Digital Commons Network^™

The Rider (2020-09-28), Jacqueline Peraza

The Rider Archives

Vol.6 No.6

Press Release - Researching The Language At The U.S. - Mexican Border, The University Of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Corpus Bilingüe Del Valle

Corpus Bilingüe del Valle (CoBiVa) - News Releases

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Intention To Use Telehealth Services In Underserved Hispanic Border Communities: Cross-Sectional Study, Suad Ghaddar, Kristina Vatcheva, Samantha G. Alvarado, Laryssa Mykyta

Health & Biomedical Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Despite the United States having one of the leading health care systems in the world, underserved minority communities face significant access challenges. These communities can benefit from telehealth innovations that promise to improve health care access and, consequently, health outcomes. However, little is known about the attitudes toward telehealth in these communities, an essential first step toward effective adoption and use.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to assess the factors that shape behavioral intention to use telehealth services in underserved Hispanic communities along the Texas-Mexico border and examine the role of electronic health (eHealth) literacy in telehealth …

Decolonial-Hispanophone Curriculum: A Preliminary Sketch And Invitation To A South-South Dialogue, James C. Jupp, Micaela González Delgado, Freyca Calderón Berumen, Caroline A. Hesse

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

In our essay, we advance a preliminary sketch of decolonial-Hispanophone curriculum and extend an invitation for a South-South dialogue between students, teachers, or activist educators from distinct intellectual traditions of the geo-regions called “the Americas.” After sharing provisional definitions, we plant the problem of doing curricular-pedagogical work within a historical trajectory emphasizing historical colonies and present-day coloniality. Planted in this way, we provide a preliminary sketch of decolonial-Hispanophone curriculum as one dimension of a transnational, contextual, and relational decolonial project. From this sketch, we theorize three historicized concepts: (a) the historicity of decolonial thought, (b) mestizx conceptualization, and (c) communality/pluriversality. …

A Comparative Study Of Principals' Perceptions Of Bilingual Education In School Districts In South Texas, Enrique H. De La Cruz

Theses and Dissertations

At a time when school leaders are held accountable for academic achievement and student growth, this study served to inform school leaders, who implement bilingual education programs, on the influence their perceptions have in their students’ academic success. This study examined and described elementary principals’ perceptions about bilingual education in a district implementing an early-exit bilingual program and in a district implementing a dual language bilingual program and its effectiveness to help ELLs achieve academic success. The study focused in determining if elementary principals’ perceptions were a function of their bilingual proficiency or language discourse, level of academic knowledge of …

Diffusion Of Falsehoods On Social Media, Kelvin Kizito King

Theses and Dissertations

Misinformation has captured the interest of academia in recent years with several studies looking at the topic broadly. However, these studies mostly focused on rumors which are social in nature and can be either classified as false or real. In this research, we attempt to bridge the gap in the literature by examining the impacts of user characteristics and feature contents on the diffusion of (mis)information using verified true and false information. We apply a topic allocation model augmented by both supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms to identify tweets on novel topics. We find that retweet count is higher …

The Wind Still Blows: Poems, Sarah Alicia Solis

Theses and Dissertations

The Wind Still Blows: Poems is a collection of autobiographical poems and lyric essays that explore my journey with faith. This collection reveals the life of a young woman learning to meld Chicana feminist ideas and Christian belief. With regards to this introduction, the first-person “I” will be used to denote specific craft choices and critical frameworks that I, the writer, used within the collection, and third-person references to “the speaker” refer to the constructed narrator described in the poems. In this collection, the speaker offers up a history with anxiety disorders, fraught relationships with male figures, developing into an …

Autoethnography: A Self Reflection Of The Benefits In Attending A T-Stem High School, Adriana Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this autoethnography is to analyze the benefits I obtained as a bilingual, first-generation, Hispanic student by attending a STEM high school. PSJA Thomas Jefferson T-STEM Early College High School provides an Early College experience as well as a Bilingual STEM environment in a district located at La Frontera. This autoethnography uses two techniques to collect data: artifacts and reflective journals. As the researcher, I self-reflected and analyzed my own success story which will be viewed through a Narrative Inquiry lens to answer two questions 1) to what extent has the STEM model/ curriculum influenced my academic …

Reflexiones Sobre Nuestra Lengua, Yanina Hernández, José Esteban Hernández

Open Educational Resources - Books

Reflexiones sobre nuestra lengua se compone de ocho unidades temáticas pertinentes a la realidad social de los hablantes de español como lengua de herencia en los Estados Unidos. Además de enfocarse en la escritura como un proceso, se enfatiza el desarrollo de una conciencia sociolingüística y crítica del lenguaje en esta población estudiantil.

Campbell’S Chicken Noodle Soup™ And Saltine Crackers: A Milpero’S Autoethnographic Study Of Struggle And Success In Life And In Education, Ernesto Cantu

Theses and Dissertations

The state of Texas has close to 3,000 colonias, with most of them found along the Texas/Mexico border (“Colonias in Texas,” n.d.) and the most citizens of any state living in colonias. I grew up in a colonia in South Texas called Las Milpas, located in Pharr, Texas. Colonia children are often stigmatized and marginalized. This autoethnographic study is a look into my life as an educator and the social and cultural factors that have contributed to my survival and success. As a child, I lost both my mother and father. I was fortunate that my oldest …

Addressing Barriers To Primary Care Access For Latinos In The U.S.: An Agent-Based Model, Hyunsung Oh, Mai P. Trinh, Cindy Vang, David Becerra

Management Faculty Publications

Objective: Disparities in access to primary health care have led to health disadvantages among Latinos and other non-White racial groups. To better identify and understand which policies are most likely to improve health care for Latinos, we examined differences in access to primary care between Latinos with proficient English language skills and Latinos with limited English proficiency (LEP) and estimated the extent of access to primary care providers (PCPs) among Latinos in the U.S. Method: We used agent-based modeling techniques to estimate the effects of English proficiency, insurance coverage, Latinos with LEP seeking care from English-speaking PCPs, distance to PCP, …

Flowing With The Translanguaging Corriente: Juntos Engaging With And Making Sense Of Mathematics, Luz A. Maldonado Rodríguez, Gladys Krause, Melissa Adams Corral

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

The translanguaging corriente, or current of language practices, as described by García et al. (2017), is always flowing through your mathematics classroom, whether you realize it or not. The corriente, how multilinguals use all their languages to learn and engage with content in school and make sense of a complex world, requires educators to reconsider what is understood about language and mathematics. By rethinking how we view language separation in the multilingual mathematics classroom, we propose that teachers teach with a translanguaging stance in order to access multilingual students’ full linguistic repertoires and to develop deep mathematical understanding.

Proximity And The Pox: Pathologizing Infidelity In Marston’S Dutch Courtesan, Andrew Fleck

Literatures and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications

Marston’s Dutch Courtesan links the dangers of sexually transmitted infection and false religious doctrine, both spread by the Family of Love. The play finds dark comedy in the syphilis epidemic that urban sexual promiscuity perpetuated and in ridiculous religious heterodoxy. Both seem to thrive on infidelity. By making the tavern-owning Mulligrubs, the sex worker Franceschina, and her bawd Mary Faugh members of the Family of Love, Marston makes the corporeal dangers of illicit sex during an epidemic even more dangerous when its companion is the contagion of Familism, threatening to spread as efficiently as the syphilis ravaging early modern London.

Alternatively Assessing Conceptual Learning In An Emergency Clinical Environment—A Mixed Methods Design, Zhidong Zhang, Alice Yang Zhang

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

Modeling cognitive processes in clinical learning environments is a necessary first step towards improving learning assessment and medical practice by using an alternative assessment model. Verbal protocol and cognitive content analyses are effective methods of exploring such cognitive processes. For the purpose of simplifying the discussion, we have labeled these processes as Identification of Information, Advanced Cognition, and Medical Cognitive Action. Exploring problem solving processes with Bayesian network techniques can characterize students' dynamic learning processes quantitatively, identify differences in cognitive components at different stages of learning and better represent clinical problem solving features.

We develop a hierarchical cognitive model as …

Press Release - Brownsville The Herald Code Switch, The University Of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Corpus Bilingüe Del Valle

Corpus Bilingüe del Valle (CoBiVa) - News Releases

No abstract provided.

Culturally Relevant Care Through The Lens Of Duoethnography, Jacqueline B. Koonce, Karin A. Lewis

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Our study endeavors to explore how culturally relevant care manifests in our teaching at a predominantly Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Through duoethnography and collaborative interpretation of narrative data from our former students, we seek to better understand our own and our students’ learning experiences. Collecting our own and our students’ perspectives and stories about lived experiences with us as professors in narrative form allows for us and our respondents to reflect and express freely--to share views, impressions, interpretations, and experiences in our/their own words. Analysis of narrative reflections provides an opportunity to craft a story, to give voice to those living …

Review Of Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies, Marlene Galván

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Press Release - Utrgv Linguists Awarded Federal Grant To Document The Language Of The Rgv, The University Of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Corpus Bilingüe Del Valle

Corpus Bilingüe del Valle (CoBiVa) - News Releases

No abstract provided.

Press Release - Bilingual Voices Provide Insight Into Community Languages, The University Of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Corpus Bilingüe Del Valle

Corpus Bilingüe del Valle (CoBiVa) - News Releases

No abstract provided.

A Longitudinal Investigation Of The Efficacy Of Online Expressive Writing Interventions For Hispanic Students Exposed To Traumatic Events: Competing Theories Of Action, Michiyo Hirai, Serkan Dolma, Laura L. Vernon, George A. Clum

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Objective: Although expressive writing (EW) appears efficacious for treating a range of posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms including diagnosed PTSD, little is known about its efficacy when offered online and for ethnic/cultural minority populations such as Hispanic individuals. The current study examined the longitudinal effects of two online EW tasks for treating PTS symptoms in a Hispanic student sample.

Design: Seventy-one participants who had experienced a traumatic event were randomly assigned to either an emotion-focused (EM) writing group or a fact-focused (FC) writing group and completed online writing sessions for three consecutive days. Participants completed online assessments at 1-week, 1-month, and …

Assessing English Learners For Special Education Eligibility: Evaluator’S Perspectives And Procedures, Brenda Iveth De La Garza

Theses and Dissertations

There is a disproportionate number of English Learners (ELs) in Special Education across the United States (Kligner, Artiles, & Barletta, 2006). When educators are concerned about EL’s lack of progress and their underachievement they turn towards Special Education as a way of finding resources and a solution to their concerns (Kligner, Boile, Linan-Thompson & Rodriguez, 2014). This poses a challenge for evaluators, especially for those who lack or have little knowledge about the differences that exist between typical language acquisition differences and a learning disability. Evaluators who lack this knowledge might be more likely to confuse a student’s second language …

The Impact Of A Multisensory Intervention On Literacy Attitudes Of Students With Dyslexia, Lorena De La Cruz

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the impact of a pull-out multisensory reading intervention on the attitudes towards reading and writing of fourth-grade students identified with dyslexia. Students identified with dyslexia must receive an evidence-based reading intervention as required by Texas educational state law. The multisensory reading intervention utilized in this study and known as Structured Literacy, included explicit instruction in phonological awareness, sound-symbol association, syllabication, orthography, morphology, and reading comprehension. The researcher focused on a variety of data sources including field notes, audio-recorded interviews, reading interest survey responses, and spelling assessments. The data collected …

Pebblechild, Brenda Ochoa

Theses and Dissertations

This collection of short stories depict life moments for people that are connected through the city of Peñitas, Texas. This manuscript begins as an origin story for the city of Peñitas. According to local historians both in the past and in present times, the city of Peñitas was founded by a priest and five other Spaniards. This idea is integrated into the storyline but with a focus on the impact of a young girl, Tala. She suffers immensely through the actions of a group she refers to as the Long Beards. She has to go through a series of discovery …

Resisting Whiteness & White Supremacy Through Mexican American Studies, Josue Puente

Theses and Dissertations

In 2018, the Texas Board of Education approved the creation of a Mexican American Studies High School elective course. However, before this course became a reality member on the board pushed to end the course all together. Board members opposed to the creation of a Mexican American Studies course argued that the class could represent a division between different groups under the banner of “we are all Americans”. This thesis centers on the implications are from the narrative created by the social studies standards and the role these standards play in supporting whiteness and supporting white supremacy that has been …

The Impact Of Social Constructivist Mathematics Learning Experiences On Latino, Middle School Students’ Proportional Reasoning, Victor M. Vizcaino

Theses and Dissertations

Due to its centrality in the curriculum, research on proportional reasoning (PR) has seen a resurgence of interest. Recent research examined students’ patterns, strategies, and achievement when solving PR problems. Other studies explored PR learning trajectories. Additional studies focused on instructional interventions such as the effect of number structure, continuous, discrete, and intensive quantities to promote the development of proportional reasoning skills (PRS). The subjects of these studies have been United States white middle school students, Icelandic grade 5 girls, Spanish secondary school students, Turkish middle school students, as well as Scottish and Korean upper primary grades’ students. Few studies …

Drama Del Dia, Eleazar Zuniga Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Drama del día is made up of short plays which will present themes and elements of life along the Rio Grande Valley border between Texas and Mexico. The plays in this work reflect the Chicano culture and attempt to touch on the various themes and conflicts people encounter on daily basis such as domestic, social, and drug cartel violence, corruption, immigration, colonialism and machismo.

A Study Of /Sk/-Metathesis In Old English, Catharina Clara Ybarra

Theses and Dissertations

Language change is the primary focus of historical linguistics. Some changes, phonological, morphological, or semantic, alter forms and lead to new regularities in a language’s lexicon. Linguistic analyses and terminology to describe them have been established to aid in linguistic investigations, though, there remain changes that defy typical explanations.

Metathesis is one change that still intrigues scholars intensely because, since the advent of modern linguistic study with Saussure, we have presumed that languages operate systematically; yet, metathetic change is often seemingly random. Even when it does operate over a period of a generation or two, it may do so erratically, …

Readers’ Perceptions Towards Two English Translations Of The Quran, Nour Alanbari

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to examine readers’ perceptions towards two notable English translations of the Quran, investigating if the readers’ language groups affected their perception of translation quality in terms of fluency, accuracy, clarity, formality, and likability. A total of 136 participants completed a survey where they rated the researched attributes of two different English translations of the Quran. Independent t-tests, paired t-tests, and ANOVA tests were conducted to compare the overall ratings of the two translations to each other, as well as between and within language groups. Ratings of the four attributes were also compared amongst themselves. Significant …

A Systematic Review Of Mood Disorders And The Working Alliance In Latino Populations, Ricardo Contreras

Theses and Dissertations

The working alliance and mood disorders in Latin populations has received scant attention. To remedy this deficit, this analysis completed a systematic review of this subject. This initial systematic review may aid to acquire a greater understanding of general and specific factors impacting this population. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT), Version 2018 will be utilized in study appraisal, as will PRISMA guidelines. Study inclusion consists of studies involving adult Latino subjects with working alliance results as related to symptomology or discussion of working alliance effects on the population. A total of 12 studies met criteria; limitations consisted of the …

Separate Is Never Equal: Utilizing Question-Answer Relationships To Foster Elementary Students’ Reading Comprehension, Elena M. Venegas

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter presents lessons for the English language arts and reading classroom using the Question-Answer Relationships (QAR) strategy with the book Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation. Both the book and the lessons presented center on historical and contemporary issues surrounding school segregation, desegregation, and resegregation. Thus, the lessons presented in this chapter are also appropriate for the social studies classroom and may be used to address curriculum standards set forth by the National Council for the Social Studies. Through its use of both explicit and implicit questioning, the Question­Answer Relationships strategy can be …