Education Commons^™

“I Want Them To See The Real Us Not Just What They What They Want Us To Be…”: Cultivating A ‘Literate Language Of The Soul’ For Radical Hope, Patriann Smith

Literacy Practice and Research

In this conceptual essay, I argue that radical hope can be fostered through literacies of timeless learning based on student-created literature in literacy and English language arts classrooms as an endeavor of soul education, allowing teachers and youth to cultivate a literate language of the soul. Drawing on tenets of soul education and its interconnections with affect theory and Ubuntu as an African spirituality, I describe how literacy and English language arts teachers working with predominantly Black middle-school youth connected their histories, backgrounds, stories, and understandings while engaging with literature created by their students. I argue that exploring literacies …

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 …

Ungifted: Teacher Candidates’ Understanding Of Giftedness Through Literature Circles, Sharryn Larsen Walker, Wendie Lappin Castillo

Literacy Practice and Research

The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze the reflective comments made by teacher candidates (TCs) after they participated in weekly discussions about the tween novel Ungifted by Korman (2012). The TCs attended at a regional Pacific Northwest university, majoring or minoring in various educational fields. After reading and discussing the topic of giftedness as it related to their engagement with the novel, the TCs wrote a reflective essay about their new understandings of teaching the gifted. Using the constant-comparative method, the essays from three sections of the course over a three-year period were read and reread for identifiable …

Arrows Of Resilience: Teaching The Artemis Archetype In Children’S Literature, Shannon Tovey

Literacy Practice and Research

Story is a powerful vehicle for teaching resilience skills. Strong female archetypes in stories demonstrate qualities of resilience that offer models of how to face adversity, survive it, and thrive. Drawing on psychoanalytic, resiliency, reader response, and Storyworld Possible Selves theories, this work explores the relationship between strong female characters in children’s literature and resilience skills, and explains ways in which analyzing, discussing, and writing about them can help to build emotional competencies that will last a lifetime.

What Are The Disciplinary Literacy Complex Texts And Comprehension Habits Of Mind In Elementary (K-6)?, Stephanie Buelow, Charlotte Frambaugh-Kritzer

Literacy Practice and Research

This article spotlights complex texts and the comprehension habits of mind that elementary students may encounter across the disciplines of visual arts, performing arts, science, social studies, and mathematics.

Linguistic Landscapes And The Navigation Of New Settings: A Phenomenological Self-Study Of Signage On My First Trip Abroad And Implications For Teaching Literacy, Lindsay Persohn

Literacy Practice and Research

Landry and Bourhis (1997) are credited with coining the term linguistic landscapes, a term which they defined as “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings [combined] to form the linguistic landscape [of a given region]” (p. 25). In this phenomenological (Patton, 1990) self-study, I explored the linguistic landscapes of three unfamiliar countries during a forty-five-day summer research and leisure trip. I analyzed the photographic data I collected to understand what information I gained from the signs, how I used the information in visual images to …

Critical Review Of Language At The Speed Of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’T, And What Can Be Done About It By Mark Seidenberg, Elizabeth Fincher

Literacy Practice and Research

This comprehensive book review on Mark Seidenberg’s Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It advances the conversation around the “reading wars” in scholar and educator stances on effective methods to teaching reading through explicit phonics-based instruction versus a whole-language approach that emphasizes the child’s discovery of meaning through experiences in a literacy-rich environment. Seidenberg’s support of science-based or “brain-based” teaching of reading is critically examined, as it relates to theoretical and practical knowledge in reading pedagogy. This review aims to provide scientific insight into reading development and …

A Phenomenographic Study Of K-8 Mathematics Teachers’ Conceptualizations And Their Accounts Of Enacting Integrated Stem Education, Elizabeth Forde

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Students’ mathematics performance in the United States and internationally continues to cause concern among educators, researchers, and policymakers. This concern coupled with a re-energized interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has resulted in calls to revisit the approaches used in teaching mathematics. A promising pathway for improving students’ problem-solving skills and mathematical understanding is through integrated approaches (Burghardt et al., 2010; Chiappetta, 2009) as is currently being practiced in STEM education. One of the major stakeholders and catalysts in implementing this transformative possibility is mathematics teachers. Teachers’ conceptualizations and approaches to instruction affect student learning outcomes (Srikoom et …

An Exploratory Examination Of The Financial Knowledge, Attitudes, Capabilities, And Socialization Of Black College Students And Their Lived Experience Of Personal Financial Management, Joycelyn C. Morris

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Financial literacy and education have become hot topics in the U.S. The research of the Black community within this field of study is limited and existing research findings are bleak. The purpose of this study was to understand the financial knowledge, behaviors, and socialization of Black college students. Many existing studies seek to understand financial literacy through quantitative inquiry solely, however this study used a concurrent mixed method research design to obtain a holistic understanding of the research questions while minimizing biases.

The quantitative portion of the study consisted of a survey administered online and grounded in the Family Financial …

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 …

"A Virtual Community Literacy Partnership: A Place-Based Reading And Writing Initiative Between College Of Education Students And Urban Middle School Students", Anne Katz Ph.D., Justin Hanson

Literacy Practice and Research

How can I reflect on my practice as a literacy teacher? “I want to be the type of teacher who inspires great writing from my students, and makes them yearn for more knowledge.”

As a reading professor, I am inspired by the words Justin wrote in the pre-project survey at the beginning of the semester. In the midst of a pandemic, how could I create a learning experience to facilitate a literacy collaboration with local middle school students? I planned the community literacy partnership in the context of a College of Education grant written the previous year. This format anticipated …

The Effects Of Remote Teaching Pedagogy On Online Writing Instruction, Natalie Henriquez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will investigate the development of online writing instruction and the new innovations or adaptations that were created to cope with the online learning environment during the pandemic. I conducted interviews with four Writing & Rhetoric professors from Florida International University. The interviews I conduct for this thesis focused on the experience that these professors had and how they faced certain challenges along the way such as building an online community and promoting communication and collaboration in the online classroom. I argue that the themes of mindfulness, flexibility, balance, community, and empathy that were found in the interviews are …

Something American, Carolina S. Souto

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

SOMETHING AMERICAN is a poetry collection written from the perspective of a first-generation American navigating a growing family, a political crisis, and a global pandemic. Influences on this collection include Robert Hass’s THE ESSENTIAL HAIKU and FIELD GUIDE, which attend to nature and the poet-speaker’s immediate surroundings with diligence and precision. Ariel Francisco’s place poems and creative titles in ALL MY HEROES ARE BROKE provide important touchstones for Souto’s commitment to here-and-now writing. And Sylvia Plath’s frank and complex writing about motherhood in ARIEL grants the poet permission to probe these subjects as well.

In SOMETHING AMERICAN, experimental poems sprawl …

Critical Awareness For Literacy Teachers And Educators In Troubling Times, Patriann Smith, S. Joel Warrican

Literacy Practice and Research

The field of literacy remains assailed by a persisting discrepancy between an increasing body of literacy research that honors the diversity in students’ practices juxtaposed against a persistent system of schooling and high-stakes assessment that has not been designed to draw from underrepresented students’ literate assets. This discrepancy has created a situation where teachers often receive well-intentioned instruction from literacy educators about how to address diverse literacy needs, but then, struggle to enact this instruction in the high-stakes testing environment of classrooms and schools where they have little autonomy. We argue in this essay that critical multilingual, critical multicultural and …

Is Price Why Students Don't Get Their Books? Undergraduate Acquisition Of Class Materials, Joseph Todd Patton

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A study of the acquisition of assigned textbooks and materials was conducted among 1,333 active undergraduates, exploring the widely reported phenomenon of two-thirds of students not getting all the books and materials assigned to them in their college classes. Current research focuses on high textbook & materials prices as the reason why students do not get assigned materials, and government policies are focused on bringing down these prices. This study’s major focus was investigating whether it is true that high prices explain why undergraduates do not get their assigned class materials. The findings suggest that price is not the reason …

Student Reflections On Study Abroad: A Collective Case Study Exploring The Experiences Of Pre-Service Teachers During An International Student Teaching Program, Holly D. Hutton

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As classrooms in the United States grow more culturally and linguistically diverse, schools of education are challenged to prepare more culturally responsive, globally minded educators. International student teaching (IST) programs provide a unique opportunity for pre-service teachers to develop cultural competencies in a global context. However, in order for these programs to effectively meet ambitious global and intercultural learning objectives, multiple curricular and programmatic components must be considered, and on-going research exploring individual student experiences must be conducted.

The present collective case study explored the experiences of five, pre-service teachers during a semester-long, IST program at Florida International University. A …

The Pedagogy Of The Youth Teachers Of The Cuban Literacy Campaign, Yuleisy Mena

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 turned teenagers into teachers. This study interviewed three former youth teachers and recorded their experiences through the oral history lens and method. The study focused on the pedagogical components of their lived experience, often overlooked by scholars who have mainly focused on the campaign’s political and economic history from the top down. In turn, issues of identity surfaced that helped explain the personal motivations for participating in the campaign and produced counter-narratives in the process. The interviews compiled allowed a bottom-up history to be archived, highlighting the stories of people omitted from the …

Representations Of A Good Citizen: A Genealogy Of Power And Critical Investigation Of Pictographs, 1937-1942, Joselyn Naranjo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study traced selected knowledge that influenced pictographs in social studies textbooks in the United States from 1937 through 1942. The qualitative study analyzed the messages in pictographs produced by Rudolf Modley’s business - Pictorial Statistics, Incorporated. The study interpreted the underlying ideological management within pictographs to present a method of analysis for future research on other visual educational material. Foucault’s (1980; 2003; Shiner, 1982) genealogy of power method addressed the different shifts in power and meaning making involved in communicating sociopolitical messages to the reader through pictographs while ideological management and governmentality informed Hsieh & Shannon’s (2005) directed content …

Teachers’ Use Of Standardized Assessments To Monitor Learning And Its Impact On Student Reading Achievement, Eilyn Sanabria

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reading instruction must be “intentional, systematic, and explicit” and “implemented by a knowledgeable teacher” (Ruetzel & Cooter, 2019, p. 87). The era of accountability has brought standardized assessments to the forefront of reading instruction. However, gaps about assessment-related and instructional practices and their impact on student achievement exist in the literature. The present study aims to provide needed insights on how these practices help or hinder, specifically, historically low-performing students.

Using student achievement and teacher survey data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten 2011 (ECLS-K), and through the lens of data use theory (Hutchins, 1995; Spillane, 2012), hierarchical multiple …

Investigating Educational Disparities In Belize: A Quantitative Study On The Impact Of Student-Level Sociocultural Factors On Academic Achievement Among High School Seniors Across Belize, Aisha Usher

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The idea that education is a fundamental human right is garnering increased support from the international community. Yet, there are children throughout the world who face impediments to access quality education, while others face no such hardships; this concept is described as “educational inequality” or “educational disparity.”

In Belize – a sparsely populated, English-speaking Caribbean country located in Central America – there have been reports of disparities in educational attainment along gender and ethnic lines; however, there has been little research focused on potential gaps in academic achievement, especially at the secondary level. The purpose of the present study was …

The Initial Development And Validation Of The Youth Gun Violence And Voice Survey: The Classroom Experience, Diana E. Santangelo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Community violence surrounding children and youth affects a variety of developmental outcomes, including social-emotional, behavioral, physical, and cognitive domains. Adolescents who are exposed to continual community violence can respond with aggression, anxiety, behavioral issues, academic problems, and truancy. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a survey instrument that measures the youth perspective of the classroom experience following the loss of a schoolmate due to homicide by firearm. Youth perspectives challenge normative perspectives and can critique common policies and practices, and such findings can inform instruction and policy.

An exploratory sequential mixed methods research design was used …

Examining The Effects Of Familial Occupations And Early Stem Experiences On Female Students' Stem Identity And Career Intentions, Susie M. Cohen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The studies within this collected papers dissertation investigate the effects of familial occupations and early experiences in STEM on female students’ STEM identity and career intentions. The salience of this topic originates from the underrepresentation of women in STEM related occupations within the United States, and the urgent need to develop a diverse STEM workforce that can excel in a global environment.

The studies are guided by a variety of theoretical frameworks including STEM capital, STEM identity, and STEM identity capital. These frameworks provide lenses to examine familial occupations and early STEM experiences as contributors of STEM capital which serve …

Understanding L2 Learners' Writing Needs And Attitudes In Eap Writing Contexts, Renata Pavanelli Pereira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to conduct a needs analysis in order to identify the real-world writing tasks that diverse English for Academic Purposes (EAP) learners are required to perform in academic contexts. The study initially uncovered the culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds of EAP learners across three Southeastern state colleges. The study then identified the writing tasks that were being completed in an advanced EAP composition course. Furthermore, the study explored the writing needs of EAP learners with a focus on the participants’ experiences and attitudes about the writing tasks they performed in the composition course. Finally, an …

Teachers In Action: A Phenomenographical Study On Mathematics Teacher Agency, Indira Gil

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teacher agency plays a critical role in determining teachers’ identities and decision-making abilities. It is also key in developing teachers’ sense of purpose, which leads to forming school environments where teachers are happy and thriving. However, teacher agency has not been researched in depth. Exploring teacher agency is essential in understanding how to create spaces where teachers feel comfortable and eager to share their personal skill sets. In this qualitative study, phenomenography was employed to detect and describe variations in mathematics teachers’ experiences of agency. This study investigates teacher agency by analyzing the experiences of 14 mathematics teachers teaching in …

The Role Of Number Writing In Early Math Readiness, Giselle Hernandez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how number writing in a class of low-income, pre-kindergarten children (N = 15) developed over the course of a school year, and to see what role that development played in their overall math readiness. This study used a mixed-methods approach. The target class was explicitly taught number writing as part of an early math intervention. Scores on a number writing inventory, and two math readiness assessments (Number Knowledge assessment, State of Florida VPK Assessment) were compared at the end of the year, both within the intervention group, and with a matched …

Music Literacy: A Multicase Study Of Five Choral Directors' Use And Understanding Of Choral Music Literacy In The Choral Classroom, Alicia M. Romero Sardiñas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this multi-case study was to give experienced choral music educators a voice. It sought to describe, examine, and understand five choral music educators’ perceptions and use of elements within choral music literacy. These elements were specifically sight-reading, text analysis, and composition. Research questions included 1) What are the choral music educators’ perceptions and understandings of choral music literacy? 2) How do these choral music educators design and implement their curriculum? and 3) How can choral music educators balance performance requirements and the elements of choral music literacy, which are invaluable in the creation of independent music making? …

An Examination Of Cuban-American Social Studies Teachers' Cultural Consciousness Relative To Their Identity, Educational Beliefs, And Curricular Decisions: A Critical Latino Theoretical Perspective, Victor Barrios

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to examine how five self-identified Cuban-American social studies teachers, in a city where they are viewed as the dominant culture, demonstrated ethnic and cultural identity, expressed educational beliefs on teaching and learning, promoted culturally diverse pedagogy, and approached the official curriculum relative to their cultural consciousness. This study used a qualitative research design with multiple case and cross-case analysis. Critical Latino theory was the theoretical framework employed for social and cultural categories pertinent to Latinx groups. The study found that the teacher-participants in this study reflected a dominant cultural ideology in Miami which influenced …

A Visually-Enhanced Approach To Multivariate Calculus Facilitated By A Computer Algebra System, Belarmino Gonzalez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of a visually-enhanced approached to the teaching of selected multivariate calculus concepts on students’ mathematical understanding and visualization. The sample size consisted of 65 undergraduate students from Miami Dade College, a large Hispanic Serving Institution in the Southeast. A pretest – posttest, nonequivalent group design was used. CAS dynamic worksheets containing visualizations and geometric representations were created using a computer algebra system and embedded as part of the lecture in the experimental group. Instructor-developed instruments were used to measure students’ prerequisite knowledge for multivariate calculus, and students’ mathematical understanding of selected concepts. Furthermore, Yoon (2011)’s …

How Are Social Studies Teachers Using Technology In The Classroom?, Stephanie Delgado

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

So that students are equipped with the skills needed to compete a in a global economy, schools are being given resources intended to increase equity, opportunity, and to close the digital divide. Digital equitability exists when all students have access to both advanced technologies and the learning opportunities the technologies provide (Solomon, Allen, & Resta, 2003). The U.S. Department of Education notes that although students are graduating high school at high rates, performance gaps among students from low socioeconomic and various cultural backgrounds still exist. My study followed a constructivist grounded theory approach to examine how seven teachers in Miami-Dade …

The Hpst Framework: A Case Study On An Organizational Tool Used To Understand Historical Narrative In A Social Studies Classroom, Jose M. Pombo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation chronicled a multifaceted study utilizing the Historical, Philosophical, Societal and a Takeaway (HPST) Framework; an organizational tool used for document analysis. Utilizing a case study format, this research unpacked how a charter school teacher used HPST within her own ninth grade Advanced Placement World History class. As a starting point, I offered an account of my own autobiographical narrative, chronicling through my attempt at ethnographic writing and infused with scholarly literature as needed. Consequently, this personal narrative was coupled with my professional experiences within the Social Studies field. Upon this foundation, this study explored the use of the …