Education Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

Zine-Making As A Pedagogical Practice: A Phenomenographic Study Of Teachers’ Experiences, Diana Levy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A zine (pronounced zeen) is a short, self-created and self-published booklet filled with a combination of writing, drawing, poetry, collage, and other text and images that create a message. Historically, zines have been associated with an underground, activist or radical literary subculture. Zines embody a breadth of literacies and have the potential to create critical readers, writers, and thinkers; however, minimal scholarly research exists on school zines. The purpose of the current study was to explore the experiences of educators using zine-making in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. Phenomenographical analysis of nine, in-depth, semi-structured interviews revealed that participants described …

A Comparison Study Of The Executive Functioning Abilities And Reading Comprehension Skills Of Students In Response To Intervention, Catherine Schultheis Salum

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Response to intervention (RTI) is a data driven framework that classifies students into three tiers and provides interventions at different levels of intensity (Flanagan, Ortiz, Alfonso, & Dynada, 2006; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Stecker, 2010, Gilbert et al., 2012). The screening assessments and interventions used for RTI have become generalized (Garcia, Gonzalez-Castro, Fernandez, & Rodriguez-Perez, 2012). Many schools implementing RTI use one screening instrument and one intervention for all struggling readers (Ezpeleta, Granero, Penelo, de la Osa, & Domenech, 2015; Flanagan et al., 2006; Garcia et al., 2012; Gilbert et al., 2012).

Executive functioning (EF) is a neuropsychological ability that regulates …

A Corpus-Driven Approach Toward Teaching Vocabulary And Reading To English Language Learners In U.S.-Based K-12 Context Through A Mobile App, Seyedjafar Ehsanzadehsorati

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to decrease teachers’ decisions of which vocabulary the focus of the instruction should be upon, a recent line of research argues that pedagogically-prepared word lists may offer the most efficient order of learning vocabulary with an optimized context for instruction in each of four K-12 content areas (math, science, social studies, and language arts) through providing English Language Learners (ELLs) with the most frequent words in each area. Educators and school experts have acknowledged the need for developing new materials, including computerized enhanced texts and effective strategies aimed at improving ELLs’ mastery of academic and STEM-related lexicon. Not …

The Effect Of Reciprocal Mapping On Third-Grade Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement And Reading Attitude, Olga Elena Flamion

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language (Snow, Science and Technology, and States, 2002). For many students, there is a decrease in reading achievement as early as fourth grade as a result of increased demands in complexity of intermediate text (Williams et al., 2005). Reading attitude is “a system of feelings related to reading which causes the learner to approach or avoid a reading situation” (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, p. 1). McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth (1995) found that attitude towards reading grew increasingly negative as students moved from first …

A Mixed Method Study Of Prospective Teachers' Epistemic Beliefs And Web Evaluation Strategies Concerning Hoax Websites, Jennifer Coccaro-Pons

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teachers need to be equipped with the tools necessary to evaluate content on the Internet and determine if it is a credible source, or a hoax website since they are expected to instruct and prepare students on how to evaluate the sites which is now a relevant phenomenon. The purpose of the mixed‑method study was to obtain an understanding of the web evaluation strategies of prospective teachers regarding the evaluation of hoax websites and how their epistemic beliefs may influence their evaluation. Another aspect of this study was to find out what outcomes resulted from providing guidance, or not to …

The Effect Of Employing Cultural Criticism In The Teaching Of British Literature For Chinese Undergraduate English Majors, Yu Zhang

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The traditional literature teaching methods for Chinese English majors are formalism and biographical criticism. These criticisms use an objective approach focused on details about the author, historical context and literary mechanics to analyze literature. These methods neglect the fact that literature comprehension involves readers’ active participation. Cultural criticism, as a critical approach, considers influences that readers bring to their engagement with a given literary text. This approach is supposed to fit the classroom settings for cross-cultural literature teaching and learning.

This study was conducted to examine the effect of utilizing cultural criticism to teach British literature among Chinese undergraduate English …

Becoming Bilingual: Examining Teachers' Perceptions And Practices For Achieving Bilingualism And Biliteracy In English And Spanish In A Two-Way Dual Language Bilingual Education Program, Carolyn O'Gorman-Fazzolari

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bilingualism characterizes not only people, but homes, schools, and communities across the United States. While some bilingual people are forced to suppress their bilingualism, others are encouraged to develop their skill set to a level of becoming biliterate. Bilingualism and biliteracy are key features in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs where students are provided daily opportunities to develop two languages simultaneously, along with grade-level academic content. Research in DLBE suggest closure of the achievement gap (Valentino & Reardon, 2015). Traditionally, DLBE programs were designed to keep the two target languages (for example, Spanish and English) separate as designated by …

Factors Affecting The Alignment Of Grades And Reading Scores For Third Grade Students On The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, Kristine L. Dittmar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to aid in understanding the relationship between current Reading report card grading practices and standards-based state standardized testing results in Reading and factors associated with the alignment of this relationship. Report card and Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) data for 2004 were collected for 1064 third grade students in nine schools of one feeder pattern in Florida's Miami-Dade County Public Schools. A Third Grade Teacher Questionnaire was administered to 48 Reading teachers. The questionnaire contained items relating to teachers' education, teaching experience, grading practices, and beliefs about the FCAT, instructional Reading activities, methods, and …