4368 research outputs found
Sort by
Addressing Emergency Response and Recovery from a Critical Social Justice Lens
Get PDFThis thesis examines how the institutional practices put forth by the emergency management community have impacted the health equity of marginalized groups of people, such as the Black community of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and how that has in turn, impacted community equity and development following the event. Specifically, this thesis analyzes the impact Hurricane Katrina and its emergency response had on the marginalized community’s health equity. Following the events of Hurricane Katrina, I will analyze two similar events that followed Hurricane Katrina -- Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Maria -- in order to observe the changes made within emergency management when it comes to decision-making in response methods that disproportionately impact marginalized communities that face discrimination due to race. Finally, after contextualizing the changes within emergency management that have occurred over time, I will create an outline for an awareness training program for emergency management personnel that will focus on remedying and changing past institutional-based emergency management practices that have negatively impacted marginalized communities in their journey towards emergency situation recovery. The overarching goal of this thesis is to create response awareness within the emergency management community and mitigate future institutional discriminatory practices such as racism within emergency response and recovery. While this thesis is a critique of emergency response and recovery, it is meant to be a means of showing necessary areas of improvement within emergency management in order to better meet the needs of communities
Identity Issues Seen in Asian-American Adoptees: The Impact of Homeland Tours
Get PDFA common issue seen within the adoptee community is their identity. This thesis will explore how international adoptees, specifically Asian-American adoptees, often feel uncertain about their identity when it comes to ethnicity and belonging to a certain group. It will also focus on how this could change or be enhanced when adoptees visit their home country. This project will look at different stories of adoptees who have struggled with identity issues found in different scholarly resources focusing on this issue along with personal interviews and stories from other adoptees that I have met. Some of these people have returned to their home country, some have not. With these stories, identity issues can be analyzed and the idea of identity changing after visiting one’s birth country can be evaluated. In the end, I will write a section telling my own personal story of being an Asian-American adoptee in Oregon, the identity issues I have encountered, and what my trip back to China was like
Action Research Project: Practice in Action Improvement Through Self-Study
Get PDFLearners are at the heart of the teachers profession. In order for teachers to provide the best environment for their students, the teachers themselves must be learners as well. This project examines my teaching practices as I went through my practicum. It examines how well I differentiate my plans to meet student needs. It also looks at my implementation of best practices. And finally, it exams if I can keep my students in high regard despite the challenges of teaching
Bridge Curriculum for Middle School STEM Classrooms
Get PDFSTEM education is becoming more and more prevalent and relevant. STEM education has grown out of the understanding that life is inherently cross-curricular and interdisciplinary in nature and that education should match. “It is no wonder that many secondary school students complain that school is irrelevant to the larger world. In the real world, we do not wake up in the morning and do social studies for 50 minutes. The adolescent begins to realize that in real life we encounter problems and situations, gather data from all of our resources, and generate solutions. The fragmented school day does not reflect this reality” (Hayes Jacobs, 1989, p. 1). We have known for decades, long before the term STEM was first used, that interdisciplinary education makes sense, as it better prepares students to face the problems that the postsecondary world will throw their way.
In essence, the engineering curriculum, and STEM curriculum overall need to prepare students to solve problems, and bridges pose a problem. Experts state:
There are more than 617,000 bridges across the United States. Currently, 42% of all bridges are at least 50 years old, and 46,154, or 7.5% of the nation’s bridges, are considered structurally deficient, meaning they are in “poor” condition. Unfortunately, 178 million trips are taken across these structurally deficient bridges every day. (infrastructurereportcard.org, 2021, Bridges)
This information comes directly from the American Society of Civil Engineers, and this is one reason why it is important to educate students about bridges and the engineering conundrum they provide
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and the Reduction of Anxiety in a Mathematics Classroom
Get PDFThe purpose of this project was to conduct research to determine culturally relevant teaching strategies in the classroom as well as strategies to reduce student anxiety in the mathematics classroom. Through a literature review on these topics, I have been able to better understand strategies that can benefit culturally diverse students. To better understand these strategies in my classroom, I focused on three questions for this study: (1) What culturally responsive teaching strategies will I implement in my teaching to better support diverse students? (2) What are the methods that I can apply in my classroom to build student confidence in Mathematics? (3) What strategies are the most effective to use in my classroom to keep students engaged in a math classroom? To answer these questions, I focused on analyzing documents, observations, and journals. By answering these questions, it was my goal to better understand the strategies and techniques that students respond to the best and show a growth in their learning
Wolfie Round-Up: A Pilot Program to Assist Students with Staying Connected To WOU
Get PDFA common goal amongst many different universities is to attain a higher retention rate from their students. This project will particularly focus on trying to achieve this goal at Western Oregon University, making it so more students will continue pursuing their degree at WOU. As a Western Oregon University alum, I have first-hand experience with recognizing the need for a program that Western can offer to students. Due to the common retention goal amongst the collegiate world, there is a plethora of information that discusses the psychology surrounding why students are hard to retain - this dissertation will only cover the information that directly relates to the community, geography, and population that is most similar to Monmouth, Oregon. We will start by discussing current and recent past practices that WOU has proposed to retain students, we will also examine what another university, Eastern Washington University, which is a peer institution to WOU and what their current methods/data on retention techniques are, then we will discuss the data dilemma that may cause lack of true information that could impact how well techniques are doing. At the end of this discussion, you will be able to view a PowerPoint that goes over the details of a newly developed pilot program named, “Wolfie Round-up\u27\u27. I have composed this pilot program to have a sole focus on achieving a higher retention rate for Western Oregon University in conjunction with other methods that WOU is current by providing Western students with more accessible resources, informational sessions that allow new and current students to have a personal relationship with different members of the WOU community, and 4 specifically identify most aspects that the university has to offer that their students can take advantage of during their time