in chapter three. The performance of the heuristics is benchmarked against the true optimum for small problem instances of VSFD and FSVD. For VSVD, the heuristic is benchmarked against an upper bound.Chapter six discusses two extensions of the service provider's design problem, (i) endogenous service levels, and (ii) service design for a population of customers who are heterogeneous in terms of their rates of acclimation and memory decay. In case of endogenous service levels we assume that every activity can be assigned a service level within a range, by the service provider. The sequence and duration of activities is assumed to be fixed. The results indicate that it is optimal to allocate activities towards the end of the service encounter a higher service level, and the activities near the beginning of the encounter a lower service level.For heterogeneous customers we find that the sequence and duration allocation rules that are optimal for homogeneous customers are now not always optimal. For this scenario we numerically test the robustness of the service design that is optimal for homogeneous customers. We find that the sequence that is optimal for the mean value of the rates of acclimation and memory decay for the entire population of customers, serves as a good heuristic in the heterogeneous case. Finally, in chapter seven we conclude by providing an overview of the results and provide directions for future research. The Appendix provides detailed proofs for analytical results.

Engagement is now a necessity for marketers in need to reach their customers. This paper studies how nine different experiences are related to the advertising effectiveness of magazines. The results of a regression model show that seven of them are statistically significant predictors of advertising effectiveness. On the one hand, when readers experience content that they can talk about and share, makes them part of a community, inspire their lives and gives them a timeout of daily routine, then the advertising those magazines is more effective. On the other hand, when readers experience unreliable ads and an overload of them, advertising effectiveness is negatively affected. The findings are relevant for further studies on media experiences and its effects on advertising and also for magazine publishers who need to strength selling arguments in times of high media competition and cornucopia of content. -------------------------------------------------------------------- El vínculo que se genera entre un medio de comunicación y sus lectores (audiencia) hoy en día es un requisito para poder marcar diferencia en un mercado altamente competitivo como lo es el sector de las revistas. Este trabajo estudia nueve experiencias que evoca en las personas la lectura de revistas y como éstas se relacionan con la efectividad publicitaria. Los resultados se generan gracias a un modelo de regresión en el que se muestra como siete de ellas son predictoras en la efectividad de sus anuncios. Los resultados son relevantes y son de ayuda para el desarrollo de nuevas investigaciones, pero sobre todo para los medios de comunicación que pueden medir el efecto sobre la publicidad y conseguir argumentos más sólidos para sumar y retener anunciantes cada vez más exigentes.

My doctoral dissertation consists of three essays on consumer behavior. The first chapter studies demand for experience goods. Consumers behave very differently when they do not have perfect information about all brands available on a shelf. This paper extends the benchmark discrete choice model of consumer demand to capture two distinct features of experience-goods markets: prior brand experience and shopping frequency. Although the current literature incorporates habit formation in consumer demand models, it has not considered a more fundamental question: how the first experience with a brand affects the consumer's choice. The model is estimated using data on purchases of ready-to-drink orange juice, which comes from a new consumer-level panel provided by a large supermarket chain in Brazil. The results show that for this product prior experience of a brand is more important for a consumer's choice than price. Furthermore, own- and cross-price elasticities change significantly when experience and shopping frequency are taken into account. The findings of this chapter have implications for both firms' strategies and for antitrust analysis related to experience-goods markets. The second chapter explores how umbrella branding can significantly decrease consumer's first-time experience cost. Multiproduct firms often market their products under the same brand name. When a firm launches a new product with the same brand name, consumers can pool their prior experience with the brand to infer a quality for the product. This strategy can be particularly useful when a firm decides to enter a market of experience goods, in which consumers face a cost for trying a new product. The main objective of this chapter is to study the process by which consumers' brand choices and first-time purchases for ready-to-drink orange juices are affected by their experience with the same brand in another category. The results are consistent with signaling theories of umbrella branding as they indicate that consumers' experience cost with a product decreases with experience of other products of the same brand. The third chapter is about a household's choice of retail formats. Thirty percent of households' food expenditure in the United States comes from clubstores, mass merchandisers, supercenters, drugstores and convenience stores. However, earlier work focused on consumers' shopping behavior mostly in grocery stores and has not examined consumers choice across different types of retail outlets. To address this gap a multinomial logit model is estimated on household-level scanner data for the United States to study how households' characteristics are related to their choice of retail outlets. The results show that income, household size and ethnicity significantly affect these choices. These findings are important for policies that target certain consumer groups.

What is the anthropology of imagination and how can we understand imaginative experience? Anthropology has long focused on the readily observable, the visible, and the present, yet the experience of everyday life is also shaped by private thoughts, imaginings, dreams and daydreams. This paper is an experiment in approaching such affective faculties. Drawing on fieldwork conducted with Yolmo-Nepali colleagues in Queens, New York between 2009-2011, I explore some of the imaginative experiences of migrants as they relate to and illuminate complex existential circumstances brought about by social, economic, and political forces. By attending to experiences such as dreaming, daydreaming, and the relationship between the actual and the virtual, I aim to gain a better understanding of the role of imagining in the everyday lives of Yolmo migrants. In doing so I hope to identify the limits, as well as potential openings that an attention towards the imagination entails in the context of anthropological research.

People often say, "college is the best time of your life, enjoy it while it lasts." But what makes college life so memorable? Is it the people, the places, the classes, the work, or the experiences? The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of extraordinary experiences in familiar and novel settings. The unit of analysis in this study was one extraordinary experience. 97 total experiences were collected from 19 undergraduate students based on there experiences at a major Midwestern university and 2 seperate study abroad programs to Uganda and China in the 2009 school year. Through this research, it was found that competition and accomplishment, group idendtity, spontaneity, off-campus exploartion and walking outside were five themes that could define extraordinary experiences in familiar settings, while reflection, outdoor adventure, and cross cultural interactions defined extraordianry experiences in novel settings. It was also found that being evaluated during leisure time can actually be a beneficial and memorable experience, which runs counter to popular research. Insights gained may benefit campus life and recreation, university retention rates, as well as leisure and tourism programming.

This paper explores four Wildean texts, their techniques, and their purposes, beginning with an introduction to Wilde's life, contemporary culture, and his major educational and ideological influences--a familiarity that is necessary to understand his more subtle and subversive meanings. The second chapter deals with Wilde's pre-incarceration texts, 'The Decay of Lying' and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The essay serves almost as a guidebook for the writing of the novel and through similarities in theme and vocabulary, perfectly sets up a comparison with the post-incarceration works--De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol--which will be examined in the third chapter, along with various biographical elements which are necessary to any interpretation of De Profundis. Echoing the relationship between 'The Decay of Lying' and The Picture of Dorian Gray, De Profundis serves as an interpretive tool for The Ballad of Reading Gaol. In Reading Gaol Wilde expounds in great detail upon his theory about Christ, who is one of the three primary figures in the poem (the other two being Charles Thomas Wooldridge and, of course, Wilde himself). The object of this treatment is not to demonstrate some great transformation in Wilde's proclaimed philosophy of life and art, but rather to display the 'deepening' of a man who, by discovering that 'the secret of life is suffering' (De Profundis 1082), realized a hope declared in a confiscated letter passed through prison bars: 'Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse' (1098).

Studies of the Supreme Court consistently show that the Office of the Solicitor General enjoys remarkable success before the Supreme Court, both at the certiorari stage and at the merits stage. These studies offer a variety of explanations for Solicitor General success, but fail to portray accurately the Office of the Solicitor General and to account for variations in governmental success. This paper seeks to continue the exploration of governmental success. By looking at the Office of the Solicitor General as a series of individuals with distinct characteristics rather than as a single entity, and by accounting for various situational dynamics, I attempt to explain the variations in executive success.

The aims of this study were to test: (1) the association between medication experience and consumer satisfaction with a new medication controlling for other influential factors, (2) the impact of the disconfirmation of consumer expectations and experience on satisfaction and (3) the relationship between consumer satisfaction and intent to continue the medication therapy. Oliver's theory of expectancy disconfirmation was used as the theoretical framework. This research used a longitudinal study design. Pharmacists at Michigan pharmacies recruited ambulatory care consumers meeting the study inclusion criteria, which included being at least 18 years of age and filling a prescription for a medication that the consumers had never used before. Recruited consumers were requested to complete a baseline questionnaire to determine expectations regarding the medication before starting therapy. Consumers also completed a follow-up questionnaire a month later regarding their experience, satisfaction and intent to continue using the new medication. Consumers provided data through paper or web-based surveys. Data were analyzed using Pearson's correlation coefficients, factor analysis, reliability analysis, factorial ANOVA models, multiple linear regressions and structural equation modeling. The key finding was that the medication-related experience had a strong positive impact on satisfaction. Positive associations were also observed between satisfaction and intent to continue using the medication. Expectations on the other hand did not exhibit a strong impact on satisfaction. Disconfirmation between expectations and experience was also not significantly associated with satisfaction. Variables such as general attitudes towards the medication, information-seeking behaviors, physician-patient relationships, symptom burden and medication adherence had a significant impact on the constructs of expectations, experience and satisfaction with a new medication. Oliver's theory of expectancy disconfirmation could be expanded using the above-mentioned variables. From a policy standpoint, the positive association between satisfaction and intent to continue using the medication is an important finding. It establishes the importance of the satisfaction construct. Pharmaceutical manufacturers could include satisfaction results obtained within clinical trial on medication labels and promotional materials. This would provide valuable information to consumers and health care providers regarding the medication, and therefore, serve as an important marketing and informational tool.