An Analysis of the Motivational Content of Current Basal Reader Stories (open access)

An Analysis of the Motivational Content of Current Basal Reader Stories

The problem was to compare the motivational elements of basal reader stories of the past with those of the present. The purpose of the problem were 1) to determine the motivational content as represented by thema found in current basal reader stories and 2) to find differences, if any, between motivational content basal reader stories and findings of previous research.
Date: January 1967
Creator: Myers, Howell Lewis, 1922-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Mathematics Teacher Motivation in the Context of Lesson Study with Open Approach (open access)

Mathematics Teacher Motivation in the Context of Lesson Study with Open Approach

Providing professional development to in-service teachers remains a high priority when attempting to meet state and federal school accountability requirements, yet principals may neglect teacher motivation and the teacher change process when facilitating teacher learning. Drawing on self-determination theory, this research examined social and environmental factors shaping teacher motivation in the context of lesson study with open approach. This descriptive case study included the perceptions of eight secondary mathematics teachers who engaged lesson study as a form of professional development. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews suggested the following contextual factors improve motivation: emerging proficiency, synergy, interpersonal dynamics, volition, and internalization. Additionally, apprehension, minor barriers, and contentious interpersonal dynamics may reduce intrinsic-like motivation. As teachers encountered supportive contextual factors, they satisfied their need to experience competence, relatedness, and autonomy which encouraged value internalization of new learning manifesting as an epistemological shift in teaching paradigm. By internalizing the value of new learning, teachers may become more likely to authentically enact new pedagogy in their classrooms. The results of this study indicated lesson study with open approach may provide a robust form of learning capable of changing prior instructional beliefs. These findings suggest principals create and maintain contextual factors (with deliberate intent) that …
Date: August 2019
Creator: Petty, Clinton Scott
System: The UNT Digital Library
Toward a Framework for a New Philosophy of Music Education:  Løgstrup  as Synergy Between the Platonic and the Aristotelian Perspectives in the Music Education Philosophies of Bennett Reimer and David Elliott (open access)

Toward a Framework for a New Philosophy of Music Education: Løgstrup as Synergy Between the Platonic and the Aristotelian Perspectives in the Music Education Philosophies of Bennett Reimer and David Elliott

In the domain of music education philosophy there are, at present, two foundational systems that purport to be self-contained philosophies of music education. These are music education as aesthetic education, often referred to as MEAE, espoused by Bennett Reimer, and the praxial philosophy of music education posited by David Elliott. The debate between these two philosophies has been contentious and has had the effect of fracturing the philosophical underpinning of the music profession in an irreconcilable way. It is the purpose of this dissertation to introduce a third voice, that of the Danish philosopher Knut Løgstrup, to serve as a synergy between the philosophies of Reimer and Elliott and lead toward a framework of thinking for music education philosophy. I assert that the philosophies of Reimer and Elliott represent a modern articulation of an ancient dialectic between Platonic and Aristotelian ideals. Thus, the Reimer philosophy has its foundation in Platonic thought and Elliott has embraced an Aristotelian philosophical perspective. Løgstrup's position provides a third fundamental viewpoint that includes both Platonic and Aristotelian thinking and can therefore provide a synergy for these two music education philosophies. He refers to his philosophy as an ontological ethics. As a methodological approach, I utilize …
Date: December 2006
Creator: Wheeler, T. Ray
System: The UNT Digital Library
Oracy, Literacy and the Music of Adam De La Halle: The Evidence of the Manuscript Paris, BibliothèQue Nationale f.fr. 25566 (open access)

Oracy, Literacy and the Music of Adam De La Halle: The Evidence of the Manuscript Paris, BibliothèQue Nationale f.fr. 25566

This study examines the thirteenth century Artesian trouvère Adam de la Halle in the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale f.fr 25566 as it pertains to the oral/literate model for explaining characteristics of musical traditions. The fortuitous collaboration of a single scribe with a single composer on a musical collection encompassing a cross-section of thirteenth-century styles and idioms make this repertoire uniquely appropriate to a comparison of musical oracy and literacy.
Date: August 1996
Creator: Keyser, Dorothy
System: The UNT Digital Library
Beyond the Merchants of Death: the Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930s and its Role in Twentieth-Century American History (open access)

Beyond the Merchants of Death: the Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930s and its Role in Twentieth-Century American History

The Senate Munitions Committee of 1934-1936, chaired by Gerald Nye of North Dakota, provided the first critical examination of America's modern military establishment. The committee approached its task guided by the optimism of the progressive Social Gospel and the idealism of earlier times, but in the middle of the munitions inquiry the nation turned to new values represented in Reinhold Niebuhr's realism and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Second New Deal. By 1936, the committee found its views out of place in a nation pursuing a new course and in a world threatening to break out in war. Realist historians writing in the cold war period (1945-1990) closely linked the munitions inquiry to isolationism and created a one-dimensional history in which the committee chased evil "merchants of death." The only book-length study of the munitions investigation, John Wiltz's In Search of Peace, published in 1963, provided a realist interpretation. The munitions inquiry went beyond the merchants of death in its analysis of the post-World War I American military establishment. A better understanding emerges when the investigation is considered not only within an isolationist framework, but also as part of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of the interwar years. In particular, Franklin …
Date: May 1996
Creator: Coulter, Matthew Ware
System: The UNT Digital Library
Donor-Acceptor Systems: Photochemistry and Energy Harvesting Applications (open access)

Donor-Acceptor Systems: Photochemistry and Energy Harvesting Applications

Donor-acceptor systems have unique properties that make them ideal candidates for solar energy harvesting through mimicry of natural photosynthesis. This dissertation is focused on unraveling those unique properties in various types of donor-acceptor systems. The systems investigated are categorized as closely linked, push-pull, supramolecular, and multi-unit. As part of the study, photosynthetic analogues based on BF2-chelated dipyrromethene (BODIPY), porphyrin, phthalocyanine, truxene, ferrocene, quinone, phenothiazine (PTZ), perylenediimide (PDI), fullerene (C60), dicyanoquinodimethane (DCNQ), tetracyanobutadiene (TCBD), and triphenylamine (TPA) are investigated. The effects of proximity between donor-acceptor entities, their geometrical orientation relative to each other, push-pull character of substituents, and competitive energy and electron transfer are examined. In all systems, primary events of photosynthesis are observed, that is absorption and energy transfer and/or electron transfer is witnessed. Ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy is utilized to characterize the photo-induced events, while other methods such as steady-state luminescence, cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, chronoamperometry, and computational calculations are used to aid in the characterization of the donor-acceptor systems, in particular their applicability as solar energy harvesters.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Thomas, Michael Brandon
System: The UNT Digital Library
Placing High-Redshift Quasars in Perspective: Unifying Distant Quasars with Their Lower Redshift Counterparts through Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (open access)

Placing High-Redshift Quasars in Perspective: Unifying Distant Quasars with Their Lower Redshift Counterparts through Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

I present spectroscopic measurements for 260 sources from the Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph–Distant Quasar Survey (GNIRS-DQS). Being the largest uniform, homogeneous survey of its kind, it represents a flux-limited sample of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) quasars at 1.5 < z < 3.5. A combination of the GNIRS and SDSS spectra covers principal quasar diagnostic features, chiefly the C IV λ1549, Mg II λλ2798, 2803, Hβ λ4861, and [O III] λλ4959, 5007 emission lines, in each source. The spectral inventory is utilized primarily to develop prescriptions for obtaining more accurate and precise redshifts, black hole masses, and accretion rates for all quasars. Additionally, the measurements facilitate an understanding of the dependence of rest-frame ultraviolet–optical spectral properties of quasars on redshift, luminosity, and Eddington ratio, and test whether the physical properties of the quasar central engine evolve over cosmic time.
Date: May 2023
Creator: Matthews, Brandon M.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Morale in the Western Confederacy, 1864-1865: Home Front and Battlefield

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
This dissertation is a study of morale in the western Confederacy from early 1864 until the Civil War's end in spring 1865. It examines when and why Confederate morale, military and civilian, changed in three important western states, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. Focusing on that time frame allows a thorough examination of the sources, increases the opportunity to produce representative results, and permits an assessment of the lingering question of when and why most Confederates recognized, or admitted, defeat. Most western Confederate men and women struggled for their ultimate goal of southern independence until Federal armies crushed those aspirations on the battlefield. Until the destruction of the Army of Tennessee at Franklin and Nashville, most western Confederates still hoped for victory and believed it at least possible. Until the end they drew inspiration from battlefield developments, but also from their families, communities, comrades in arms, the sacrifices already endured, simple hatred for northerners, and frequently from anxiety for what a Federal victory might mean to their lives. Wartime diaries and letters of western Confederates serve as the principal sources. The dissertation relies on what those men and women wrote about during the war - military, political, social, or otherwise - …
Date: May 2006
Creator: Clampitt, Brad R.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Anabaptist Purity of Life Ethic (open access)

The Anabaptist Purity of Life Ethic

This dissertation establishes that the Evangelical Anabaptists lived a noticeably distinctive Christian life when compared with their peers, accounts for their committed pursuit of holiness, and describes the outcome of that commitment. The sources used include the arranged archival source material in the Tauferakten, confessions, tracts, letters, debates, martyrologies, miscellaneous writings of the Anabaptists, and subsequent scholarship on the subject.
Date: May 1985
Creator: Dalzell, Timothy Wayne
System: The UNT Digital Library
Scaling, Power-Law First Return Times, and Non-Ergodicity (open access)

Scaling, Power-Law First Return Times, and Non-Ergodicity

This dissertation is a collection of papers on anomalous phenomena in physics, biology, and sociology. These phenomena are primarily analyzed in terms of their temporal and spatiotemporal statistical properties. The analysis is based on both numerical simulations and, in some cases, real-world physiological and sociological data. The primary methods of analysis are diffusion entropy analysis, power spectral analysis, multifractal analysis, and survival (or waiting-time) analysis.
Date: August 2022
Creator: Lambert, David Robert
System: The UNT Digital Library
Saving Society Through Politics: the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas, Texas in the 1920s (open access)

Saving Society Through Politics: the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas, Texas in the 1920s

This study analyzes the rise of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Dallas, Texas, in the context of the national Klan. It looks at the circumstances and people behind the revival of the Klan in 1915. It chronicles the aggressive marketing program that brought the Klan to Dallas and shows how the Dallas Klavern then changed the course of the national Klan with its emphasis on politics. Specifically, this was done through the person of Hiram Wesley Evans, Dallas dentist and aspiring intellectual, who engineered a coup and took over the national Klan operations in 1922. Evans, as did Dallas's local Klavern number 66, emphasized a strong anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic ideology to recruit, motivate, and justify the existence of the Ku Klux Klan. The study finds that, on the local scene, the Dallas Klavern's leadership was composed of middle and upper-middle class businessmen. Under their leadership, the Klan engaged in a variety of fraternal and vigilante activities. Most remarkable, however, were its successful political efforts. Between 1922 and 1924, the Klan overthrew the old political hierarchy and controlled city and county politics to such a degree that only the Dallas school board escaped the Invisible Empire's domination. Klavern 66 also wielded …
Date: December 1997
Creator: Morris, Mark N. (Mark Noland)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Cardinal Giovanni Battista De Luca: Nepotism in the Seventeenth-century Catholic Church and De Luca's Efforts to Prohibit the Practice (open access)

Cardinal Giovanni Battista De Luca: Nepotism in the Seventeenth-century Catholic Church and De Luca's Efforts to Prohibit the Practice

This dissertation examines the role of Cardinal Giovanni Battista de Luca in the reform of nepotism in the seventeenth-century Catholic Church. Popes gave very large amounts of money to their relatives and the burden of nepotism on the Catholic Church was very onerous. The Catholic Church was crippled by nepotism and unable to carry out its traditional functions. Although Cardinal de Luca and Pope Innocent XI worked tirelessly to end nepotism, they were thwarted in their attempts by apprehension among the Cardinals concerning conciliarism and concerning the use of reform measures from the Council of Trent; by Gallicanism and the attempts of the French King to exercise power over the French Church; and by the entrenchment of nepotism and its long acceptance within the Church. Cardinal de Luca and Innocent XI were not able to push through reforms during their lifetimes but Pope Innocent XII was able to complete this reform and pass a reform Bull. This dissertation has two complementary themes. First, a confluence of circumstances allowed for the unfettered growth of nepotism in the seventeenth-century Church to the point of threatening the well-being of the Catholic Church. Reform was not undertaken until the threat to Church finances was …
Date: August 2012
Creator: Cowan, H. Lee
System: The UNT Digital Library
Service Honest and Faithful: The Thirty-Third Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Philippine War, 1899-1901 (open access)

Service Honest and Faithful: The Thirty-Third Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Philippine War, 1899-1901

This manuscript is a study of the Thirty-Third Infantry, United States Volunteers, a regiment that was recruited in Texas, the South, and the Midwest and was trained by officers experienced from the Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War. This regiment served as a front-line infantry unit and then as a constabulary force during the Philippine War from 1899 until 1901. While famous in the United States as a highly effective infantry regiment during the Philippine War, the unit's fame and the lessons that it offered American war planners faded in time and were overlooked in favor of conventional fighting. In addition, the experiences of the men of the regiment belie the argument that the Philippine War was a brutal and racist imperial conflict akin to later interventions such as the Vietnam War. An examination of the Thirty-Third Infantry thus provides valuable context into a war not often studied in the United States and serves as a successful example of a counterinsurgency.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Andersen, Jack David
System: The UNT Digital Library
Mary Jones: Last First Lady of the Republic of Texas (open access)

Mary Jones: Last First Lady of the Republic of Texas

Abstract This dissertation uses archival and interpretive methods to examine the life and contributions of Mary Smith McCrory Jones in Texas. Specifically, this project investigates the ways in which Mary Jones emerged into the public sphere, utilized myth and memory, and managed her life as a widow. Each of these larger areas is examined in relation to historiographicaly accepted patterns and in the larger context of women in Texas, the South, and the nation during this period. Mary Jones, 1819-1907, experienced many of the key early periods in Anglo Texas history. The research traces her family’s immigration to Austin’s Colony and their early years under Mexican sovereignty. The Texas Revolution resulted in her move to Houston and her first brief marriage. Following the death of her husband she met and married Anson Jones, a physician who served in public posts throughout the period of the Texas Republic. Over time Anson was politically and personally rejected to the point that he committed suicide. This dissertation studies the effects this death had upon Mary’s personal goals, her use of a widow’s status to achieve her objectives, and her eventual emergence as a “Professional Widow.” Mary Jones’s attempts to rehabilitate her husband’s public …
Date: December 2011
Creator: Fish, Birney Mark
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Music of Anton Webern (open access)

The Music of Anton Webern

In this study, the Anton Webern's music is considered in two groups: that which was written before Webern adopted the twelve-tone technique, Opp 1-16, and that written in the twelve-tone technique, Opp. 17-31. This division is not intended to represent an attempt at periodization of Webern's music, for the changes of style in Op. 17 are not that significant. But the fact that Webern employed the twelve-tone technique in all the works he wrote after Op. 16 makes this a natural point of division for a study of this sort. Besides the music of Webern, two peripheral areas are included in this study. No attempt has been made at an exhaustive biography of Webern, but facts relative to his life, and impressions about the person are presented. Also, to create a proper perspective for the study of Webern's which existed during the time that Webern lived and composed, is presented.
Date: May 1960
Creator: McKenzie, Wallace Chessley
System: The UNT Digital Library
Articles on Drama and Theatre in Selected Journals Housed in the North Texas State University Libraries: a Bibliography (open access)

Articles on Drama and Theatre in Selected Journals Housed in the North Texas State University Libraries: a Bibliography

The continued publication of articles concerning drama and theatre in scholarly periodicals has resulted in the "loss" of much research due to the lack of retrieval tools. This work is designed to partially fill this lack by cassifying the articles found in fourteen current periodicals using Trussler's taxonomy. This bibliography could also be updated on a regular basis. The issues that are presently not available through the North Texas State University Libraries could be ordered, classified and appended to this work. In short, this thesis is a start toward the opening of the source material held by the campus libraries. But it is only a start. There is still a treasure trove yet to be developed.
Date: December 1985
Creator: Foster, Jimm
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Arsenal of the Red Warriors: U.S. Perceptions of Stalin's Red Army and the Impact of Lend-Lease Aid on the Eastern Front in the Second World War (open access)

The Arsenal of the Red Warriors: U.S. Perceptions of Stalin's Red Army and the Impact of Lend-Lease Aid on the Eastern Front in the Second World War

Through the U.S. Lend-Lease program, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to keep Joseph Stalin's Red Army fighting Adolf Hitler's forces to prevent a separate peace and Nazi Germany's colonization of Soviet territory and strategic resources during the Second World War. Yet after the Red Army's 1943 counterattacks, Roosevelt unnecessarily increased Soviet Lend-Lease aid, oversupplying Stalin's soldiers with more armament than they required for the Soviet Union's defense and enabling their subsequent conquest of East Central Europe and large parts of East Asia. Roosevelt's underestimation of the Red Army's capabilities, his tendency to readily rely on Soviet-influenced advisers, and his unquestioning acceptance of Stalin's implicit threats to forge a separate peace all contributed to his excessive arming of Moscow from 1943 forward. Expanding on the findings of other scholars, this work identifies and explains the impact of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on Roosevelt's reasoning, the key role of the Arctic convoys in delivering material to the Red Army, and how the unnecessary aid routes through Iran and Alaska resulted in the oversupplying of Stalin's troops. Had Roosevelt not opened these unnecessary routes, the Arctic convoys could have continued to sufficiently supply the Red Army's defensive efforts without empowering it to aggressively spread …
Date: May 2023
Creator: Fancher, James Reagan
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Student Environment Model: a Measure of Institutional Effectiveness (open access)

A Student Environment Model: a Measure of Institutional Effectiveness

In a rapidly changing environment of growing competition for limited resources and ever increasing operational costs, institutions of higher education must focus on all aspects of the organizational functions to insure institutional effectiveness and the maximization of student success. This study will use a Student Environment Model (SEM) to assess students' perception of their college environment outside of the formal classroom at a unique two year technical college. The information obtained is used by the administration of Texas State Technical College Waco (TSTCW) to make appropriate adjustments in programs, services, or policies when the student data indicates that change or improvement is needed. While the SEM provides an indication of the students' "image" of the college environment, it can also provide indicators of areas which need improvement or require change. Applying the SEM information to decision making, problem solving, and planning will allow the institution and its people to move toward higher productivity and continuous quality improvement.
Date: May 1995
Creator: Morris, Lucille Darline
System: The UNT Digital Library
Edvard Munch's Fatal Women: A Critical Approach (open access)

Edvard Munch's Fatal Women: A Critical Approach

This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the fatal woman motif in the writings and art of Edvard Munch from the early 1890s to 1909. It uses a background of the women in the artist's life as well as the literary and artistic worlds in which Munch participated. Following separate accounts of Munch's relationships with five women, the manner in which the artist characterizes each as a fatal woman in his writings and art is discussed and analyzed. Next, the study describes the fatal woman motif in late nineteenth century art and literature. It begins with a discussion of the origin of the Symbolist and Decadent Movements and an ideological examination of the fatal woman motif as it is manifested in the writing and art of these two groups. In addition, it compares Munch's visual manifestations of the femme fatale with the manner in which the artist's contemporaries depicted her. Finally, this study describes two groups of men with whom Munch was particularly close: the Christiania Bohéme and the Schwarzen Ferkel Circle. An examination of the literary works of these men helps to determine the way in which they affected Munch's pictorial perception of the fatal woman.
Date: December 1985
Creator: Bimer, Barbara Susan Travitz
System: The UNT Digital Library
Elizabeth Bishop in Brasil: An Ongoing Acculturation (open access)

Elizabeth Bishop in Brasil: An Ongoing Acculturation

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), one of the foremost modern American poets, lived in Brasil during seventeen-odd years beginning in 1951. During this time she composed the poetry collection Questions of Travel, stand-alone poems, and fragments as well as prose pieces and translations. This study builds on the work of critics such as Brett Millier and Lorrie Goldensohn who have covered Bishop’s poetry during her Brasil years. However, most American critics have lacked expertise in both Brasilian culture and the Portuguese language that influenced Bishop’s poetry. Since 2000, in contrast, Brasilian critic Paulo Henriques Britto has explored issues of translating Bishop’s poetry into Portuguese, while Maria Lúcia Martins and Regina Przybycien have examined Bishop’s Brasil poems from a Brasilian perspective. However, American and Brasilian scholars have yet to recognize Bishop’s journey of acculturation as displayed through her poetry chronologically or the importance of her belated reception by Brasilian literary and popular culture. This study argues that Bishop’s Brasil poetry reveals her gradual transformation from a tourist outsider to a cultural insider through her encounters with Brasilian history, culture, language, and politics. It encompasses Bishop’s published and unpublished Brasil poetry, including drafts from the Elizabeth Bishop Papers at Vassar College. On a secondary …
Date: August 2014
Creator: Neely, Elizabeth
System: The UNT Digital Library