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A Literacy Coach's Role in Professional Learning Communities in Elementary Schools
No full textTeaching and Learning Department capstone projectEffective professional development for teachers has been a controversial topic in education for many years. Schools beg to answer the question: how do we continue to educate teachers so that student learning will increase? Oftentimes, professional development is a one-day event; information is delivered through direct instruction by a presenter and teachers leave with binders that end up collecting dust on a bookshelf. As educators sift through the policy changes and expectations of Common Core to increase student achievement and learning, the need for continuing growth and learning amongst teachers is crucial to meet these demands. This capstone seeks to answer the question: is there a way to provide teachers with an ongoing learning experience, specifically for literacy instruction? This paper, which is grounded in an extensive review of research literature, will explore the definition of a Professional Learning Community (PLC), the rationale for PLCs and why they are superior to traditional professional development approaches in respect to increasing student learning, a principal’s essential role in creating a conducive environment for successful PLCs, the literacy coach as a facilitator of literacy PLCs in an elementary (K-4) setting, and what research says about how the literacy coach can effectively implement the PLC model in an elementary setting.Department of Teaching and LearningPeabody College of Education and Human Developmen
Student Handbook 2016/2017: First Edition
No full textThe Vanderbilt University Student Handbook is produced by the Office of the Dean of Students for student reference. This document contains policies and guidelines for students at the University
Relations Among Positive Emotions, Appraisals, the Big Five, and Appraisal Style
No full textThe associations among positive emotions and different personality factors may hold a key to understanding individual differences in emotional experience. The present research sought to examine individual differences by investigating the relationships among 12 positive emotions, 16 appraisals, the Big Five, appraisal style, and positive emotion differentiation. Furthermore, two different appraisal models were compared on their ability to predict four different positive emotions. Participants completed a survey containing the personality and trait measures; they then recalled and wrote about a past positive experience and rated the positive emotions and appraisals with respect to that experience. The Big Five were not significant predictors of appraisal or appraisal style, but significant correlations were found. Positive emotion differentiation was stable across momentary and retrospective situations. In comparing the two appraisal models, only the strongest appraisal predictors emerged as significant predictors of each emotion: happiness, gratitude, pride, and satisfaction/contentment.Vanderbilt UniversityPsychologyCollege of Arts and ScienceThesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Honors Program in Psychological Science
Bruce Morrill on the Presence and Participation of Fellow Christians at Roman Catholic Mass
No full textIn this podcast, Chris Benda, theological librarian at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, interviews Bruce Morrill about his article “Good Table Manners? The Presence and Participation of Fellow Christians at Roman Catholic Mass,” _Liturgy_ 31, no. 3 (2016):37-45. Read the article at http://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/bruce-morrill
A Tale of Two Cemeteries: The Paris Commune, the Haymarket Affair, and the Politics of Memorialization
No full textThis paper examines the relationship between late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century Paris and Chicago by analyzing their respective commemorations and memorializations of the Paris Commune and the Haymarket Affair. Though these commemorations reveal many key differences between the two cities notably the power of municipal authority's they ultimately speak to the power of silence as a political tool wielded by both the oppressor and the oppressed
Ode to Peace or Prelude to Militarism?: The Opening Ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Olympics as Political Theater
No full textWhen Nazi leadership ultimately embraced the notion of hosting the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, the decision entailed an undertaking to which an inherently militaristic society would seem ill-suited: orchestrating an opening ceremony, a celebration grounded in the principles of peace and harmony, that could withstand the scrutiny of a leery global audience. Through a dynamic approach that steeped the ceremony's routine proceedings in rich symbolic gestures, the Nazis' audition on the international stage generally succeeded in establishing an outwardly benign atmosphere. However, a thorough appraisal reveals that the regime could not bring itself to fully suppress its martial disposition, which consequentially colored a number of the day's events
The Gilded Age: Allen W. Dulles and the CIA
No full textAllen W. Dulles spent his tenure as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) entrenched in secret power struggles that would ensure his ultimate power over the foreign and domestic affairs for the United States. Throughout his childhood, Dulles learned to use political power in order to get ahead, and to use secrecy to make unilateral decisions. After analyzing examples of his treatment of various foreign affairs disasters, as well as his manipulation of American media and politicians, Dulles is exposed as a man whose legacy lives in the CIA, as a legendary figure who is in fact much more of a crafted legend than a man of truth
Research Support Services: Religious Studies
No full textThis study is an in-depth qualitative analysis of the research practices of academics in research studies in order to understand the resources and services these faculty members need to be successful in their research and teach. This report is the local (Vanderbilt University) report interviewing 15 Vanderbilt faculty in Religious Studies and in the Divinity School. Vanderbilt Divinity Library is one of 19 theological seminaries and theological schools participating in the national study, proposed and coordinated by Ithaka S+R, a non-profit research and consulting firm.
Each of the participating locations used the same survey instrument, prepared by the principal investigator at Ithaka S+R. Each local report deals only with that specific institution, Ithaka S+R will compile results from representative interviews at each institution, to generate a national level report about research practices and needs in Religious Studies (broadly conceived).Ithaka S+R and Divinity Library, Vanderbilt Universit
Social Brains, Social Bodies: Investigating the Role of Personality in Embodied Emotion
No full textThis thesis explores the impact of personality and sub-clinical symptomatology on individuals' experience of embodied emotion. First, the impact of latent liability for Autism and Schizophrenia on gait perception is investigated. Then, an overarching construct of alexithymia is introduced, as a possible mediating mechanism. Finally, results of a body mapping task are utilized to explore the connections between self and other experience of embodied emotion. Implications include reforming the way we think about emotion as related to the body, across the span of human individual difference (both neurotypical and clinical), as well as clarifying and forwarding the use of trans-diagnostic socioemotional traits.Accurate emotion perception is essential for adaptive social functioning. Abnormal emotion perception and associated social impairments are core features of neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and autism. Such deficits extend to healthy individuals who share latent liability for these conditions, such as those with elevated schizotypal or autistic traits. Although much is known about emotion perception deficits in the schizophrenia- and autism- spectrum, underlying mechanisms have not been elucidated. One proposed mediating mechanism is alexithymia, a difficulty labeling and describing feelings. In turn, alexithymia is associated with abnormal interoception and experience of embodied emotion. The goal of the current study was to examine alexithymia’s contribution in the impact of schizotypal and autistic traits on embodied emotion, as assessed by an emotion perception task that asks participants to discriminate emotions from the gait of polygonal avatar walkers and a visual body mapping task that asks participants to map emotions onto an outline of a body. Results indicated negative correlations between low-threshold emotion perception via gait and autism-spectrum quotient (ρ = -0.23, p < 0.05), as well as positive schizotypy (ρ = -0.28, p = 0.01) but not alexithymia. Decreased emotion perception was associated with decreased report of embodied emotion, on the body mapping task. The study also replicated previously demonstrated correlations between alexithymia, schizotypy, and autism-spectrum quotient (p < 0.05), serving as further validation of the AQ-10 item version. In summary, the current study further clarifies our understanding of emotion perception in the extended phenotypes of autism- and schizophrenia-spectrum, while also indicating connections between interpersonal and intrapersonal embodied emotion.Vanderbilt UniversityPsychology and Human DevelopmentPeabody CollegeThesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Honors Program in Psychological Sciences under the mentorship of Dr. Sohee Par
Nanoscale dolmen structure exhibiting a tunable Fano resonance
No full textPHYS-4998; Honors Thesis; Dr. Richard F. Haglund Jr.A Fano resonance is an asymmetric, resonant scattering phenomenon which occurs in a multitude of fields, such as atomic physics, nuclear physics, nonlinear optics, and nanophotonics. The Fano resonance is a many-particle excitation arising from a single-particle excitation, and occurs due to the interference of a narrow discrete resonance overlapping with a spectrally broad resonance. Multi-element nanoparticles are explored as a means to realize this resonance type, which has a characteristic, steep dispersion useful in sensors, among other devices. A gold dolmen nanostructure consisting of a bright, radiative, dipolar mode coupled with a dark, quadrupolar mode is investigated, which produces the plasmonic analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency through the interference of the bright and dark modes. Additionally, the plasmonic resonance of a metallic nanostructure is extremely sensitive to its local dielectric environment. Vanadium dioxide exhibits a large change in its dielectric function during its metal to insulator phase transition. The combination of the gold dolmen nanostructure with vanadium dioxide produces a tunable Fano resonance. The dimensions of the structure are optimized such that the resonance is near symmetric in shape and located in the near infrared to allow for spectroscopic measurement. The author is unable to obtain experimental results of this hybrid structure, but previous work, combined with simulation data, suggest the proposed structure will exhibit the expected result.Vanderbilt UniversityDepartment of Physics and AstronomyCollege of Arts and ScienceUnited States. Department of Energy. Office of Science (DE-FG02-01ER45916)