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Browsing by Author "Macdonald, Bradley, committee member"

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    Broadening the lens: a pilot study of student cognitive flexibility and intercultural sensitivity in short-term study abroad experiences
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Gantt, Jessica, author; Aoki, Eric, advisor; Williams, Elizabeth, committee member; Macdonald, Bradley, committee member
    Study abroad has emerged as an essential element in many U.S. students' college careers, as many degree programs have implemented study abroad as a degree requirement and globalization has fostered a flourishing globalized economy and society. Over half of these students are choosing to go abroad for short-term programs of six weeks or less, and thus this pilot study considered the effects short programs can have on participants. The study included a study abroad participant group who went abroad for one month or less and a control group of students who did not go abroad. The study utilized a pre-posttest design, and participants in both groups were sent online surveys before and after the one month study period. The study utilized Martin and Rubin's (1995) Cognitive Flexibility Scale and Chen and Starosta's (2000) Intercultural Sensitivity Scale to measure changes in participant intercultural personhood, to which both cognitive flexibility and intercultural sensitivity contribute. The study also used open-ended questions in the posttest to gather study abroad participant narratives and add qualitative depth to the findings. The data analysis found the study abroad students did exhibit an increase in cognitive flexibility after their trips abroad (M = 5.00, SD = 0.65) when compared with the longitudinal data for control group participants who stayed in country (M = 4.72, SD = 0.32); however, due to the size of the small pilot study, these findings were not statistically significant: F (1, 1) = 0.867, p > .05. The study encountered an unexpected trend when study abroad students exhibited lower intercultural sensitivity after their trips (M = 3.55, SD = 0.54) than control group students who stayed in country (M = 4.00, SD = 0.45), though also not a statistically significant finding: F (1, 1) = 1.14, p > .05. Interestingly, a data analysis considering changes in cognitive flexibility when controlling for second language fluency did approach significance: F (1, 1) = 13.262, p = .068. The difference in level of cognitive flexibility in study abroad participants (M = 4.92, SD = 0.65) and control group participants (M = 4.80, SD = 0.32) when controlling for second language fluency also continued to trend in the expected direction. While I provide insight into potential explanations for the three trends, the findings and conclusions from this pilot study are used to posit questions and ideas for future research. The findings of this pilot study not only contribute holistically to the field of study abroad research, but can also be applied to future short-term study abroad research and even to the actual design of study abroad program support structures.
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    Environmental security: a source of legitimacy and contestation in global environmental governance
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Liebenguth, Julianne, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Harris, Peter, committee member; Macdonald, Bradley, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member
    Environmental security is an increasingly popular concept though which various actors seek to understand and articulate the urgency, risks, and vulnerabilities associated with dangerous socio-environmental changes. Such urgent shifts include rising temperatures, droughts, floods, intensifying weather-related disasters, land-use changes, and the expansion of exploitative and extractive practices, all of which can be said to pose significant dangers to a vast range of political communities and systems under the broader rubric of environmental security. The consequences of turning to the logic of security, however, are heavily debated among those who both espouse and reject this conceptual linkage. Thus, this dissertation seeks to dig deeper into the ways security is conceptualized, leveraged, and contested across certain domains of global environmental politics. Specifically, I contribute three empirical studies that each employ critical discourse analysis to highlight distinct connections between the environment and security as they emerge across different state and non-state actors, including governments, IGOs, NGOs, TNCs, and resistance movements. I focus on the Food, Energy, Water (FEW) security nexus as an over-arching arena of global environmental politics in which such actors frequently draw upon securitized language to describe environmental problems and their potential solutions. I find that 1) elite actors including state representatives, NGOs, and IGOs designing the FEW security nexus agenda position scarcity as the main threat and private sector actors as key agents of environmental security; 2) environmental security is leveraged in unique ways as a source of legitimacy by TNCs operating across the FEW nexus; and 3) resistance movements can generate contradictory and alternative visions of environmental security and legitimacy that challenge prevailing and unequal systems of governance. I conclude that the emergence of the FEW security nexus as global development paradigm presents a particularly important opportunity to interrogate processes and performative implications of securitization (both oppressive and emancipatory), build upon alternative, bottom-up visions of environmental security, and reflect upon the changing role of the state in relation to both security and global environmental politics more broadly.
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    Tlapalli in iquin onitlacat: in tlateomatiliztli de tlalnamiquiliztli
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Saiz, LeRoy F., author; DeMirjyn, Maricela, advisor; Kim, Joon K., committee member; Bubar, Roe, committee member; Macdonald, Bradley, committee member
    Research analysis within American Indian Studies establishes social change practices concentrating on American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian communities--Indigenous communities recognized by the United States Government. Chican@ Studies inquiry locates a similar approach to scholarship, except social change becomes strategized in reference to Latina/o communities; more specifically, Mexican-American communities. In the American Southwest, Xikan@ racial representation is observed by outside Indigeneities as Indigenous to North America. However Xikan@ ethnic representation is scrutinized due to its palimpsest features--a counterbalance to Spanish, Mexican, and American colonization. The purpose of this study is to identify a Xikan@ Indigenous identity and determine the factors that situate othered or sub altern Indigenous identities in the peripheries of Indigeneity. As exemplified through auto-ethnography and traditional storywork, the creation of a Xikan@ methodological approach can articulate the need to maintain hemispheric approaches to Indigeneity, while respecting the uniqueness of local epistemologies such as Xikan@ Traditional Knowledge (XIK).