Browsing by Subject "Discipline"
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Item Administrator perception of threat from students with disabilities and disciplinary decisions(2013-05) Williams, Jacob Levi; Pazey, Barbara Lynn, 1951-; Yates, James R.The disproportionate exposure to exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities is an acknowledged phenomenon. However, a theoretical understanding for this phenomenon is unknown. Recent claims have been made that the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities results from a long-standing historical pattern of discrimination. The use of exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities results in the denial of opportunities and services at a more frequent rate than their peers without disabilities. This denial would indicate the possibility of prejudice, a construct understood to arise from the existence of a perception of threat by the ingroup in an intergroup relationship. The purpose of this study was to (a) determine if school administrators hold perceptions of threat from students with disabilities and (b) if a relationship exists between identified threats and disciplinary decisions. A survey measured threat perception, administrators' attitude toward students with disabilities, and administrators' disciplinary action preference in instances involving students with disabilities. It was hypothesized: H1. Perceived realistic threats will have a direct effect on administrator disciplinary decisions. H2. Perceived threats (both realistic and symbolic) will have a direct effect on administrator attitudes towards students with disabilities. H3. Perceived threats (both realistic and symbolic) will have an indirect effect through attitude on administrator disciplinary decisions. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed an acceptable model fit of the four latent variables of realistic and symbolic threat, educational administrator attitude toward students with disabilities, and educational administrator discipline decisions for students with disabilities. An acceptable fit was found for the originally hypothesized structural model, and no improved alternative models were identified. Realistic threat was found to have a significant relationship to educational administrators' disciplinary decisions for students with disabilities. No significant paths were identified for symbolic threat or attitude.Item Difference Between Hispanic Adolescent Males in Alternative and Regular Education Placement(2011-08-08) Kocian, Brandi R.Researchers have identified numerous risk and protective factors that might provide insight into the academic difficulties and success that Hispanic adolescents experience. Maladjusted outcomes cannot be attributed to a single risk factor; risk factors do not act in isolation and often have complex relationships with other risk factors. This study uses an ecological risk factor model that suggests that there are multiple risk factors related to adolescent being placed in an alternative education setting and that these risk factors exist at six levels: community-based factors, school-based factors, peer-based factors, family-based factors, child's perception factors, and acculturation-based factors. The purpose of this study is to examine differences in the protective and risk factors in the area of family, community, school, peers, child?s perception, and acculturation levels between Hispanic males who have been placed in DAEP (Disciplinary Alternative Education Placement) and their same aged Hispanic male peers who have not been previously placed in the DAEP. The sample for this study (N=119) was collected from a large urban school district in Texas. The participants were seventh and eighth graders between the ages of 12 and 16 years of age. The non-DAEP group was comprised of a majority of 7th grade students (71.7%), while the DAEP group had a larger number of 8th grade students (62.7%). This study addressed four research questions. The first question investigated if there was a difference between the two groups when the ecological levels where combined to create a cumulative risk score. The non-DAEP group had significantly lower cumulative risk scores than the DAEP. The second research question investigated if there was a difference in each cumulative risk index (i.e., family, school, peers, community, child?s perception, and acculturation) between the two groups. There was no significant difference found between the non-DAEP and DAEP group for family-based risk scores or the child's perception risk scores; however, a significant difference was found between the two groups on the peer-based, community-based, acculturation-based, and school-based factors. The third question examined the unique contribution school, peers, community, family, and acculturation makes in the prediction of the child?s perception factor for Hispanic males. A hierarchical multiple regression suggested only the community-based, family-based, and acculturation-based variables made a significant contribution to the child's perception factor. The fourth question examined if the child's perception factor mediated the relationship between placement in the DAEP and the family-based, community-based, peer-based, school-based, and acculturation-based factors. The effects of the five variables on group placement and child's perception factors were assessed through the use of structural equation modeling using the program AMOS. (Analysis of Movement Structures; See Figure 2).Item Disciplining mommy : rhetorics of reproduction in contemporary maternity culture(2013-08) Mack, Ashley N.; Cloud, Dana L.In this dissertation, I argue that the maternal body is a chief site of discursive political and cultural struggle over gender, family, and work in a neoliberal America. I consider contemporary discourses of maternity, an aggregate I call maternity culture, as cultural products and rhetorical expressions of the antagonistic arrangements in contemporary capitalism since the neoliberal turn. The complexities of maternity culture discourses can therefore be better understood when they are historicized alongside changing economic and political realities. Using materialist feminism as my primary methodology, I contend that maternity culture discourses express the ethics of neoliberalism including the privatization of social/political responsibility and self-actualization through entrepreneurialism and labor, while simultaneously justifying the intensification of maternal labor and the continued surveillance of women's bodies. I argue that maternity culture discourses are, therefore, rhetorics of reproduction and reproducing rhetorics. That is to say, they are a part of a larger set of discourses about the reproductive function that are themselves caught in the logics of capital that may result in the reproduction of unequal arrangements in material and symbolic life. In order to illuminate how maternity culture operates in neoliberal public life as a reproducing rhetoric, I provide a historical analysis of rhetorics of women's health, and analyze two case studies involving discourses surrounding breastfeeding and natural childbirth, major sites of struggle within maternity culture.Item Fear and discipline in a permanent state of exception : Mexicans, their families, and U.S. immigrant processing in Ciudad Juarez(2011-05) Bosquez, Monica Dolores; Sletto, Bjørn; Hale, CharlesThe United States recently completed the construction of a new Consulate compound in an underdeveloped site in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Mexican applicants for U.S. Immigrant Visas, particularly those who had previously entered the United States without inspection, are sent to the facility to apply through a mandatory personal interview. The interview process necessitates highly invasive medical exams at designated militarized facilities, followed by a series of interviews with consular officers. Applicants, many of whom are visiting Juarez for the first time, must wait in the city for days or weeks as they attempt to navigate the requirements. Even as the city has become more violent, the U.S. Consulate mission in Juarez has become an economic driver as it processes more immigrant visas than any other U.S. Consular office in the world. It is also the largest U.S. Consulate building on the planet and the immigration complex is drawing new migrants who are both seeking asylum through it and aiding in its construction. U.S. immigration policies and the administrative procedures that accompany them also serve to discipline immigrant visa applicants long before they arrive in Juarez as they navigate a system built on penalties and waivers. The effects of these policies transcend borders and citizenship, impacting not only the immigrant applicant, but their U.S. families as well. The normalization of violence towards Mexicans and their families is becoming entrenched in a culture of impunity, both in Mexico and the United States. The immigrant processing and maquiladora manufacturing that take place in Ciudad Juarez play a specific role in U.S. / Mexico relations and are representative of the intersection of immigration policy, labor desires, and neoliberal and post-neoliberal policies of structural violence. The United States has developed, in Juarez, an economic development and security program and immigrant processing center concomitantly and Mexico has worked lockstep to fortify this position. I examine this historical occurrence, and the experiences of immigrant applicants and their families, using Foucault’s theories of discipline.Item Mothers accommodating to resolve conflict with their children(2010-05) Day, William Harold, 1978-; Dix, Theodore H.; Jacobvitz, Deborah; Hazen-Swann, NancyMaternal sensitivity is known to have important implications on children’s development. This study examined the sensitivity with which mothers used to elicit compliance from their children. In particular, this study explored the goal-regulation strategy of accommodation. One hundred twenty-nine mother-toddler dyads from a non-clinical sample were observed during a 5-minute ‘clean-up’ activity. Results showed that mothers’ utilized numerous accommodation strategies. Moreover, the use of individual accommodation strategies was associated with maternal depression, mothers’ level of child-orientation, and children’s age.Item Public junior high school employees' reactions and stages of concern of an electronic discipline referral system(Texas Tech University, 2007-05) Terrell-Edmiston, Raney G.; Maushak, Nancy; White, David; Price, Robert; Crooks, Steven M.This mixed method action research study examined how the process of a required technology innovation adoption can be conducted in order to facilitate change in ways that alleviate the concerns of faculty, administrators, and staff in a public junior high school. The innovation in the study was an electronic discipline referral system in which the traditional paper method of discipline referrals was replaced with a form that was generated, transmitted, and stored electronically. While attendance, scheduling, and grades are almost always managed electronically in public education, discipline records in electronic form are just beginning to emerge. Data collected from the Electronic Discipline Referral System Survey (EDRSS), Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ), and focus groups were used answer this question by investigating four research hypotheses. The perception of the electronic discipline referral system was generally positive as expressed by the teachers, principals, and office staff at the junior high school in the study. Significant difference was found between the means in the teachers' perceptions of the electronic discipline referral system based on age. No significant differences were found based on gender or years of experience. Significant correlation was found between the teachers' concern levels on the Stages of Concern Questionnaire and their mean EDRSS scores. The qualitative focus group data were analyzed using the constant comparative method and uncovered areas of improvement and concern. The evaluation of the qualitative data provided insight for future technological change facilitators with similar innovations as well as feedback that may help to improve the current system.Item The relation of adult attachment security to changes in maternal parenting behaviors : a parenting intervention study(2011-08) Burton, Rosalinda Strano; Jacobvitz, Deborah; Hazen, Nancy; Anderson, Edward; Gershoff, ElizabethThe goal of the current study was to examine the impact of mothers’ attachment classification on their ability to change their parenting beliefs and behaviors over the course of a parenting intervention program. Results indicated that in large part, this study did not support the idea that secure mothers would benefit more from a parenting intervention program than insecure mothers. However, treatment group placement was found to moderate the extent to which attachment security and time interact on level of permissiveness. Specifically, insecure mothers in the seminar plus hands-on condition significantly decreased in their permissiveness over time. Thus, insecure individuals benefit from parenting intervention programs when they have the opportunity to practice as well as learn the material presented to them.Item Teacher Sensemaking of Student Discipline Practices in a Small Town Texas Middle School(2013-12-10) Russell, William F.This study examined teacher decision making regarding issuing student referrals using qualitative case study methodology. A single middle school was used for the case study to locate all data under a single institutional culture. A purposeful sample of six teachers was chosen, and each teacher was interviewed. These interview data sets were analyzed using Weick?s sensemaking theory regarding how individuals decide to resume flow of activities in a process once the flow has been disrupted. This theory was applied to the specific situation of how teachers resolved misbehavior within a classroom. Research participants were asked to describe the factors influencing teachers? decisions to write a referral for misbehavior, the benefits students receive from receiving a referral, and faculty responses to escalating misbehavior in their classrooms. This study attempted to give voice to teachers? reflections of attending to common classroom misbehavior and to find differences among teachers with different rates of student referrals. Participating faculty were generally satisfied with their referral rate and were effective in resuming the flow of classroom instruction after student disruptions. Although faculty members reported similar procedures for attending misbehavior, each instructor used these procedures in strikingly different ways.Item The Perceptions of Black High School Students Regarding Their Experiences Prior to an Assignment to a District Alternative Educational Placement: A Phenomenological Single Case Study(2014-04-28) Martinez, MargieThe purpose of this qualitative phenomenological single case study was to understand the perceptions of Black high school students regarding their experiences prior to being sent to a district?s discipline alternative educational placement (DAEP). The intent of this study was to use the findings to positively inform school principals? practices related to the disproportionate number of Black students? exclusionary consequences in school discipline. This research was guided by one major question ? What are the perceptions of Black high school students regarding their experiences prior to an assignment to a DAEP? Through purposive sampling, seven Black high school students who were assigned to the DAEP participated in the study. There were a total of 13 individual semi-structured interviews conducted with the participants. Each first interview lasted approximately one hour and each second interview was between 30-40 minutes. The semi-structured interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. Additionally, the participants? school documents were examined for trends in the data. Inductive analyses of the data were conducted and saturation of common themes occurred through open coding, axial coding, and selective coding of the information. The most pertinent finding to emerge, with the potential to impact principals? practices, indicated that Black students in this study responded according to their perception of being heard, respected, and understood by the principal or authority figure on campus. When students perceived their input was valued, and that they were received with dignity, discipline consequences were typically accepted without protest.The opposite occurred when students perceived they were disrespected by the principal and in turn their behaviors became more aggressive and discipline consequences became more exclusionary.Item Truancy : an opportunity for early intervention(2012-05) Pacheco-Theard, Rena Elizabeth; Osborne, Cynthia Anne, 1969-; Deitch, MicheleTruancy, an unexcused absence from school, is a common, but worrisome reality for many of America’s school children. Truancy results in missed academic instruction for the student and missed state funding for schools based on average daily attendance figures. More importantly, chronic truancy can serve as one of the first indicators that a student is need of support, whether it is academic, economic, family, or personal (such as mental or physical health), before the onset of more serious delinquency. However, this early warning flag is often ignored or mismanaged, such as when truancy is criminalized and truant students and their parents receive tickets for the offense, including a large fee and early involvement with the juvenile justice system. Responses like this can further burden students and their families and cannot effectively address truancy, unless the root causes of truancy are addressed. States and school districts across the nation continue to implement programs and policies in an attempt to successfully prevent, reduce and manage truancy. Yet, information and consensus regarding the components of successful programs or policies are lacking. Without this information, jurisdictions are utilizing or attempting to implement a broad range of interventions and responses with very little attention being paid to evaluations to understand what to implement or to determine what works for youth and why. As a result, many truancy responses are just best guesses about what might work for youth, and some are even counterproductive. Failing to effectively address truancy fails youth in the short and long-term as future prospects are reduced. More information is known about what works and what does not with regard to truancy than many jurisdictions may realize. This report seeks to increase understanding of truancy and its causes, highlight the success (or lack thereof) of programs and policies, and demonstrate the wide variety of programs currently being implemented. Equipped with better information, jurisdictions can make better decisions to improve outcomes for students and their communities.Item Writing with care : Yan Lianke and the biopolitics of modern Chinese censorship(2015-05) Chambers, Harlan David; Tsai, Chien-hsin, 1975-; El-Ariss, TarekAuthor Yan Lianke's experiences with censorship frame this investigation into the relationship between life, politics, and writing in modern China. As Yan's case shows, Chinese censorship goes beyond textual redaction, seeking to reform the very life of political subjects. The effects of this move to bridge politics and life are best demonstrated by acts of internalized censorship (e.g., "self censorship"), widespread in China's modern cultural scene. The historical genealogy of internalized censorship reveals it to be part of a broader Chinese Communist Party program of thought work, engaged in remolding the lives of political subjects. Revisiting the fundamentals of Michel Foucault's biopolitical theory, I argue that this form of censorship plays a key role in the party’s biohistory, the historical institutionalization of power aimed at radically politicizing life itself. The first chapter of this report sketches out the historical foundations of Chinese biopolitics. Regimes of thought work are shown to have been developed as disciplinary techniques of censoring and censuring, systematically deployed to correct individuals' ideological errors. Re-imagining disobedience as illness, the state sought to cure its citizens through "disciplinary care." The Communist Party has thus established institutions seeking to completely fold life into politics; consequently, top-down techniques like censorship have reemerged in the bottom-up phenomenon of internalized censoring. The second chapter returns to the novels of Yan Lianke to argue that his literature responds to the legacy of thought work with a distinct form of "literary care." His recent novels restage historical events in order to narrate confrontations between writers and institutions of state power. Through these encounters, Yan's writing unfolds literary care as a strategy to shield non-normative forms of life against powers aiming to rectify their ideological idiosyncrasies. Literary care thus affirms ways of being that exceed exclusively political interpretive frameworks. In the face of censorship, Yan Lianke does not dream of an autonomous sphere of artistic expression, nor does he campaign for a simplistic notion of intellectual liberty. Instead, Yan Lianke writes with literary care, never neglecting relations between life and politics but maintaining that one is not reducible to the other.