Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item STEM TEACHERS AS INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC LEADERS: CHANGE AGENTS AT THE SYSTEMS SCALE(2022) Vieyra, Rebecca Elizabeth; Elby, Andrew; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation research attempts to answer the questions “What do early childhood teachers perceive as their original sources of self-efficacy for strategic leadership in STEM education?” and “How does their initial self-efficacy for strategic leadership mediate their eventual engagement as international leaders in STEM education?” This study aims to move beyond the mostly descriptive studies of teacher leadership, to understand why a particular group of teachers chose to lead. It attends to visionary leadership outside the school building or district that contributes beyond administrative or political boundaries, at the wider level of the STEM teaching profession. It explores literature across multiple disciplines to aid the adoption and contextualization of a theoretical framework for data collection and analysis of seven case studies of teacher leaders. The resulting theoretical framework is anchored in Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory for its emphasis on self-efficacy and is informed by prior work in leadership and STEM teacher leader development. This theoretical lens is aligned with themes that previously emerged from the results of preliminary interviews with teachers who attributed their leadership to significant increases in leadership self-efficacy. Findings from this study suggest that the teachers acted upon their tendency toward impulsivity to accept new opportunities for strategic leadership in STEM education even when self-efficacy for STEM and teacher leadership was reported to be low, or non-existent due to the lack of familiarity with leadership or STEM (Finding #1). After accepting leadership opportunities, growing self-efficacy for leadership activities primarily derived from improvements in their STEM identity (Finding #2). Among Bandura’s sources of self-efficacy, these teachers frequently reported the importance of emotional and physiological states to engage opportunistically in strategic teacher leadership in STEM education, as well as the role of persuasion from friends and colleagues (Finding #3). Implications from this research include recognizing the importance of supporting early childhood teachers’ STEM identity through the recognition of work they already do that falls within the domain of STEM content and processes. It also suggests the need for educational leaders to help early childhood teachers move toward and overcome a commonly expressed fear of STEM. Further, it calls for those who support teachers to identify and foster risk-taking mentalities concerning leadership, offering opportunities and support even (or perhaps especially) to those teachers who do not yet feel ready to lead others. This work aims to increase the awareness of early childhood teachers’ potential as reform agents in STEM education, as well as bring attention to more human, individualized elements of teacher personal wellness and professional growth that can be realized through leadership.Item Adolescents' Attitudes Toward the Economic and Societal Responsibilities of Government in 24 Countries(2019) White, Gregory; Kahn, Joan; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Adolescents’ attitudes toward government responsibilities for economic and societal well-being are examined in 24 countries grouped within welfare regime types. Adolescents’ own sense of civic responsibility to participate in community service is also investigated. This study uses data from the IEA Civic Education Study (1999) in combination with macroeconomic indicator data employing descriptive statistics, multiple regression, and other techniques to compare results between regimes and countries. The adolescents surveyed in 1999 are now adult members of a millennial generation that is rising in political influence. Adolescents demonstrate well-established attitudes that are consistent with those of adults in certain welfare regime contexts. Attitudes toward economy-related government responsibilities are in the expected directions for regimes with a legacy of communism, which are above the international mean, as well as in the liberal regime, which is below the international mean. Adolescents in the United States (a liberal regime ideal-type country) hold the least favorable attitudes toward government-provided economic support. In addition, adolescents’ expectations of community participation are higher in the liberal and Southern Europe regimes. Female students are more likely to believe in government provision for economic needs in liberal, Southern Europe, and post-communist Central Europe regimes. Notably, no significant gender differences are found in the social democratic regime, where women face fewer social protection risks. Female students are also much more likely than males to anticipate future volunteer community participation across regimes. Contrary to expectations, variables measuring social class have few significant or meaningful associations. Volunteering has small negative effects with belief in government-provided economic support in most regimes, and small to moderate positive effects with adolescents’ anticipated community engagement in all regimes. In addition, studying community problems has small positive effects with support for economy-related government responsibilities in several regimes (including liberal) and small to moderate positive effects in all regimes for anticipated community engagement. Finally, collective student efficacy and support for ethnic minority group opportunities have positive associations with beliefs that both governments and individuals are responsible for economic and societal needs.Item (Re)Placing America: Cold War Mapping and the Mediation of International Space(2011) Barney, Timothy; Parry-Giles, Trevor; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The United States emerged from World War II as an undeniably global power, and as the Cold War unfolded, America faced decisions about where to place and display its power on the globe. The Cold War was a battle between two ideologies and competing world systems, both of which were vying for space and had the tools and technologies to control those spaces. Maps became a central vehicle for the testing of these new boundaries. Mapping projects and programs emerged from a variety of popular cartographers, foreign policy strategists, defense leaders, Congressional representatives, scientists, oppositional movements, labor unions, educational publishers, even everyday citizens. As each of these sources confirms, the scope of American commitments had expanded considerably; to account for this expansion, a cartographic impulse underwrote the continually evolving Cold War, and the tensions of art and science, realism and idealism, and space and place inherent in this impulse helped form the fault lines of the conflict. (Re)Placing America looks largely at the ways that cartography adapted to such changes and tensions in the second half of the twentieth century, and how the United States marshaled the practice of mapping in a variety of ways to account for the shift to internationalism. This dissertation explores how cartography mediated visions of space, and particularly, how it defined America's place within those spaces. Treating cartography as a complex rhetorical process of production, display, and circulation, the five chapters cover major geopolitical thematics, and the responding evolution of maps, from World War II until the Cold War's end in the early 1990s. Some of these driving themes include the "air-age" expansion of visual perspectives and strategic potential in journalistic maps; the appropriation of cartography as a medium for intelligence and national security objectives; the marshaling of maps as evidential weapons against the Soviet Union in diplomatic exchanges, Congressional reports, and government-sponsored propaganda; the shifts from East/West antagonisms to North/South ones as cartography was drafted into the modernization efforts of the U.S. in mapping the Third World; and the Defense Department's use of maps to argue for nuclear deterrence, while protest groups made radical cartographic challenges to these practices of state power. (Re)Placing America reads closely the maps of the forty-years-plus conflict and considers the complexity of their internal codes (in colors, shapes, icons, etc.), while also reaching out externally to the intersecting interests and visions of the cartographic producers and the Cold War contexts in which they emerged. The project seeks out and explores particular nodal points and thematics where maps consolidated and shaped changing shifts in perception, where cartographic fragments cohered around the defining moments, but also sometimes in the everyday politics of the Cold War. Ultimately, this project offers four conclusions about and conduct and operation of American mapping during the complex, ideologically charged time of the Cold War. First, the function of the map to both "fix" and "unfix" particular perceptions of the world is relevant to assessing how America sought to stabilize its place in a rapidly changing world. Second, the internationalism of the Cold War was bound up in the capacities for cartography to document and adapt to it. Third, the humanistic notion of a geographical imagination is central to understanding why particular Cold War agents and institutions continually drew on cartography to represent their interests. Finally, combining an ideological approach to reading maps as articulators of contextual tensions and historical ideas with an instrumental approach to maps as material, strategic documents can best help to situate cartography as an ongoing process of production, circulation, and display.Item ACADEMIC SPOKEN ENGLISH STRATEGY USE OF NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKING GRADUATE STUDENTS(2011) Ma, Rui; Sullivan, Denis F; Oxford, Rebecca L; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Currently there is a lack of investigation into the language learning and language use strategies of non-native English speaking students at the graduate level. Existing literature of the strategy use of the "more successful" language learners are predominantly based on student data at the secondary school or college levels. This dissertation research project will use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods ("mixed-methods" research) to examine academic English listening and speaking strategy use patterns of non-native English speaking (NNES) graduate students and also to investigate those students' relevant metacognitive thinking and its impact on their strategy use. First, this research project will investigate what kinds of strategies are being employed and how they are being employed to help those students achieve communicative competence in oral academic English. Descriptive statistics based on a large-scale database of questionnaire responses will be provided. Secondly, this project will investigate what factors have significant effects on the strategy use of this particular student group. Statistical tools such as the multiple regressions and path analysis are used to determine the effects of gender, academic fields, regions of origin, degree level, and other factors. Thirdly, this project examines students' metacognitive thinking and how it impacts their strategy use. The guiding theory related to this line of investigation is that students' metacognitive thinking is closely related to their strategy use patterns. Finally, this project also aims to validate a new assessment tool (a questionnaire) for investigating non-native graduate students' academic English listening and speaking strategy use. Results of the study are expected to eventually help build a descriptive model of listening and speaking strategy use of NNES graduate students and will inform learner-centered instructional design and curriculum development. The ultimate benefit will also be to help many NNES graduate students achieve at a much higher level in graduate school because of their improved English listening and speaking skills.Item Study Abroad as a Passport to Student Learning: Does the Duration of the Study Abroad Program Matter?(2005-05-27) Neppel, Jill Marie; Kurotsuchi Inkelas, Karen; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examined the effect of the length of a study abroad program on the achievement of four learning outcomes: cognitive complexity, liberal learning, personal philosophy, and interpersonal self-confidence. Data was collected through a web-based survey instrument that was administered to a sample population of University of Maryland study abroad participants. The following study abroad programs were represented: Fall 2003, Winter 2004, Spring 2004, Summer 2004, Academic Year 2003-2004, Fall 2004, and Winter 2005. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was employed in the research design with gender and academic class standing as covariates. The results found each of the research hypotheses to be statistically significant. The amount of growth in cognitive complexity, liberal learning, personal philosophy and interpersonal self-confidence was found to be significantly higher in the self-reported scores of those respondents who studied abroad on long-term programs in comparison to those individuals who studied abroad on short-term programs.