2012 | IUP Islandora

Age group differences in older adults' attitudes toward psychotherapy and willingness to seek help

Older adults have been found to underutilize mental health services. Limited research has focused on older adults' attitudes toward psychotherapy. Eighty-six older adults participated in this study, which investigated age group differences (e.g., young old versus older old) in older adults' attitudes toward psychotherapy and willingness to seek help. The effect of previous experience with psychotherapy on attitudes and willingness to seek help was also examined. Results indicated that younger...
Jillian Zeitvogel Pino.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Hatfield, Derek Committee members: Tara Johnson; Laurie Roehrich.
Psy.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

The aging workforce: an analysis of workplace injuries of nursing assistants employed in a long-term care setting

As the nation's population ages at an unprecedented rate, so too does the American workforce. This has sparked significant interest in relation to the impact that the aging workforce will have on American businesses. The high cost of workers' compensation claims in a competitive market has caused employers to seek greater control over costs associated with workplace injuries. This scenario is all too familiar to long-term care facilities that currently struggle with injury rates double the ra...
Darlene Farren Piazza.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Hirt, Mary Jane Kuffner Committee members: David Chambers; Diana Rupert.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

An analysis of third through fifth grade teachers' research-based instruction and assessment practices implemented in rural school settings in western pennsylvania

The purpose of this study is to identify the self-reported research-based instructional and assessment practices used by third through fifth grade teachers among rural school environments in Western Pennsylvania which have attained Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) pursuant to statewide assessments. Specifically, this study examines the research-based instructional and assessment practices teachers reported using to improve students' reading and mathematics achievement and the frequency in which...
Debra J Shirley.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Paquette, Kelli R. Committee members: DeAnna Laverick; Sue Rieg.
D.Ed. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

'as a gay man, i': how one literacy worker's coming out changed a campus community

This dissertation investigates how a gay literacy worker's coming out helped change the campus discourse surrounding sexuality. Through an ethnographic examination of this English instructor and the community college where he taught composition and literature for nearly thirty years, the study illustrates a rhetorical situation where a gap in understanding about homosexuality existed. In this rhetorical situation, discourses of homophobia and heterosexism contest against an instructor's pro-g...
Clifton R Justice.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Rafoth, Ben Committee members: Lynne Alvine; Jean Nienkamp.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Behind the curtain: a critical view of theory and practice of tutoring international english language learners at university writing centers

This critical study focuses on writing center (WC) development in terms of tutoring international English language learners (ELLs) at the university level. I posit that there is a common framework upholding the theories and practices of tutoring at WCs, which I call WC ideology. By introducing WC ideology in ten tenets, I attempt to find out whether it is as effective in assisting the needs and affordances of ELLs as in meeting the needs of native English-speaking writers. Within a critic...
Lan Wang.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Tannacito, Dan J. Committee members: Gloria Park; Michael Williamson.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Body image in female collegiate volleyball players: are athletics detrimental or beneficial?

Body image research among female athletes has tended to examine the detrimental effects of participation in "thin" sports such as gymnastics and dance. The present study explores positive and negative effects of athletic participation as well as the impact of level of competition on body image among female collegiate volleyball players. Female collegiate volleyball players and non-athletes were administered measures investigating current and ideal body physiques, body dissatisfaction, soci...
Megan M Hoag.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: McHugh, Maureen Committee members: Donald Robertson; Laurie Roehrich.
Psy.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

A case study of a taiwanese teachers' group exploring narrative pedagogy

Taiwanese college students regard writing as the most difficult part of their study of English. Teaching writing then becomes a daunting task for Taiwanese college teachers. Narrative writing has been used as a method to enhance student interest and to improve ESL students' English writing. Few studies talk about Taiwanese college teachers' beliefs about and experience with teaching narrative writing. This study aims at explicating Taiwanese college teachers' views of narrative. A teacher nar...
Ruo-Wan Lei.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Pagnucci, Gian S. Committee members: Jeannine Fontaine; David Schaafsma.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

A case study of commercial bank solvency during a global financial crisis

Probably one of the most salient problems of the recent past was the 2008 global financial crisis. This crisis, which began in mid-September 2008, was thought by some to have been caused by the U.S. sub-prime mortgage industry collapse. The credit freeze which followed precipitated a chain of events that affected most organizations in the United States. Because of the size and scope of this problem, the U.S. federal government intervened and offered funding to select institutions in an effo...
Daniel Kozyro.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Millward, Robert E. Committee members: Joseph Marcoline; David Piper.
D.Ed. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Challenging state, religious, and gender violence in seven contemporary arab american writers

This dissertation examines the various positions and strategies that seven contemporary Arab American writers take to debate, diagnose, outline, challenge, and critique the phenomenon of violence that has existed in either their native Arab societies, Arab American communities, or in America. The literary texts that I analyze include Dallal Shaw's Scattered Like Seeds, Ibrahim Fawal's On the Hills of God, Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, Soheir Khashoggi's Mirage, Diana Abu-Jabe...
Mohammad Salem Ali Almostafa.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Yang, Lingyan Committee members: Susan Comfort; Thomas Slater.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Chief school business officials: a qualitative investigation of employment longevity and the career plateau

The pool of candidates for the chief school business official position is shrinking, as with other senior-level leadership positions in public school districts. In order to develop future professionals in school business leadership, it is important to learn from those who have experienced success. Since chief school business officials are prone to reaching a career plateau early in their careers, discerning the strategies used to mitigate the impact of career plateauing is important to empl...
Alan T Vandrew.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Machado, Crystal H. Committee members: Cathy Kaufman; David Piper.
D.Ed. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

The children of reagan: troubling pleasures for the era of privatization

The majority of the class of 2011 was born in the year 1989. Sharing a birth year with Francis Fukuyama's The End of History means these students do not know of a time before the Neo-liberal push towards privatization. In recent years, the radical restructuring of public and private life that began with the Reagan Administration has gone largely unquestioned. The result has been a collapse of the previously separate public and private spheres, resulting in a new understanding of how we relate...
Matthew Francis Ussia.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Sell, Mike Committee members: Susan Comfort; David Downing.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Clinical instructors' perceptions of the importance of affective behaviors in undergraduate athletic training clinical education

The affective domain represents a set of learning objectives that are difficult to assess and instruct. Affective behaviors consist of different attributes such as interpersonal relationships, professionalism, trust, empathy, and integrity to name a few. This study surveyed athletic training clinical instructors' perception of the importance of using affective behaviors in a clinical setting. Using data from survey respondents, this study found that clinical instructors have a favorable a...
Rebecca L Mokris.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Millward, Robert E. Committee members: George Bieger; Jennifer Rotigel.
D.Ed. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Critical, third-space phenomenology as a framework for validating college composition placement

The topic of this study is the validity of college composition placement decisions, particularly the decision to place incoming students into Basic Writing (BW), the lower level English composition course, at a western Pennsylvania university. Validity is the study of the quality of decisions made in educational assessment, and current validity theory says that in order to validate placement (or any assessment) programs, one must investigate all possible evidence both for and against the deci...
Josh Lederman.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Williamson, Michael M. Committee members: Patrick Bizzaro; Gloria Park.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Crm implementation in nonprofits: an analysis of the success factors

Constituent Relationship Management ("CRM") is defined as an organization-wide strategy designed to enable the organization to better manage, track and steward its constituents. CRM has benefited for-profit enterprises for nearly three decades. In the nonprofit sector, the concept of CRM is fairly new. Despite the increase in CRM implementations and current research, both researchers and practitioners still view CRM as a technology rather than a strategy. Since the concept of CRM was first in...
Kelly E Grattan.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Hirt, Mary Jane Kuffner Committee members: David Chambers; P. Kosicek.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

"decolonizing feminism": women's power in "agnes grey," "the tenant of wildfell hall" and "wuthering heights"

Focusing on female characters in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, this dissertation runs counter to orthodox criticism of Victorian literature that highlights a pattern of male dominance and female oppression, reflecting the widespread belief that women are victims of male hegemony and possess very little power in both their relationships and in their place in society. On the contrary, through their strong wills, purposes, and des...
Majid S Mgamis.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Orchard, Christopher Committee members: Kenneth Sherwood; Lingyan Yang.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Detoxifying narratives: feminism, ecology, and patriarchal capitalist development in the works of contemporary american women writers

This dissertation presents an ecofeminist reading of works written in the American continent to reveal how these offer counter-hegemonic narratives to the sterilizing discourse brought about by the dominant forms of patriarchal capitalist development that may initially have started in the Third World within a colonial context. The ideology of these structures is closely accompanied by the language of hygiene that is forced on women in the house, on their spaces of labor, and their epistemic s...
Natalie Yaquenian.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Comfort, Susan Committee members: David Downing; Lingyan Yang.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

The development of racial identity versus a life without permanence: a comparative analysis regarding the willingness of african american youth to be placed transracially in white adoptive homes

Numerous studies have been conducted regarding transracial adoptions, many of which address the racial and cultural needs and the development of positive self identities in the children involved. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to evaluate the racial identity development in youth who have turned 18 and aged out of the child welfare system, in relationship to their willingness to be placed transracially. This study sought to discover if a relationship exists between the level of...
Jacqueline D Wilson.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Gunter, Valerie Committee members: Cynthia Bradley-King; William Donner.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Digital literacy practice: blogs and authorship in developing multilingual tesol professionals in a graduate program in the united states

This dissertation investigates the practice of blogging by multilingual graduate students in a TESOL program in an American context. The focus of the study is to understand the relationship between the practice of blog writing and the sense of authorship of the participants. The sense of authorship in this study mainly refers to how students see themselves as writers in blog environments. Using two sources of data, interviews and actual blog entries, this study offers a better understanding o...
Ngarmnij Sukasem.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Fontaine, Jeanne M. Committee members: Jerry Gebhard; Gian Pagnucci.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Distinguishing online and face-to-face learning: acquisition, learning, and online pedagogy

This dissertation examines the type of training currently available to potential online instructors in order to generate a graduate-level degree program design effectively offering online pedagogy. Current online teacher training is largely based on acquisition of technological skills, such as mastering the operational components of a platform (Blackboard, Moodle, D2L), however, current scholars are now demonstrating that platform-only training is insufficient and does not provide online ...
Abigail A Grant.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Bizzaro, Patrick Committee members: Christopher Kuipers; Sedef Smith.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English

Doing a school literacy information project in a south african context

This dissertation examined how disadvantaged K-12 learners completed an information literacy project (ILP) across two domains, a classroom and a public library, in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Framed by social theories of situated, academic literacies (Cummins, 1996; Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Gee, 2000; 2001; Hawkins, 2005; Lillis & Scott, 2007; New London Group, 1996; Street, 2002), and Bourdieu's (1991) theory of practice, this mircro-ethnographic study investigated how learners negotiated th...
Diane J Harley.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Bizzaro, Resa Crane Committee members: Patrick Bizzaro; Arlys van Wyk.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012.
English