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Using Tier 1 Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) for Student Behavior to Decrease Discipline Referrals Among Black Ninth-Grade Students
Get PDFI begin this dissertation with an introduction to a problem of practice that affects many schools in America- inequity in school discipline. After reviewing literature that explains why this is an important research topic, I share information about the research site, Mountain View High School (MVHS). It was seen that majority of the discipline referrals written over the school year was from ninth-grade students. When looking closer at the ninth-grade students, it also was determined that Black/ African American students were also receiving a disproportionate amount of discipline referrals compared to their White peers. After introducing the problem of practice and research site, I share my research question and the intervention that I chose to try to help solve this problem. Mountain View High School already has a MTSS process in place for academics. I decided to build upon this with the behavioral side of MTSS, in an attempt to teach the behaviors that discipline referral data and teacher input decided needed to be addressed.
Through a mixed-methods study, I conducted the intervention and collected data through student discipline referrals and teacher written discipline referrals and surveys in order to determine the effectiveness of using a behavioral MTSS system to decrease student discipline referrals among Black ninth-grade students at MVHS.
I then describe the findings of the study which suggest that there was no statistical difference in student discipline referrals before and after the intervention. However, there was some statistical difference in the number of referrals from teachers that participated in the study and those teachers that taught ninth-grade students but chose not to participate in the study. In the end, the intervention could be successful if it was implemented with a whole school approach and implemented with fidelity.
In the end, I describe why this research was important for our school, community, and other schools in America. In addition, I describe what I would change about the intervention in order to make it more successful in all areas of data collection
Crevice Corrosion Mechanisms of CoCrMo Alloys in Orthopedic Implants: Retrieval Analysis, Nano-tribocorrosion and Cellular Responses
Get PDFMechanically assisted corrosion and non-mechanically (chemically) driven corrosion in modular junctions of orthopedic implants using cobalt-chromium-molybdenum (CoCrMo) alloys remain clinical concerns and may contribute to implant failure. The underlying corrosion mechanisms are not yet fully understood, leaving a critical research gap. We hypothesized that corrosion in modular junctions may be driven by aggressive local environments, including fretting, metal ion release (cobalt ion, Co2+), low pH and reactive oxygen species (ROS). This dissertation aims to (1) analyze corrosion modes and potential causes in modular junctions; (2) identify chemically driven corrosion modes on CoCrMo alloys using simulated inflammatory modular taper crevice solutions; (3) elucidate single asperity, mechanically assisted nanoscale corrosion in physiological conditions; and (4) characterize in vitro cellular response in simulated in vivo crevice solution. First, retrieval analysis showed that knee replacements exhibit similar corrosion mechanisms to hip replacements, as both show comparable corrosion modes, including etching, fretting, pitting, carbide boundary corrosion, and titanium transfer. Second, the combination of low pH and ROS or Co2+ in physiological solutions reduced the corrosion resistance of CoCrMo alloy, suggesting that the oxide film is less stable and protective compared to neutral pH solutions without inflammatory factors. Third, we developed novel real-time AFM-based nanoscale tribocorrosion analysis methods (e.g., the tribogram), which track the progression of wear to the sub-nanometer scale and identify distinct tribocorrosion mechanisms on fluid-exposed surfaces by analyzing sharp fluctuations in the tribogram, indicating transient repassivation of the oxide film. Then, fluid-exposed CoCrMo surfaces exhibited reduced susceptibility to nanoscale wear compared to tests in air, calling into question the synergy-based tribocorrosion theories, with protein-containing solutions (bovine albumin serum) demonstrating a further increased wear resistance, likely due to a lubricant effect on wear. Finally, pre-osteoblast responses to Co2+ ions vary depending on the presence of ROS and hypoxia-inducible factor-1a (HIF-1a). In conclusion, understanding the crevice environments in modular junctions is crucial for preventing corrosion
Studies on the Effects of Operator Fatigue on Performance, Trust, and Workload Demand in Human-In-The-Loop Ai-Enabled Drone Systems
Get PDFCivil infrastructure must be regularly inspected to ensure its safety and reliability. Traditionally, risk engineers performed these inspections manually and in person. However, with the introduction of drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), inspections of civil infrastructure can now be conducted remotely. These AI-enabled drones capture and analyze images, helping engineers monitor large and complex structures from a distance. However, working with integrated systems consisting of multiple drones, especially those with varying levels of reliability, can be challenging. Operators must divide their attention, determine how much to trust each drone, and manage mental workload, which can affect their performance. Another key factor often overlooked is mental fatigue, which can impair human performance. This dissertation examines how the human operators’ trust in the AI-enabled integrated drone system and their workload and fatigue affect their performance when the system may consist of unreliable drones. An inspection drone is defined as a single infrastructure inspection drone equipped with its own AI system to assist with defect detection. The integrated inspection system is defined as a system consisting of two individual inspection drones operating together. The four studies conducted as part of this dissertation explore how different combinations of drone reliability levels and mental fatigue influence human operators’ trust, task workload, and performance. Specifically, the first study examined and explained that the human operators\u27 trust decreased and the task workload increased when the integrated inspection systems\u27 reliability decreased. The second study explained that when the operator was fatigued, their trust decreased, and workload increased. The third study showed that, similar to studies one and two, operators’ trust goes down as the AI-enabled integrated drone’s reliability goes down. For Studies 1 and 3, integrated drones\u27 reliability levels also led to operators’ poorer performance, which was measured by the number of errors operators made. Human performance decreases as reliability goes down, which means operators make more errors. For study 2, there is no statistical significance for error rate for reliability. None of the studies found a statistically significant error rate for fatigued vs non-fatigued conditions. Using wearable technologies, including a smartwatch and an eye-tracker, this study collected real-time physiological data to train machine learning models capable of classifying operator fatigue. The analysis revealed that parameters derived from physiological indicators [electrodermal activity (EDA), skin temperature, and pupil diameter] significantly differentiated between fatigued and non-fatigued human operators. These findings contribute to the growing body of research supporting the integration of adaptive AI systems that can dynamically respond to human mental states, particularly in the context of infrastructure inspection using AI-enabled drones
Closing the Youth Activity Gap Through School District–Community Partnerships
Get PDFA growing divide in physical activity amongst youth, fueled by the privatization of youth athletic programs, most negatively impacts underrepresented students. Intramural-sports programs hold the potential to engage more of our youth in physical activity, including those from marginalized populations. Utilizing a collective impact approach, school-community partnerships can create opportunities for access and strive toward equity in youth health. This study evaluates a partnership between a school district and a regional health care provider that resulted in the creation of a youth intramural-sports program by describing the partnership’s implementation strategies and by comparing first year enrollment data. Implementation strategies include: (1) a phased implementation that prioritized schools with the highest ratios of underrepresented students, (2) purposeful and coordinated communication strategies, and (3) utilization of a process evaluation during the first year of implementation. A comparison between program enrollment (n = 695) to grade level enrollment by school and across the district (N = 1873) revealed that the program achieved its goal of expanding access to physical activity for youth from income-constrained households and students of color (SOC). Implications include strategies for youth intramural program development and school-community partnership that support youth development by increasing equitable access to physical activity
Item 2: Assignment: Letter Writing: Advocacy and Issues
Get PDFThis assignment cultivates students\u27 civic engagement and enhances their communication skills. Its purpose is to empower students to become active participants in the democratic process by articulating their perspectives on public issues and advocating for change. A key learning objective is to teach students how to strategically target their advocacy efforts by understanding the structure of government. The assignment involves students in choosing a representative or government agency and a specific political issue, writing a persuasive letter, submitting drafts for feedback, and submitting a final physical copy
Item 3: Assignment 2: Voter Support Advocacy Project
Get PDFThis assignment asks students to do a real-world experiment to test out the relationship between voting plans and voting behavior. Students are asked to find ten potential voters who would be willing to make a voting plan, assist the voters through the planning process, and provide any follow-up support their subjects would find helpful. They then complete a post-project report and reflection about their experiences and takeaways. The assignment was originally designed for a general education course for first-year students, and it can be integrated into courses investigating voter engagement or rhetoric topically or used as an opportunity to have students practice data gathering and analysis in a real-world context
Asignación Uno: La vida en Puerto Rico vs. EE. UU.: Comprasen el Supermercado
No full textEl propósito de esta asignación es que los estudiantes obtengan una perspectiva más profunda sobre cómo la vida cotidiana de los puertorriqueños se compara con la de los estadounidenses en el territorio continental mediante la comparación del costo de una compra en el supermercado. En esta actividad, los estudiantes ejercitarán el pensamiento crítico
Item 4: Assignment 1: Life in Puerto Rico vs. the Mainland: Shopping at the Supermarket
Get PDFThe Jones Act, a protectionist law which requires domestic water transport to be performed by vessels that are US-made, crewed, owned, and flagged, imposes inflated costs on consumers in Puerto Rico. To better understand how this translates into everyday impacts, in this assignment students compare the cost of a grocery run in Puerto Rico and the United States. To do this, they find the price of various products in two supermarkets: Pueblo, the largest grocery store chain in Puerto Rico, and Kroger, the second-largest grocery chain in the United States. Finally, they reflect on how their shopping habits might differ in the two locations. In this assignment, students engage in critical thinking
Item 1: Democracy, Citizenship, and the Media Syllabus
No full textThis course is appropriate as an introductory course. The course is designed to delve into the topics of democracy, citizenship, and the media, and it examines how the topics intersect and affect citizen participation in the US. This course provides an in-depth analysis of what democracy is, next adding the concept of citizenship, and finally adding the topic of the media to the discussion to demonstrate how the media shapes democratic values and the role of citizenship
Item 1: Syllabus
No full textThis syllabus is for a sociology of law and socio-legal change class, the latter focusing primary on the United States. The first part of the class weaves together introductory understandings of law and concepts from sociological approaches to law (e.g., types of law, legal pluralism, legal consciousness, rule of law) with six case studies of socio-legal change. Importantly, the case studies offer liberal, conservative, local, state, and federal exemplars, as well as different routes to legal change, e.g., regulatory, constitutional, legislative, and other laws. Using inductive approaches to the case studies, students learn to identify the legal goals being sought by the advocates, the jurisdiction or institutional setting where the change is, or changes are, being sought, and the methods by which advocates sought to pursue their goals, including how they responded to opponents. The emerging knowledge provides key tools for the students to develop their assignments, described separately, which requires students to research approaches to their own socio-legal change goal. The second part of the class introduces students to various sociologists of law, mostly canonical figures (e.g. Durkheim, Marx, Weber), and combines these with contemporary applications or interpretations of the sociology of law. The final part of the class considers the impact of democratic backsliding on socio-legal change and the rule of law. It also synthesizes the different components of the class, including students’ presentations of their semester-long research and writing assignments