Middle Tennessee State University
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Arts-Based Critique of the Media’s False Images of Racial Protests
No full textWe live in a very visual culture, surrounded by images everywhere we turn. These images, especially in news and advertising, influence our ideals, thoughts, and actions. With my interactive thesis art exhibition, I challenged my audiences’ notions of race representation and what makes them think the way they do about race representation and racial protests. By framing the 1992 Los Angeles uprisings in two different perspectives, I opened the conversation up to how media coverage influences the way we perceive events, including the recent coverage of George Floyd's death and subsequent protests in 2020. My creative project emphasized the importance of reading for the dominant forces that influence a visual form (visual rhetoric), and how visual rhetoric functions persuasively. KEYWORDS: racial protests; media representation; motivated representations; Rodney King; Los Angeles 1992 protests; police brutality; race bias; racial protest bia
Preservation, Public History, and the Rural African American Church: Emery Methodist Church, Rutherford County, Tennessee, 1869 – Present
No full textFor so long Historic Preservation has widely centered its efforts around large and beautiful architecture, homes of well-known individuals within American history, and historic districts. This project aims to widen the boundaries of preservation efforts while simultaneously highlighting the rich African American history within Rutherford County, Tennessee, during the Reconstruction era and beyond.
Reconstruction was a vital time for the development of African American communities. At the center was the church, but unfortunately, many of these church buildings, and eventually histories, are lost to the times of suburban sprawl and gentrification. This project works to provide the history of Emery United Methodist Church, its congregants, and the surrounding community and work towards protecting the church building and historic documents. This study provides to the overall history of Rutherford County during the years of Reconstruction and provides an understanding of the importance of African American communities and the role that Public Historians and Historic Preservationists can play in working towards their protection and survival.M.A
TAT Archive
No full textFiles included: 1) TAT Archive Overview and 2) TAT Narrative Collection (dataset)We describe the development and contents of an archive of narratives collected in response to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), to be shared with psychology researchers, teachers, and students. This archive holds demographic data of respondents as well as the complete text of the narratives themselves. Some of the included narratives are historical, archived from previously published sources and from the records of clinicians; others will be newly collected from introductory psychology students at Middle Tennessee State University. We discuss possible uses and the strengths and weaknesses of the archive.
This document describes the creation of an open-data archive of narratives collected in response to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and illustrates some of the archive’s potential uses for researchers, teachers, and students.
KEYWORDS: open science, archival data, Thematic Apperception Test, narrativesFunding provided by the Digital Seed Grant, a program of Digital Scholarship Initiatives at Walker Library, Middle Tennessee State Universit
Assessing the Linkage Between Aquatic Biodiversity and Water Chemistry in the Stones River Watershed
No full textThe Stones River Watershed is home to great aquatic diversity but is subject to anthropogenic pollution from multiple sources. Traditional biodiversity survey methods require a lot of time and expertise for the proper identification of each taxonomic group and involve highly invasive methods. A new biodiversity survey tool, environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, is a non-invasive and fast method to efficiently and accurately capture species richness within a variety of environment types. It has the ability to quickly assess an ecosystem's species composition and aid conservation efforts. In this study, we captured eDNA and measured water nutrient concentrations that are common in anthropogenic runoff. We discovered over 9000 amplicon sequence variants that corresponded to unique sequences of animals in the Stones River Watershed. While this high diversity was not correlated with water nutrients, it is a useful base of knowledge for conservation work to build on
Little Lies: A Look at Misinformation in Recording Industry Public Relations
No full textPublic Relations (PR) is a means of strategic communication centered on building relationships between an organization and its publics. The field of PR has a complex history, with frequent ties to propaganda. Historically, journalism and PR have had a contentious relationship, but as newsrooms face economic pressures, journalists have begun to rely more heavily on PR-subsidized material. While the use of misinformation as a PR tactic is publicly decried by professionals in the field, its use in the field is still prevalent, giving misinformation ample opportunity to make its want into the news through subsidized information. This thesis uses gatekeeping theory to examine PR and journalism communications surrounding two newsworthy events in the music industry to determine how corporations release information and how that information is covered by journalists. Using critical discourse analysis, two newsworthy events in the music industry are examined to identify uses of misinformation by corporations.M.S
“STATE OF EMERGENCY”: EDGEHILL, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE AND THE FIGHT AGAINST DISPLACEMENT FROM URBAN RENEWAL TO GENTRIFICATION
No full textGentrification and displacement have become increasingly important terms within the fields of historic preservation, urban planning, geography, and social justice in late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. Urban neighborhoods have changed rapidly as developers purchase properties at low cost in order to renovate, demolish, or rebuild and sell at higher prices. Historic preservation offers organizations, both professional and grassroots, the tools to share the history of neighborhoods at risk of gentrification and the stories of the people at risk of displacement. Utilizing the Edgehill neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee, this dissertation explores the impact of residential segregation, through both federal urban renewal and the Model Cities program, to understand how gentrification is the next step of this long legacy. ALSO, the dissertation analyzes how grassroots organizations within Edgehill utilized public history methodology in the form of historic preservation and material culture to celebrate the neighborhood’s significance and make the case against gentrification in the wake of the 21st century corporate development of Nashville as a whole.Ph.D
Underwater Treadmill Training in Adults with a Unilateral Transtibial Amputation
No full textABSTRACT
A unilateral transtibial amputation (TTA) propagates secondary physical conditions and complications that may negatively impact quality of life and health. Often, there are challenges to balance, posture, and functional mobility. Underwater treadmill training (UTT) is an alternative modality for people with a TTA that can address these concerns. Series case studies were conducted with three adults (1 female, 2 males) with a TTA to establish the efficacy of UTT within this population and to better understand the challenges to activities of daily living (ADL) and physical activity (PA).
Participants completed a 6-week underwater treadmill training protocol and participated in a focus group. Pre-, mid-, and post-UTT measures of balance, fall risk, center of pressure, and weight distribution were assessed. Pre- and post-assessments of walking capacity and balance confidence were also measured and cardiovascular responses to exercise were monitored during the UTT. Outcomes of training increased balance, reduced fall risk, and improved weight distribution from left to right and front to back with increased reliance on the prosthetic limb. Balance confidence during PA and functional mobility improved. Cardiovascular responses and rate of perceived exertion were positive and linearly associated with walking bout time and walking speed, respectively. The focus group revealed themes of a need for increased planning and decreased tolerance when performing ADL. Residual limb symptoms underscored themes of challenges with cardiovascular and resistance training exercises. Participants also noted being more active post-amputation to increase health or physical fitness and attempt to return to pre-amputation levels of PA. Reponses also highlighted themes of improved balance or posture while standing or ambulating and increased confidence while performing activities with a prosthesis following UTT. Improved muscular fitness was also a consistent theme with all improvements resulting in increased exercise tolerance.
Overall, UTT was an effective and safe training modality which yielded improvements in physical performance and function for people with a TTA. Participation in UTT can increase physical fitness to minimize objective and subjective challenges associated with completing ADL and being physically active in those with a TTA.Ph.D
The Role of Personality and Experience in Vaccine Hesitancy and Harm Concern
No full textThis research study is an exploratory analysis of the role of vaccine experiences and personality in vaccine hesitancy and vaccine harm concern. Two hundred and thirty-one participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and compensated for completing the survey. The results indicated positive correlations between all personality measures (conspiracist ideation, neuroticism, extraversion, schizotypy, paranoia, probabilities and coincidences, and attitudes towards science) and belief measures (vaccine harm concern and vaccine hesitancy). There was also a significant positive correlation between the types of negative vaccine experiences (personal, close others, story, and social media) and the personality and belief measures. The results demonstrate that a negative experience with vaccines is associated with a higher amount of vaccine hesitancy and harm concern.M.A
Students’ Smooth Continuous Covariational Reasoning: A Comparative Case Study
No full textResearch results from this study reveal students have difficulties understanding and using of the concepts of average rate of change and the derivative function. Students in this study held multiple approach to understand the concepts that made it difficult to develop a strong understanding of the average rate of change and derivative function. In particular, students struggled to visualize or imagine a continuously varying rate of change and had difficulties in making meaning and interpreting concepts of average rate of change and derivative function.
This dissertation presents research on how first-year calculus students develop smooth continuous covariational reasoning abilities in the context of the concepts of rate of change and derivative functions. This study utilizes a comparative case study methodology to explore each research participant’s construction of understanding and reasoning pattern development. An initial instructional sequence was designed to support Calculus I students in constructing understandings of average rate of change and derivative function. Students were then supported in reasoning about how two quantities vary and co-vary dynamically. The instruction supported students’ reasoning abilities when solving problems related to the concept of average rate of change and derivative function in linear and nonlinear function situations.
The research findings show that the study participants demonstrated different types of reasoning to conceptualize the concept of quantity, variation, and covariation when solving mathematical problems related to the concept of average rate of change and derivative function. Sam, one of the study’s participants, demonstrated strong concrete object-oriented reasoning to conceptualize the average rate of change and derivative function. Another study participant, Ruby, engaged in procedure-oriented reasoning to conceptualize the average rate of change and derivative function. Chris, the third study participant, engaged in terminology-oriented reasoning to conceptualize the average rate of change and derivative function. The analysis of the data results of this study shows in detail how these three types of reasoning were a limitation for the participants’ mathematical problem-solving ability and conceptualizations of covariation, average rate of change, and the derivative function. This study uncovered the above three types of problematic reasoning orientations as it relates to covariational reasoning and learning average rate of change and derivative, but these types of reasoning orientations are most certainly not the only types of problematic reasoning orientations for Calculus I students —there are likely other problematic reasoning orientations that might be discovered in future studies.Ph.D
Teachers' Perceptions and Utilization of the PBIS Rewards System
No full textOne way to acknowledge when students meet expectations is to provide some type of an individual reward. The PBIS Rewards system is an automated schoolwide PBIS management system (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports Rewards, n.d) that tracks positive behavior points earned per student and number of points given out by individual teachers. The purpose of this study was to explore how middle school teachers’ perceptions of positive reinforcement and the PBIS Rewards system is related to their willingness to distribute positive behavior points to students in their classes. Results from qualitative interviews, PBIS Rewards point data, and survey results showed that there was a significant variation in the number of Rewards points that teachers in the schools distributed. Further, many teachers were unsure of what behaviors warrant points and how to implement the system with fidelity. Implementation training and clear PBIS Rewards guidelines are suggested to alleviate these inconsistencies.M.A