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Fostering Science Literacy Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Middle School Students:
No full textThesis advisor: Deoksoon KimMost science education reform efforts are designed to promote science literacy for all students. In order for students to effectively apply abstract science concepts and knowledge to their lives, they must develop strong science literacy skills. Yet culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students, whose language and cultural backgrounds are different from mainstream American culture, often lack full access to all the educational avenues that would help them fully develop science literacy. Consequently, this dissertation explored and documented the ways educators have investigated and modified multiple aspects of science-based teaching and learning in order to benefit CLD students. This three-paper dissertation investigates three pedagogical approaches for supporting CLD students’ science literacy: culturally relevant pedagogy, translanguaging, and writing-to-learn. Research on these three pedagogical approaches is crucial for examining factors that affect CLD students in developing science literacy and providing recommendations on how to support them. To investigate CLD students’ experiences in-depth, this dissertation used a multiple-case study design to conduct analyses within each case as well as across all cases. The first paper investigated how middle school CLD students applied their family and cultural knowledge to learning science content in school. This study addressed the development of students’ science literacy by examining CLD students’ engagement with “HomeFun,” a set of culturally relevant activities. The second paper explored CLD students’ science literacy development in a translanguaging science classroom. By inquiring into participant students’ experiences with translanguaging and perceptions of its use, this study uncovered tensions between how translanguaging can facilitate students’ comprehension of science content while underscoring students’ desire to use English to improve their English language skills. The third paper examined how writing-to-learn can shape CLD students’ science literacy development. In a case study of six CLD students’ experiences with writing and content analysis of their compositions, this study revealed how writing helped students develop their thinking, effectively facilitating knowledge transfer from school-based contexts to real-world ones. Together, these studies demonstrate the usefulness of culturally relevant pedagogy, translanguaging, and writing-to-learn for fostering CLD students’ science literacy. Furthermore, each study offers insight into influences on CLD students’ ability to develop science literacy, such as the importance of family engagement or the pervasive nature of school-based monoglossic language ideologies. The three pedagogical approaches effectively support students socially, culturally, and academically, to make meaningful connections between science concepts and the world around them. In exploring the application points of culture, language, and literacy within science-based learning, this research offers science educators new insights and educational practices in support of CLD students.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction
Essays on Apportionment Methods for Affirmative Action:
No full textThesis advisor: M. Utku ÜnverThesis advisor: M. Bumin YenmezThis collection of two essays in market design examines the designs of affirmative action policies. In the first chapter, “Affirmative Action in Two Dimensions: A Multi-Period Apportionment Problem”, we study affirmative action policies that take the form of reserved seats or positions and apply at two levels simultaneously. For instance, in India, beneficiary groups are entitled to their proportion of reserved seats in public universities at both university and at department levels. We theoretically and empirically document the shortcomings of existing solutions. We propose a method with appealing theoretical properties and empirically demonstrate advantages over the existing solutions using recruitment advertisement data from India. Our problem also suggests possible extensions in the theory of apportionment (translating electoral votes into parliamentary seats). In the second chapter, “Impartial Rosters for Affirmative Action’’, we present an answer to this question for the case where all positions are homogeneous. Devising methods is particularly necessary when the number of seats is small. For instance, a university appoints at most one assistant professor of economics every year, while the country’s affirmative action policy has more than one beneficiary group. To ensure that, over a period of time, each beneficiary group respects the spirit of an affirmative action policy, India devised a tool called roster. We present a theory of designing rosters to argue that only a few rosters can be considered impartial in that they do not favor some beneficiaries over others. We provide a method that constructs the set of impartial rosters. We show that the existing roster of India is not one of them and favors categories with a larger proportion of seats relative to the smaller ones.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Capital Improvement to Principal Leadership: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy Implementation
Get PDFThesis advisor: Vincent ChoThis individual case study is part of a larger group study examining how principals benefit from and shape professional capital to improve schools. Specifically, this study sought to understand what organizational and individual factors contributed to principals’ decision-making about implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in a large, urban school district in Massachusetts. The research team interviewed a total of 21 participants, including central office leaders, principals, and educators. The study found that principals use a variety of factors to make sense of DEI policies. In particular, they were responsive to organizational changes instituted by the central office, notably the creation of an executive team to lead the district’s DEI initiatives and the first ever district-wide professional development day dedicated to DEI. While most principals indicated that they believed in the work of the DEI office, there was less evidence that they were self-reflective about their role in how to implement DEI policies. Further, the data suggested that principals made few individual decisions to take action with regard to the DEI policy implementation. However, coupling organizational learning with research on policy implementation shows that self-reflection and individual learning stem from individual sense-making of organizational changes, and that these changes become cyclical and ongoing, leading to greater implementation.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Health Patterning of Im/migrant and Asylum-Seeking Emerging Adults from Guatemala and Honduras:
No full textThesis advisor: Jane FlanaganBackground: Over the past decade, increasing numbers of emerging adults, defined as ages 18 to 22, have journeyed to the United States (US) from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Upon arrival to the US, many experience inequities in health and healthcare access. The inequities are shaped by US political practices and choices attributed to broad structural and systemic-level barriers within planetary, social, economic and necropolitical forces. Applying a critical framework of antiracism, anti-oppression and anticolonialism, nurses and other healthcare providers must seek to understand the health patterning and life experiences of emerging adult im/migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador so that their health and healthcare needs may be supported. Approach: This qualitative research project aimed to explore health patterning of emerging adult immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador using the nursing specific research praxis of Health as Expanding Consciousness (HEC). The second aim explored themes across the group. Critical posthuman, feminist, and new materialist assumptions also informed the approach to the study. Between June 2021 to November 2022 thirteen emerging adult participants from Guatemala and Honduras were interviewed twice. Enrollment occurred through community-based recruitment and snowball sampling methods. Each person’s individual story was explored using the HEC praxis method.
Results: Participants’ stories uncovered unique profiles with situated, context-specific individual health patterning. Four themes were identified across stories using the qualitative analytic method of Sort and Sift, Think and Shift: Family is Fundamental, The Journey Holds Meaning, Opportunities Exist Amidst Constraints, and Movement and Art are Healing.
Conclusions: The discussion section reviews main implications for building critical nursing praxis; understanding intersections of health, nursing care and human mobility; advancing nursing policy for people excluded from care; advancing research using HEC praxis as a caring act of accompaniment; and transforming nursing education for social justice and radical possibility. Im/migration and asylum-seeking were viewed as fundamental human rights including critically advancing the right to health and safety for people in mobility contexts.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing.Discipline: Nursing
AnImmersion into the Dialogue of Religious Experience at Varanasi: A Christian Engagement in the Devotion and Practice of the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas
No full textThesis advisor: Margaret E. GuiderThesis advisor: Francis X ClooneyIn ‘geo-religious’ contexts throughout the world, the Church faces two crucial imperatives. Called to participate in the Missio Dei, it must engage other religions through inter-religious encounters and dialogue. Called to immerse itself within multi-religious realities, it also must deal with the epistemic arrogance that has accelerated religious extremism and contributed to the social construction, domination, and vilification of the religious ‘other.’ In response to these imperatives, Church leaders have issued a substantial number of ecclesial documents inviting Christians to enter into dialogue with adherents of other religions and philosophies of life. Ecclesial ministers have been called to reflect upon the 'clash of religions' and offer adequate responses to religious conflicts in various regions of the world. Unfortunately, however, our reliance on the comparative study of religion and the theology of religions, while informative, has not proven to be sufficiently formative. If Christian communities of faith are to respond to the adverse consequences of religious extremism, violence, and conflict, a new way of doing theological education is needed. Formation for ministry must include learning how to approach the religious other in a 'dialogue of life' through 'epistemic humility' that acknowledges, our need for the religious other. It must include cultivating the dialogical virtues of humility, hospitality, empathy, and interconnectedness necessary for promoting a ‘culture of encounter.’ In the processes of encounter and dialogue, learning by listening deeply can be transformative both for aspiring ministers and for adherents of other religions as they develop relationships of trust and mutual concern, thereby opening themselves to creating a heart for the other. In this dissertation, I propose that within the context of India, where religious violence is exacerbated by extremism and the marginalization of non-Hindus, the mission of interreligious dialogue entrusted to the Church by the Holy Spirit can be enhanced by encounters and relationships that provide for a deeper engagement with religious texts, rituals, and performative aspects of various faith traditions. I use the method of Comparative Theology articulated by Francis X. Clooney, S.J., that aims at deepening and expanding one’s own tradition through interreligious learning. In doing so, I advance the conviction, drawing from my own experiences through immersion, that the popular Hindu devotional text, Rāmcaritmānas, from the 16th century, with its textual, ritual, and performative dimensions, offers an instructive model for fostering a ‘culture of encounter’ and practicing dialogical virtues for the sake of the Reign of God.¹ As a consequence, I argue that ecclesial ministers who are formed and transformed by such experiences will be better prepared to accompany Indian Christians in ‘creating a heart for the other.’ Furthermore, by introducing aesthetical approaches to the proclamation, communication, and reception of Gospel narratives that deal with the life of Jesus Christ, the fruit and application of their interreligious learning, they also will be more skilled at helping Indian Christians to rediscover and intensify their devotion to Christ. Ideally, it is my hope that these learnings from the Mānas will foster ‘bandhuthā’ (fraternity) among Christians and Hindus and ultimately promote and sustain genuine encounters and dialogue.
¹ Abbreviated form MānasThesis (STD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry.Discipline: Sacred Theology
Courtroom Cartography: How Federal Court Redistricting Has Shaped American Democracy from Baker to Rucho
Get PDFThesis advisor: Shep MelnickEvery decade, following the U.S. Census, lawmakers redraw state and federal legislative districts. This process of redistricting is a necessary aspect of representative democracy for capturing population changes in a dynamic society. While this responsibility of redrawing legislative districts has historically been left to state legislatures to complete - and more recently to commissions and panels - the reality is that every redistricting cycle, some of these maps are actually drawn by the U.S. federal courts. These maps determine the district boundaries for millions of Americans - who votes where, for whom and with whom. Since the Supreme Court ruled that legislative reapportionment was a justiciable issue for federal judiciary in 1962’s landmark decision, Baker v Carr, the lower federal courts have regularly taken the extraordinary step of drawing legislative districts themselves when the initial redistricting institution fails to implement a lawful plan. This places the famously nonpartisan institutions at the center of the most political activity. There is no clear constitutional or statutory guidance for how federal courts should make these remedial maps, and there are dozens of competing criteria for where to draw each line: compactness, partisan advantage, racial representation, competitiveness, protection of political subdivisions, etc. This raises fundamental questions about the role of the federal courts in American government, the nature of representative democracy, judicial independence and the separation of powers, the criteria for judging fairness, institutional capacity and federalism. Despite these tensions, there has been no comprehensive research on the impact that federal courts have on redistricting. This dissertation aims to address these tensions and fill this scholarly gap, answering the question of What has been the impact of federal court involvement in legislative redistricting between 1962’s Baker v Carr and 2019’s Rucho v Common Cause. In this dissertation, I use five approaches to undertake a comprehensive examination of the role of the federal courts in redistricting during this 57-year period. In Chapter 2, I adapt Supreme Court decision making theories for the lower federal courts to develop a theory of institutional constraints. I argue these constraints determine the courts’ choices on when, how and why to make a redistricting map and which criteria to use. In Chapter 3, I use an American Political Development approach to examine the changes in judicially manageable standards created by the Supreme Court over time for understanding the legally constraining precedents for the lower courts. In Chapter 4, I conduct an original descriptive content analysis of more than 1,200 lower federal court decisions between 1960 and 2019 related to redistricting to understand the preconditions for federal court action, the trends in lower federal court caseload and outcomes, and the obedience of the lower courts to Supreme Court precedents. In Chapter 5, I present the analytical heart of this dissertation, testing my theory and defining what makes a federal court-made map distinct from those made by other institutions. To accomplish this goal, I use an original dataset of five decades of redistricting plans at the state and federal levels together with 13 varied quantitative methods developed by myself and other political scientists for measuring gerrymanders. Analyses of these data allow me to quantify the criteria used by the federal courts in distinction to other institutions, leading to predictive results about the federal courts as map makers. I find that federal courts create redistricting plans with lower population variance, more compact districts, and a higher proportion of majority-minority districts for descriptive racial representation than legislatures or commissions. Federal courts also create some partisan bias in their plans but at a lower level than is seen in legislatures. In Chapter 6, I take a qualitative, case study approach and compare these empirical results to the actual court opinions in four representative instances where the courts drew the maps. I examine how well judges understood the nonpolitical criteria they were actually using in practice and apply my theory of institutional constraints on lower federal courts. In sum, this dissertation offers:
• new datasets and methods for studying redistricting institutions;
• descriptive accounts of the trends, processes and development of federal courts redistricting;
• an institutional theory and approach for studying the lower federal courts;
• A detailed examination of the development of Supreme Court precedents on redistricting that constrain lower court decision making;
• and quantitative and qualitative analyses of which criteria the federal judiciary favors when they draw plans and why.
Most importantly, this dissertation finds that the criteria courts favor in practice differ from those used by state legislatures and commissions. Federal courts apply criteria shaped by judicial constraints and that reflect a distinct understanding of legislative representation. The dissertation’s conclusion examines the implications of these findings for American democracy, the lower federal courts, voters and constituents.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Political Science
Development of a Rasch/Guttman Scenario Instrument to Measure Teachers' Use of Data to Inform Classroom Instruction:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Larry H. LudlowTeachers in the United States are increasingly tasked with using data to inform their classroom instruction both through federal policies, such as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2016), and state policies requiring the use of teacher-determined data-driven goals for performance evaluations (MA 603 CMR 35.07). Many teachers, however, report that they feel underprepared to engage in this type of work (Dunn et al., 2013), also called Data-Driven Decision Making (DDDM). In addition, there is currently a limited set of instruments to measure the construct of using data to inform classroom instruction and the instruments that currently exist measure this construct using a typical Classical Test Theory design.This work developed an instrument called the Using Data to Inform classroom Instruction (UDII) scale to measure teachers’ use of data to inform classroom instruction. It used the Rasch/Guttman Scenario (RGS) methodology, an approach that develops scenarios that reflect the rich lived experiences of individuals (Antipkina & Ludlow, 2020; Ludlow et al., 2014). The RGS approach utilizes the Rasch model, part of the family of Item Response Theory models, which conceptualizes a construct as a hierarchical continuum. Scenario items and people are plotted on the same variable map, which allows for the development of rich descriptions of individuals at particular raw score locations on the continuum. An interpretative variable map is included to help schools and districts use the results of the survey.
This work adds to the growing body of literature utilizing the RGS approach, as well as the literature focused on the use of data to inform classroom instruction (or DDDM). The UDII scale can be utilized by schools and districts who are engaged in the work of using data to inform classroom instruction to identify the current skillsets of teachers and/or teams of teachers to provide differentiated support, or it can be used before and after an intervention focused on using data to inform classroom instruction to measure change.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation
Essays in Competition Economics:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Julie H. MortimerThree self-contained essays explore government regulation in the airline industry, and how such policies affect competition. The first essay explores the proposed merger between US Airways and American Airlines in 2013, approved by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) under the condition that 104 airport slots (“landing rights”) at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, DC, be divested to low cost carriers. To investigate the efficacy of the slot divestment, I estimate demand and cost parameters along with bounds on the shadow price of an airline slot, and simulate counterfactual post-merger prices and quantities with and without the regulatory divestment. I find that the merger and associated divestment together increased consumer surplus for markets involving Reagan Airport by roughly 25%. This increase in consumer welfare happened because the median price fell and the quantity of passengers increased. I show that the marginal value of a slot to an airline is decreasing in total slots, validating the DOJ’s decision to divest slots from the largest incumbent (US Airways, whose marginal value was 852). Beyond providing a key input to merger analyses, my approach can also aid in analyzing voluntary exchanges of airline slots, which are subject to DOJ approval due to their perceived anti-competitive effects. The second essay investigates the impact of airport slots on competition in general. Congestion is managed in high-density airports by capping the number of flights permitted in any given hour and allocating the rights (or slots) to a takeoff or landing among airlines. Airlines must use their slots at least 80% of the time to keep them for the next season. This rule creates a perverse incentive for airlines to hold on to underutilized slots by operating unprofitable flights instead of forfeiting these slots to a rival. Using exogenous removal of slot control at the Newark Airport in 2016, we investigate the lengths at which airlines go to meet the minimum requirements that let them keep the slots while violating what a neutral observer might call the “spirit” of the regulation. In my third essay, I assess the effectiveness of the gross upward pricing pressure index (GUPPI) in predicting price changes of the 2013 merger between US Airways and American Airlines. I compute GUPPI using only publicly available data, and find that it is close to the observed average increase in price. However, unlike most markets, flights to/from Reagan Airport experience a price drop, likely due to mandated structural remedies; the GUPPI predicts a price increase at Reagan Airport, whereas a full merger simulation correctly predicts a price reduction. I argue that the divergence between GUPPI and, if appropriate, the more accurate predictions of the merger simulation is due to the weaker assumptions made under the simulation. This underscores the fact that while GUPPI, with its restrictive assumptions and low computational burden, can be a good primary screening tool, it does not negate the necessity of employing a more rigorous secondary tool (such as a merger simulation) when assessing mergers.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Essays in Labor Economics:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Theodore TP PapageorgiouThis dissertation contains three independent chapters on topics in labor economics. In the first chapter, I examine the sources of decline in the job-finding rate over the spell of unemployment. In particular, I distinguish between dynamic selection and the adverse effect of longer unemployment durations. In the second chapter, Carter Bryson and I explore the role of broad sectoral shifts in labor demand in explaining the divergence of employment outcomes of Black and White men during the second half of the 20th century. Finally, in the third chapter, I propose a nonparametric estimator for the discrete-time version of the Mixed Proportional Hazard (MPH). In the first chapter, "Duration Dependence and Heterogeneity: Learning from Early Notice of Layoff,'' I disentangle the sources of decline in the observed job-finding rate over the spell of unemployment. It is possible that an individual worker's likelihood of exiting unemployment declines with the duration of unemployment (e.g., due to employers discriminating against long-term unemployed). However, workers also differ in their employability, their desperation to find a job, or perhaps their ability to look for jobs. Such heterogeneity across workers, which is often unobserved, implies that the observed job-finding rate declines even when an individual worker's exit probability does not. As the more employable workers exit early, the still unemployed workers are increasingly the less employable ones. A long literature tries to disentangle the role of structural duration dependence from heterogeneity, but it has proved to be quite challenging. I develop and implement a novel approach to answer this question by leveraging variation in the length of notice an individual receives from their previous employer before being laid off. The key idea behind my approach is that workers with longer notice start searching earlier and are more likely to exit unemployment early. If workers are heterogeneous, then the composition of long-notice workers should be worse at later durations as the more employable workers from this group have already left. This observation enables me to pin down the extent of heterogeneity and estimate structural duration dependence. My estimates imply that there is substantial heterogeneity in the likelihood of exiting unemployment across workers. I find that roughly 40% of the decline in the observed job-finding rate over the first five months is due to dynamic selection. Further, an individual's exit probability increases up to unemployment insurance (UI) exhaustion and remains constant after that. This is in contrast to the observed exit rate, which continues to decline even after benefit exhaustion. Recently, researchers have tried to explain this decline in the observed exit rate after UI exhaustion. For instance, it can be rationalized with storable offers (Boone and van Ours, 2012) or reference-dependent utility (DellaVigna et. al., 2017). My estimates suggest that most of the decline in the observed exit rate after UI exhaustion is due to changes in the composition of workers. In the second chapter which is joint work with Carter Bryson, "Understanding the Racial Employment Gap: The Role of Sectoral Shifts,'' we quantify the extent to which sectoral reallocation can explain the divergence in employment outcomes of Black and White men during the last three decades of the 20th century. Using a shift-share strategy, we document that local employment-to-population ratios for Black men are relatively more responsive to local labor demand shocks. We also document substantial population responses for both groups of workers. Finally, we provide a framework incorporating frictional unemployment and imperfect mobility across locations to aggregate these local responses. We find that sectoral shifts can explain roughly half of the observed exacerbation in the employment-to-population ratio differential between Black and White workers from 1970 to 2000. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the increase in the differential due to sectoral shifts results from the greater responsiveness of Black workers to local labor demand shifts rather than a higher concentration of these shifts in areas or sectors with a higher share of Black workers. In the final chapter, "The Discrete-Time Mixed Proportional Hazard Model'', I propose a nonparametric estimator for the discrete-time MPH model. Hazard models of event durations are widely employed in economics to analyze unemployment spells, retirement decisions, and an array of other topics. As the findings from the first chapter highlight, ignoring unobserved heterogeneity while analyzing duration data can lead to inaccurate inferences. The MPH model explicitly accounts for such heterogeneity but estimating this model can be challenging. I set up a discrete-time MPH model and propose an estimator for it that is based on the Generalized Method of Moments and is easy to implement.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Role of memory processes in the emotion regulation of naturalistic events:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Maureen RitcheyRegulating negative emotions that arise while recalling an unpleasant event presents a persistent challenge. As a reconstructive process, recall offers an opportunity to ease the burden of repeated regulation by updating negative memories, with the potential for long-term reductions in the negative affect associated with a memory. However, little is known about the recall-related brain processes that support lasting effects of emotion regulation on episodic memories. Across three studies, the current project examined the behavioral and neural correlates of regulating emotionally negative memories. First, a stimulus database of real-life news videos optimized for studying naturalistic emotional memory was developed. Then, the behavioral effects of two emotion regulation strategies, memory reappraisal and memory suppression, were tested. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the brain processes associated with lasting reappraisal-related changes in memory valence. We found that reappraisal was associated with lasting reductions in the negative valence of naturalistic memories, whereas suppression had no effect on memory valence. We also found that recall-related activity in lateral occipital cortex was associated with a reappraisal-mediated reduction in negative valence 24-hours after reappraisal. These results suggest that brain processes involved in the initial retrieval of negative content also support the emotion regulation of those memories, consistent with research showing that memory reactivation is critical for robust memory updating.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Psychology