Background: This study examines how pro-vaccine flu messages, guided by the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), affect parents’ intentions to vaccinate their children.

Methods: Parents of children six months to five years old (N = 975) were randomly exposed to one of four high-threat/high-efficacy messages (narrative, statistical, combined, control) and completed a follow-up survey. Differences between message conditions were assessed with one-way ANOVAs, and binary logistic regressions were used to show how constructs predicted intentions.

Results: There were no significant differences in the ANOVA results at p = .05 for EPPM variables or risk EPPM variables. There was a significant difference between message conditions for perceived manipulation (p = 0.026), authority, (p = 0.024), character (p = 0.037), attention (p < .000), and emotion (p < .000). The EPPM model and perceptions of message model (positively), and the risk EPPM model and fear control model (negatively), predicted intentions to vaccinate. Significant predictor variables in each model at p < .05 were severity (aOR = 1.83), response efficacy (aOR = 4.33), risk susceptibility (aOR = 0.53), risk fear (aOR = 0.74), issue derogation (aOR = 0.63), perceived manipulation (aOR = 0.64), character (aOR = 2.00), and personal relevance (aOR = 1.88). In a multivariate model of the significant predictors, only response efficacy significantly predicted intentions to vaccinate (aOR = 3.43). Compared to the control, none of the experimental messages significantly predicted intentions to vaccinate. The narrative and combined conditions significantly predicted intentions to search online (aOR = 2.37), and the combined condition significantly predicted intentions to talk to family/friends (aOR = 2.66).

Conclusions: The EPPM may not be effective in context of a two-way threat. Additional constructs that may be useful in the EPPM model are perceptions of the message and fear control variables. One-shot flu vaccine messages will be unlikely to directly influence vaccination rates; however they may increase information-seeking behavior. The impact of seeking more information on vaccination uptake requires further research. Flu vaccine messages should be presented in combined form. Future studies should focus on strategies to increase perceptions of the effectiveness of the flu vaccine.

In this dissertation, organizational whistleblowing is guided by the methods for writing Creative Nonfiction. That is to say, a true story is told in a compelling and creative, easy to read manner, so that a broader audience, both academic and non-academic alike, can understand the stories told. For this project, analytic concepts such as antecedents, organizational culture, resistance and dissidence, social support, and ethics are embedded in the narrative text. In this piece, the author tells the story of a whistleblowing process, from beginning to end. Using the techniques advised by Gutkind (2012) questions and directions for research and analytic insight are integrated with the actual scenes of the whistleblowing account. The consequences of whistleblowing are explored, including loss of status, social isolation, and a variety of negative ramifications. In order to increase confidentiality in the dissertation, pseudonyms and adapted names and locations have been used to focus on the nature of the whistleblowing experience rather than the specific story. The author ends the dissertation with reflection on whistleblowing through the insight gathered from his firsthand account, suggesting advice for future whistleblowers and directions for future organizational research on whistleblowing.

This longitudinal exploratory research study examines a Russian language online community of creative writers who refer to themselves as Real Padonki. Grounded theory was used as the method of data collection and analysis. Based on analysis of the texts published on udaff.com and interactions between the members of this community several conclusions were made. It is proposed that udaff.com should be viewed as an online resource for writers who have created a new form of literature: post-Soviet Russian literature. This new of form literature is characterized by several features that distinguish it from previous forms. This new form of literature is based on the cultural model of a Real Padonak - a new kind of person that embodies both the writer and the hero (a new archetype) created by this writer. In the same way as dissident writers made criminal argot a part of Russian literature, the writers of udaff.com rely on the use of Albanskij, a linguistic innovation, a variation of the Russian language that they have created. Finally, this new literature uses the Internet as its main medium of publication. As a new archetype, Real Padonak represents a continuum of characters (real life people as well as invented literary characters) created by udaff.com writers. From the perspective of Discourse analysis, the cultural model of Real Padonak is shown as multiglossia of Discourses that represent beliefs, attitudes, values, and practices that exist in contemporary Russian society.

This visually rich qualitative teacher-action research focuses on the personal learning experience a classroom of first grade students had as they grew in understanding of difference through daily interactions with young friends who have severe disabilities. Each first grader spent 30 minutes, one day a week, visiting the special education classroom down the hall, which was home to their friends who needed total care and spent a majority of their day in a wheelchair.

During these visits, the first graders enjoyed interacting with their friends using a variety of manipulatives, music, movement, games, books, and art. This experience was loosely supervised by the special education teacher after students were given instructions on stations and activities available that day. Upon returning to their classroom, the students reflected on the experience. Reflection for the first few weeks was through oral discussion to build a community feel and common language. Written reflections were later kept in student-created journals.

Though this experience began in the fall, data for this exploration was collected during the Spring semester of the 2013-2014 school year. The following questions guided the design and implementation of this study: 1) How do children make sense of their interactions with children who have severe disabilities, and what do their words reveal regarding their understandings about and across difference?

2) What do interactions between students “look like,” and what can “doing” reveal about human interactions?

Data collection and analysis were informed through a critical, ethnographic-like lens with a participant perspective from the teacher-researcher. Photos and video documentation focused on the hands and feet of the participants to ensure privacy rights. Interviews, journal entries, photo elicitation, and a focus group discussion provided the remainder of the data set after parental permission and participant assent.

Findings are shared visually with an invitation to enter a child’s lifeworld via their voice, both written and verbal. Readers are asked to ponder the evidence through the shared voice and visions and consider the impact of the affective realm on learning and understanding and its significance in all of human interactions—all the selves and all the others.

In an attempt to gain a greater understanding of the interpretations and attitudes of higher education faculty in education programs teaching critical pedagogy, social justice, student empowerment and related concepts I conducted interviews with twenty faculty members in education programs in the New York City area. It is a study looking at the philosophies and conceptions of faculty and the relationship between those philosophies and their actions in the classroom. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed for trends and patterns. The nature of the questions focused on various aspects of critical pedagogy and allowed for an easy transition to preliminary categories based on the interview questions. The data was reviewed again for similarities and trends, and then again for comparison between the three identified perspectives: Professionalization Perspective, Democratic Student Development Perspective, and Critical Action Perspective.

Black Rock City is a temporary city existing for one week in the harsh desert of northern Nevada. It plays host to the Burning Man festival with over 300 large-scale art installations and is considered to be the largest interactive art festival in the world. Besides the main burn, smaller local regional events have developed. These regional events encompass many of the same tenets as Burning Man including the presentation of large-scale art. Burn2 is the regional event held on the virtual world, Second Life. In 2013, both events used the theme of Cargo Cult as a stepping off point for the artists. Through the lens of spectacle, I used art criticism as a way to gain understanding of the artworks.

Art criticism is a means of interpreting and appreciating artwork and is often used in the art classroom. Edmund Feldman's method promotes a deeper understanding of art and consists of four steps: description, formal analysis, interpretation and judgment. Using Feldman's method, I analyzed three artworks from the 2013 Burning Man festival and three works from Burn2. From interviews, photographs, and personal observations I analyzed the artworks. I used external analysis to compare the literature on similar festivals and the artworks with other events held in the real life and virtual world.

I found in both events very similar concepts and themes. Artists had specific subject matter in mind when designing their installations. Artists used the theme as a stepping off point for rationalizing their content. Art made to be displayed at Burning Man was expensive; funding was a concern for all the artists. Burn2 artists were free from funding concerns even though there were expenses to making art in Second Life. Emerging themes were use of building materials and color, use of electronics and computer technology, art installations in festivals, spectacle, collaboration, and interactivity. Further implications included teaching about the engineering of structures, critical thinking about festival themes and the individual art installations, visual culture, and art making with these emerging art forms.

This study focuses on the principles of caring and respect for persons, and how they are manifested in the preschool classroom. Caring and respect are core ethical principles. When applied, they inform our thinking and guide our behavior. Leading ethicists, including Immanuel Kant and Nel Noddings, have argued that caring and respect are vital elements in ethical human relationships. This dissertation is at the forefront of a new line of inquiry which is seeking to connect the philosophical with the empirical in ways that can be illuminating for both, and for education research and practice more generally. The study connects ethical theory with a qualitative analysis of how the principles of caring and respect do and do not manifest in pre-K classrooms. The empirical portion of this study is a secondary data analysis of classroom videos collected for a large-scale research project conducted by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE). Using maximum variation sampling, I identified six preschool classrooms to examine in regard to my research questions and identify observable behaviors associated with caring and respectful interactions. These video samples of teachers interactions with small and larger groups of children were then transcribed, described, analyzed, and discussed through the lens of the ethics of care and respect for persons. The study found that caring and respect for persons were either not demonstrated or were demonstrated in very limited ways in the observable behaviors of teachers in the samples of preschool classrooms under examination. These findings point to the importance of connecting ethics and practice in educational research and the professional development of early childhood educators.

The history of the American Old West has frequently been romanticized and idealized. This dissertation study explored four Arizona towns that developed during the era of the American Old West: Tombstone, Jerome, Oatman, and Globe. The study broadly examined issues of remembering/forgetting and historical authenticity/myth. It specifically analyzed historic tourist destinations as visual phenomenon: seeking to understand how town histories were visually communicated to contemporary tourists and what role historically-grounded visual narratives played in the overall tourist experience. The study utilized a visual methodology to organize and structure qualitative data collection and analysis; it incorporated visual data from historic and contemporary photographs and textual data from observations and interviews. Through a careful exploration of each town's past and present, the research proposed a measure to assess how the strength of visual connections between past and present impacted tourist impressions of each town. The analysis suggested that, due to a general lack of historic knowledge, tourist impressions were more closely connected to contemporary experiences and prior expectations of the American Old West than to historically-grounded visual narratives.

I conducted this qualitative research including data collection, data analysis and comparison analysis in a Casting and Jewelry Techniques course at Arizona State University for a whole semester. The purpose of this research was to explore the symbolic interactive meaning of metalworking to university students in metal courses, and if they had various learning needs to improve and enhance their metal art making by seeking their responses to the relationship between technical issues and concepts of their own artworks. The study results showed that the meanings of metalworking to students were craftsmanship, and a sense of accomplishment, and it related to their daily lives in career and presentation. Most of them focused on the degree of technical completion and forms of work rather than expressive concepts, and techniques were important in their works. I compared my findings in this study with my pilot study and James's study in a sculpture studio class, and found some similarities in teacher's philosophy and students' metalwork meanings that included career aspirations, some peer interaction, technical concerns rather than concept formation, and process as serious play or the exploration of materials.

The growing population of American Indian students who attend off-reservation school has been under researched. This absence in American Indian education research, their unique needs, and their growing numbers warrant more attention. To address this absence in education research literature, this study captures the experiences of American Indian students in an off-reservation high school. Through Social Reproduction Theory and Cultural Capital Theory this qualitative study makes known the varying ways that American Indian students in off-reservation high schools comply and resist formal schooling. Through interviews and observations of these students, in addition their teachers and administrators, I document and interpret their experiences. The data suggest that American Indian students strongly connect to and use their tribal identities to negotiate school. By recognizing the rules of the school, these students employ different forms of cultural and social capital, specifically the importance of space and forms of communication. Even though their high school has a high population of American Indian students, they continue to experience challenges in academic success through stereotypical assumptions, expected roles, and structural barriers. Illustrating student identity as effects of the social reproduction process clearly demonstrates resistance, compliance, and agency of these students in their high school.