Digital Commons Network^™

Teachers’ Beliefs Towards Learners’ Heritage Languages Inside Schools In A Multilingual Setting, Ivian Boruchowski Phd

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study adds to the conversation about the increasing language diversity in U.S. schools (Paris & Alim, 2014). In the South Florida district discussed here, ELLs represent 16.9% of the total student enrollment (Miami Dade, 2020), and there is a popular narrative about the value of bilingualism in this community. Despite that, Valencia and Lynch (2019), Mackinney (2016), and Lanier (2014) indicated: even though the bilingual political and economic value in South Florida is noticeable, HLs are relegated to a secondary place and with no prestige inside local school settings.

As Garcia and Wei (2014) observed: "language practices cannot be …

Engaging Your Students By Engaging With Your Librarians:​ Accessing And Preserving ​ Audio Primary Materials ​ For Academic Work, Veronica Gonzalez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This section presents FIU library initiatives to promote and supports long-term preservation and academic access to primary materials in the humanities. The Diaz Ayala Collection (DAC) provides access to faculty and students to one of the most relevant collections of Cuban and Latin American music in the United States. The DAC librarian will explain the application of technologies to preserve, access, and disseminate audiovisual content. Additionally, she will elaborate further on national and international academic partnerships, grant participation, classwork collaboration, and travel grant opportunities supported by the FIU Libraries, LACC, and CRI.

Creative Collaboration: Providing Inclusive Access To Fiu Libraries' Collections, Annia Gonzalez, Ximena Valdivia, Karla Ferrer

Works of the FIU Libraries

The FIU Libraries Special Collections and Cataloging departments are immersed in a project to make primary source materials more accessible to the South Florida community and internationally. This presentation will demonstrate how archivists and catalogers worked collaboratively to provide access by leveraging traditional approaches and new tools to increase discoverability in Finding Aids and the library catalog.

Throughout the years, the archives at FIU Libraries has collected historical records that represent the history of the Hispanic community in Miami. Although Miami is known as having a large Hispanic community, the discovery of collection material represents a challenge for non-English speakers …

Use Of A Depression Screening Measure: Perspective Of Clinicians In A Mental Health Clinic, Samantha C. Montealegre

Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing Student Projects

The purpose of this DNP project was to explore clinician perspectives on the utilization of evidence-based depression screening measures during client intake at a psychiatric clinic. A cross-sectional, 15-item survey was developed and administered with a convenience sample of clinicians at a psychiatric clinic. The survey item development was guided by the Prochaska and DiClemente (1983) Transtheoretical Model and previous research. Eight participants of the eligible 15 staff members completed the paper-based survey. Participants included advanced practice registered nurses, a licensed clinical social worker, and a licensed mental health counselor. Most (seven clinicians, 87.5%) participants reported depression was a “very …

The Subject And Object Of Art: Lacan, Rose, And Levinas., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

This article introduces the different approaches between the western metaphysical thought and the scholars Jacques Lacan, Jacqueline Rose, and Emmanuel Levinas – particularly the contributions to the notion of the ‘becoming’. Lacan expands on Freud’s discovery of the primacy of the unconscious (the id) and concentrates on how the unconscious is structured as a language. He argues that human subjectivity is formed by three realms: The mirror stage which initiates the child into the imaginary, the language which initiates the child into the symbolic and the realm of the real which is always veiled and out of reach.

Reframing First-Year Composition: A Translingual Approach To Writing About Writing, Nicole H. Sirota

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces a course design that brings together two successful approaches to teaching First-Year Writing, Writing about Writing Studies and Translingual Writing, to encourage transfer of writing knowledge and ultimately help students be the best writers they can be. The course situates translingualism within the Writing about Writing approach and suggests assignments that will allow students to recognize their language differences as resources to help create new meanings and fight against the discriminatory expectations of “standard” English often seen in academia. By the end of the course, students will gain agency in their writing allowing them to take greater …

Imagining Costumbrismo: Connecting Image And Text In Nineteenth-Century Colombian Cuadros De Costumbres, María Sol Echarren

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Influenced by nineteenth-century scientific trends, Costumbrismo was a literary and artistic genre combining aspects of Romanticism and Realism and presenting traditional customs of autochthonous daily life. Nineteenth-century cuadros de costumbres, or “sketches of manners,” often used local color to depict national scenes, regional types, and cultural traditions. The cuadros, comprised of short but illustrative writings published as periodical pamphlets, contained visually charged descriptive language infused with a didactic objective in order to shape readers’ perspectives about the nation and present specific sociopolitical philosophies.

This dissertation analyzes the connections between literature and art through the written cuadros de costumbres …

An Interpretive Analysis: Black Men, Masculinities, And The Field Of Tropic Play, Mario D. Lewis

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While much has been written about the participation of Black Men in higher education, such scholarship has often been predicated on empirically derived insights that have privileged phenomenological experiences as a primary point of departure for analysis. While this literature has done much to illuminate how higher education scholars and practitioners understand what Black men pursuing higher education experience, I use this study as an opportunity to think differently about this demographic and those experiences.

With the aim of not only providing nuanced understanding of Black men in college, but also a general methodological shift in how they are studied …

The Unusual Suspects: The Bourbon Reforms And The Inter- And Intracolonial Mobility Of Africans And Their Descendants In The Spanish Caribbean, Trevor E. Bryant

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This social history examines the trans-imperial mobility of people of African descent in the eighteenth-century Spanish Caribbean in the context of Atlantic enslavement and fugitivity and Spanish imperial policy. Spanish officials knew how often Africans and their descendants traveled throughout the circum-Caribbean. They implemented policies to use this movement for their own gain, either by harnessing that movement for imperial rivalry or commandeering it for security. A close analysis of Catholic parish records, Spanish governors’ correspondence, drafts of Black codes, and smuggling investigations reveals a tension between free and enslaved people’s multi- faceted mobility and Spanish officials’ attempts to use …

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

A Culturally Sustaining Book Club: The Examination Of African American Students' Motivation And Literacy Achievement, Brittney C. Jones

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Culturally sustaining pedagogy includes centering students’ cultural identities, languages, and practices in the classroom. Such practices have had positive effects on the reading achievement and motivation of African American students. In particular, communalism and interdependence are cultural themes that are preferred by African American students and parents. Book clubs are a long-standing literacy activity that centers student voices and social interactions as the basis of student learning.

This mixed-methods intervention study was conducted to determine the effects of a culturally sustaining book club on second and third-grade African American students’ motivation and reading achievement at a Title I school as …

Factors Influencing Telecommuters Infrastructure Acceptance: An Investigation Into Videoconferencing, Fatogoma Silue

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study aims to identify key factors influencing telecommuters' videoconferencing acceptance in the United States of America in a context of generalization to every industry. The study looks at a mixture of individual factors like self-efficacy and computer knowledge and organizational factors like corporate support. The seven-point Likert scale measurement was used to build a survey in The Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). The study then applied a modified version of the original technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate the factors influencing telecommuters' videoconferencing acceptance. A quantitative cross-sectional study design collected six hundred and ninety-four (694) valid responses …

Closing The Gap In Career Selection Pathways: Factors That Influence Career Indecision Of High School Students In The Us., Juan Carlos Rey

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Based on Donald Super’s Developmental Self-Concept theory, Osipow’s theory of career development, Crite’s career maturity theory, and Bandura’s social cognitive theory; this study observes the impact of Self-Efficacy (specifically Career Decision Self-Efficacy) on Career Indecision in high school students of the United States by applying the Career Decision Self Efficacy scale (CDSE) (Taylor and Betz, 1983), and the Career Decision Scale (CDS) (Osipow, 1987) to a sample 250 high school students. A comprehensive study of the major theories related to career development is performed as well as an analysis of relevant factors that impact career decision. When applied in educational …

Integrating Cultural Knowledge Into Artificially Intelligent Systems: Human Experiments And Computational Implementations, Anurag Acharya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence, it seems as if every aspect of our lives is impacted by AI in one way or the other. As AI is used for everything from driving vehicles to criminal justice, it becomes crucial that it overcome any biases that might hinder its fair application. We are constantly trying to make AI be more like humans. But most AI systems so far fail to address one of the main aspects of humanity: our culture and the differences between cultures. We cannot truly consider AI to have understood human reasoning without understanding culture. So it …

Afro-Cubans, Incorporation, And Cubanidad In Miami, Fl, Elena M. Cruz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research study is to investigate how Afro-Cubans as double diasporic subjects have been incorporated into the socio-cultural landscape of South Florida and the relationship between these methods of incorporation and the evolution of ethno-racial identification. The study examines the role of race and racism in shaping the socio-economic adjustment of Afro-Cubans in South Florida. Miami is the appropriate research site as home to half of all Cuban immigrants in the United States where cubanidad is most closely associated with whiteness. Miami also has a substantial population of other Afro-diasporic populations, including Afro-Caribbean immigrants as well as …

Communicating With Culture: How Humans And Machines Detect Narrative Elements, Wolfgang Victor H. Yarlott

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To understand how people communicate, we must understand how they leverage shared stories and all the knowledge, information, and associations contained within those stories. I examine three classes of narrative elements that convey a wealth of cultural knowledge: Propp's morphology, motifs, and discourse structure. Propp's morphology communicates how roles and actions drive a narrative forward; motifs fill those roles and actions with specific, remarkable events; discourse groups these into a coherent structure to convey a point.

My thesis has three aims: first, to demonstrate that people can reliably detect and identify all three of these narrative elements; second, to develop …

Human Rights And Professions Museums As Interlocutors Of Buraku Identity In Japan, Lisa Mueller

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Members of the Buraku minority group in contemporary Japan are traditionally perceived as descendants of outcaste communities who performed work deemed impure according to Shinto and Buddhist taboos in Japan’s caste system during the Tokugawa Era (1603-1867). After receiving emancipation in 1871, they continued to experience severe discrimination. Following successful activism culminating in government-issued affirmative action “special measures” funding beginning in 1969, Buraku people have now approached social and economic parity with mainstream Japanese. Partially due to these successes, the Buraku Liberation League, the largest Buraku rights organization in the country, has now embraced a new globalized, UN-centric Buraku identity …

A Non-Normative Paradigm: Disability And Gender In Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature, Malena Sol Pendola Biondi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within nineteenth century society, normalcy is presented through unfeasible means of appearance and identity, leading to a rejection of the self. By exploring characters in Victorian gothic literature, who are marginalized by society, and invoking the work of Gail Weiss, Kim Hall, and others, this essay investigates the way these norms are immortalized through published representations and how they expose the lingering presence of rejection of disabled, queer, and gender-fluid bodies. Through the analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I look at the contextualization of marginalized existence compared to able-bodiedness and normalized …

Jewish Conversion During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Victoria Davide

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

March 2020 saw a stark change to daily life and religious practices for many individuals because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those converting to Judaism, or in the process of wanting to convert, found themselves physically isolated from their Jewish communities. This thesis dives into what aspects are important when creating a Jewish identity and how individuals circumnavigate these changes in crisis. Through the use of qualitative interviews this thesis illuminates the many different changes and experiences that individuals went through converting to Judaism during the COVID-19 pandemic. I bring many different groups for comparisons including different branches within Judaism and …

Detecting The Emotions Of Animate Beings In Narrative, Samira Zad

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifying emotions as expressed in text (a.k.a. text emotion recognition) has received a lot of attention over the past decade. Narratives often involve a great deal of emotional expression, and so emotion recognition on narrative text is of great interest to computational approaches to narrative understanding. The meaning and impact of narratives is strongly bound up with the emotions expressed therein. Emotions may be experienced by characters in a story (which may include the narrator), by a story-external narrator, or by the reader. There has been so far two separate streams of work relevant to this observation: (1) emotion detection, …

The Relationship Between Gifted Selection Criteria And Student Performance On Fifth-Grade Science Achievement, Teresa Vega Cereijo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Education policymakers have struggled for decades to provide equal opportunities for all students. Persistent disparities exist between subgroups of students, based on factors such as race, disability, ethnicity, and socio-economic status (SES), which leads to over-representation of minority students in special education and their under-representation in gifted education. Efforts to ensure equity in school districts in identification and support of minority and low SES students have been lagging. Failing to reach students’ potential and educating them with appropriately challenging curriculum is a disservice not only to them, but also to our nation. Although gifted programs were developed with the intent …

Staff Education Of Culturally And Linguistically Appropriate Services (Clas) Standards To Improve Staff’S Knowledge In Cultural Competency: A Quality Improvement Project, Marie Guerrier

Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing Student Projects

The objective of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to develop, implement, and evaluate cultural awareness in a private outpatient mental health care clinic in accordance with the Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) standards and by providing cultural awareness education training. Instrumentation included a competence self-assessment checklist adapted with permission from the Central Vancouver Island Multicultural Society. Frequency counts were used to examine the distribution of categorical demographic variables. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to examine whether a change in awareness, and knowledge, was statistically significant. Awareness scores were found to change significantly over time, F (2, …

Improving Covid-19 Vaccination Awareness And Immunization In The African American Ages 55 And Up- A Quality Improvement Program, Lissa Fabienne Bazile

Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing Student Projects

The unprecedented health care effects, and consequences of COVID-19 have been felt disproportionately within distinctive races and older adults, especially African Americans. An individual’s race, comorbidities, age, and other determinants of health impact level of inclusion in society also influencing an individual’s susceptibility to developing COVID-19. Over 42 million people in the United States have tested positive for the COVID-19. Reluctance in the COVID-19 vaccination within the Black community can delay the closure of the race mortality gap seen with COVID-19.

Increasing COVID-19 vaccination awareness in Blacks ages 55 and older population at a South Florid a medical center using …

Longitudinal Transactional Relationships Between Caregiver And Child Mental Health During The Covid-19 Global Pandemic, Emily L. Robertson, Jennifer Piscitello, Ellyn Schmidt, Carolina Mallar

Coronavirus Research at FIU

Background Emerging work examining the psychological impact of COVID-19 on children and families suggests that the relationship between pandemic-related stress, child psychosocial functioning, and caregiver mental health are interrelated. However, much of this research is unidirectional and thus little is known about the bidirectional cascading effects children and caregivers may experience. The current study examined the transactional relationships between caregiver and child mental health over time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Linguistically, racially, and ethnically diverse caregivers (N = 286) of young children completed measures of caregiver mental health, caregiver pandemic-related stress, and child mental health (i.e., externalizing, internalizing, prosocial …

Effect Of Flow Phonation Voice Exercises On Vocal And Aerodynamic Measures In Undergraduate Student Singers, Jorge A. Diaz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of Flow Phonation Voice Exercises on vocal measures in undergraduate student singers. Whereas these exercises have provided positive outcomes in individuals with vocal hyperfunction, the use of these exercises in potentially enhancing the singing voice has not been explored. A total of 10 participants were randomly assigned into an experimental group (n = 6), that received 5 sessions of the Flow Phonation Voice Exercises across 5 weeks, and a control group (n = 4) which did not receive the treatment. Changes in auditory-perceptual, acoustic, subjective respiratory, quality-of-life and fatigue related measures compared across two groups. …

Son For Everybody: Exploring Afro Cuban And African American Relations Through Langston Hughes’ Translations Of Nicolas Guillén’S Poetry, Hayley R. Fernandez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to analyze the translation decisions made in Cuba Libre, Translated from the Spanish By Langston Hughes and Ben Frederic Carruthers, and to explore the contemporary image of Nicolás Guillén as expressed in recent projects regarding his work and legacy. Particular attention was paid to the historical and social frameworks Guillén employed in his own work and the same frameworks he and his poetry have been associated with in recent years. The larger importance of this piece was to take a look at how international Blackness existed and was worked with in literature at the …

Approaching Protest With Affect: An Analysis Of The Images Spread By News Media During The George Floyd Protests, Kenneth L. Ward

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the characteristics of images that are most prevalent in news media coverage of the George Floyd Protests during 2020. To do so, I have examined gallery images from nine different news source which cover the gamut of the entire political spectrum.

Through my research, it was determined that the characteristics found in the images correlated greatly with the political leanings of the publication, with right-wing publications far more likely to depict scenes of meaningless violence, and left-wing publications far more likely to show linguistic messaging and images of group solidarity.

In conclusion, …

Exploring The Role Of Higher Education In Responsible Deployment Of Artificial Intelligence, Shahin Vassigh

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Higher education is the key driver for the teaching, research, and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), as it bears responsibility for preparing engineers, scientists, technologists, and corporate leaders who shape and fuel its revolutionary advances. With AI and automation technologies relying on more advanced levels of training, and universities serving as the prime site for their development, faculty views on the implications of this technology are critically important.

The purpose of this case study was to gain insights into how academics and disciplinary experts perceive their roles and responsibilities in the teaching, development, and deployment of AI. Using FIU as …

Convergent And Diver Gent Brain Structural And Functional Abnormalities Associated With Developmental Dyslexia, Xiaohui Yan, Ke Jiang, Hui Li, Ziyi Wang, Kyle Perkins, Fan Cao

All Faculty

Brain abnormalities in the reading network have been repeatedly reported in individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD); however, it is still not totally understood where the structural and functional abnormalities are consistent/inconsistent across languages. In the current multimodal meta-analysis, we found convergent structural and functional alterations in the left superior temporal gyrus across languages, suggesting a neural signature of DD. We found greater reduction in grey matter volume and brain activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus in morpho-syllabic languages (e.g. Chinese) than in alphabetic languages, and greater reduction in brain activation in the left middle temporal gyrus and fusiform gyrus …

Global Trends In Forced Migration: Policy, Practice And Research Imperatives For Social Work, Mark Macgowan, George Palattiyil, Dina Sidhva, Amelia Seraphia Derr

Coronavirus Research at FIU

Global forced migration rates are the highest since World War II. This article presents an overview of migration and presents an original argument as to the imperatives for social work. First, global trends are presented and forced migration is conceptualised as an international phenomenon. Second, global responses are explored with a focus on legal and protection frameworks. Finally, existing policy, practice and research gaps related to human mobility and forced displacement are examined, and recommendations for social work policy, research and practice are presented. The contextual influence of the Covid-19 pandemic is considered in this article.