The effects of writing process instruction on the writing and reading performance of students with learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of a writing process approach for the instruction of language arts with learning disabled elementary students. A nonequivalent control group design was used. The sample included 24 students with learning disabilities who were in second and third grade. All students were instructed in resource room settings for ninety minutes per day in language arts. The students in the treatment group received instruction using the writing process steps to create complete meaningful compositions on self-chosen topics. A literature-based reading program accompanied instruction in writing to provide examples of good writing and to provide a basis for topic selection. The students in the control group received instruction through the use of the county-adopted textbooks and accompanying worksheets. The teacher followed basic textbook and curriculum guide suggestions which consisted mainly of fill in the blank and matching type exercises. The treatment group consisted of 12 students: five second-graders and seven third-graders. The control group consisted of 12 students: four second-graders and eight third-graders. All students were pretested and posttested using the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement-Revised (WJ-R ACH) for writing samples and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (WRMT) for reading achievement. T-tests were also done to investigate the gain from pre to post for each reading or writing variable for each group separately. The results showed a highly significant difference from pretest to posttest for all writing and reading variables for both groups. Analysis of Covariance showed that the population mean posttest achievement scores for all variables adjusted for the pretest were higher for the treatment group than those for the control group.

History education and the construction of national identity in Iran

This study examined the representation of national and religious dimensions of Iranian history and identity in Iranian middle school history textbooks. Furthermore, through a qualitative case study in a school in the capital city of Tehran, teachers' use of textbooks in classrooms, students' response, their perceptions of the country's past, and their definitions of national identity is studied. The study follows a critical discourse analysis framework by focusing on the subjectivity of the text and examining how specific concepts, in this case collective identities, are constructed through historical narratives and how social actors, in this case students, interact with , and make sense of, the process. My definition of national identity is based on the ethnosymbolism paradigm (Smith, 2003) that accommodates both pre-modern cultural roots of a nation and the development and trajectory of modern political institutions. Two qualitative approaches of discourse analysis and case study were employed. The textbooks selected were those published by the Ministry of Education; universally used in all middle schools across the country in 2009. The case study was conducted in a girls' school in Tehran. The students who participated in the study were ninth grade students who were in their first year of high school and had just finished a complete course of Iranian history in middle school. Observations were done in history classes in all three grades of the middle school. The study findings show that textbooks present a generally negative discourse of Iran's long history as being dominated by foreign invasions and incompetent kings. At the same time, the role of Islam and Muslim clergy gradually elevates in salvaging the country from its despair throughout history, becomes prominent in modern times, and finally culminates in the Islamic Revolution as the ultimate point of victory for the Iranian people. Throughout this representation, Islam becomes increasingly dominant in the textbooks' narrative of Iranian identity and by the time of the Islamic Revolution morphs into its single most prominent element. On the other hand, the students have created their own image of Iran's history and Iranian identity that diverges from that of the textbooks especially in their recollection of modern times. They have internalized the generally negative narrative of textbooks, but have not accepted the positive role of Islam and Muslim clergy. Their notion of Iranian identity is dominated by feelings of defeat and failure, anecdotal elements of pride in the very ancient history, and a sense of passivity and helplessness.

The effects of goal setting and attributional feedback on self -efficacy for writing and writing achievement

This study investigated the effectiveness of goal setting and attributional feedback on self-efficacy for writing and writing achievement of students who are gifted underachievers. Students in grades 3, 4 and 5 participated. Five dependent measures were investigated: fluency, syntax, range, diversity and organization. The results indicated that a systematic writing instruction program increased self-efficacy for writing. In addition the self-efficacy strategies of goal setting and attributional feedback improve self-efficacy and increased some areas of writing achievement. The dependent measures most affected were fluency, syntax and organization. The students in this study did not improve their levels of vocabulary. This study included many practical applications for teachers to use in a classroom setting. ^

The effects of cross -age peer tutoring on writing and reading comprehension skills and attitudes and self -perceptions as writers of third and fourth grade students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cross-age peer writing response groups on the writing and reading achievement of third and fourth grade students. Students' attitudes about writing and their perceptions of themselves as writers were also measured at the end of the study. ^ One hundred and twenty-two third and fourth grade students enrolled in a public school in a middle-class, multi-cultural neighborhood participated in the study. Four existing classes of students were randomly assigned to either the experimental condition (EC) or the control condition (CC). Both groups were pretested and posttested for writing and reading achievement. The intervention, cross-age peer writing groups, met for eleven weeks. ^ Three hypotheses were examined in this study: (a) writing improvement score, (b) reading comprehension improvement score, and (c) students' attitudes toward writing and their perception of themselves as writers based on the five scales measured on the Writer Self-Perception Scale. ^ ANOVAs were done on the pretests and posttests for writing and the Stanford Achievement Test reading comprehension subtest scores for the year of the study and the previous year. ANOVAs were also done for the five areas of the Writer Self-Perception Scale. Cross-tabulations were also used to compare improvement level verses treatment group, and grade level. ^ Analysis of the data revealed that there was no evidence that the tutoring (EC) groups made more progress than the non-tutoring (CC) groups in writing and reading. There was evidence of growth in writing, especially by the fourth graders. Most importantly, the fourth grade tutors, the experimental group, had the most positive feelings about writing and themselves as writers. ^

Tracing Antilles: History, Culture, and Art in the Work of Humberto Castro

This flyer promotes the event "Tracing Antilles: History, Culture, and Art in the Work of Humberto Castro" cosponsored by the Cuban Research Institute and the Frost Art Museum.

Taking Issue with History: Empathy and the Ethical Imperatives of Creative Interventions

The purpose of this thesis was to contribute to a dialogue that considers the relationship between history, literature, and empathy as a literary affect. Specifically, I explored sites of literature’s transformative potential as it relates to cultural studies and the ethics of deconstruction. Via a deconstructive, post-colonial reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I considered how subjects in our current socio-political moment can feel history. Emerging from a post-structurally mediated engagement with history, signification, and feeling, I argued that empathy, as it is contentiously presented in the context of deconstruction, is not necessarily a reductive or essentialist approach towards relating or “being-with” an-other. Instead, I proposed that the act of reading historiographical novels that take constructions of the Atlantic Slave Trade to task might generate an affective empathy, which could in turn engender a more empathetic relationality and way of being-in-the-world.

Colors of the World Medieval Paints and their Origins

Educator Janie McCoy will be giving a lecture on medieval manuscripts on March 27, 2014 at the Green Library, Modesto Maidique Campus, Florida International University.

A comparative study of life history and gene flow in darters (Pisces: Percidae)

Gene flow, or the exchange of genes between populations, is important because it determines the evolutionary trajectory of a species, including the relative influences of genetic drift and natural selection in the process of population differentiation. Gene flow differs among species because of variation in dispersal capability and abundances across taxa, and historical forces related to geological or lineage history. Both history and ecology influence gene flow in potentially complicated ways, and accounting for their effects remains an important problem in evolutionary biology. This research is a comparative study of gene flow and life-history in a monophyletic group of stream fishes, the darters. As a first step in disentangling historical and ecological effects, I reconstructed the phylogenetic relationships of the study species from nucleotide sequences in the mtDNA control region. I then used this phylogeny and regional glaciation history to infer historical effects on life-history evolution and gene flow in 15 species of darters. Gene flow was estimated indirectly, using information from 20 resolvable and polymorphic allozyme loci. When I accounted for historical effects, comparisons across taxa revealed that gene flow rates were closely associated with differences in clutch sizes and reproductive investment patterns. I hypothesized that differences in larval dispersal among taxa explained this relationship. Results from a field study of larval drift were consistent with this hypothesis. Finally, I asked whether there was an interaction between species' ecology and genetic differentiation across biogeographically distinct regions. Information from allozymes and mtDNA sequences revealed that life history plays an important role in the magnitude of species divergence across biogeographic boundaries. These results suggested an important association between life histories and rates of speciation following an allopatric isolation event. This research, along with other studies from the literature, further illustrates the enormous potential of North American freshwater fishes as a system for studying speciation processes. ^

Sugar and coffee: A history of settler agriculture in nineteenth-century Liberia

This dissertation is about commercial agriculture in nineteenth-century Liberia. Based primarily on the archives of the American Colonization Society (founder of Liberia), it examines the impact of environmental and demographic constraints on an agrarian settler society from 1822 to the 1890s. Contrary to the standard interpretation, which linked the poor state of commercial agriculture to the settlers' disdain for cultivation, this dissertation argues that the scarcity of labor and capital impeded the growth of commercial agriculture. The causes of the scarcity were high mortality, low immigration and the poverty of the American “Negroes” who began to settle Liberia in 1822. ^ Emigration to Liberia meant almost certain death and affliction for many immigrants because they encountered a new set of diseases. Mortality was particularly high during the early decades of colonization. From 1822 to 1843, about 48 percent of all immigrants died of various causes, usually within their first year. The bulk of the deaths is attributed to malaria. There was no natural increase in the population for this early period and because American “Negroes” were unenthusiastic about relocation to Liberia, immigration remained sparse throughout the century. Low immigration, combined with the high death rate, deprived the fledgling colony of its potential human resource, especially for the cultivation of labor-intensive crops, like sugar cane and coffee. Moreover, even though females constituted approximately half of the settlers, they seldom performed agricultural labor. ^ The problem of labor was compounded by the scarcity of draft animals. Liberia is in the region where trypanosomiasis occurs. The disease is fatal to large livestock. Therefore, animal-drawn plows, common in the United States, were never successfully transplanted in Liberia. Besides, the dearth of livestock obstructed the development of the sugar industry since many planters depended on oxen-powered mills because they could not afford to buy the more expensive steam engine mills. ^ Finally, nearly half of the immigrants were newly emancipated slaves. Usually these former bondsmen arrived in Liberia penniless. Consequently, they lacked the capital to invest in large-scale plantations. The other categories of immigrants (e.g., those who purchased their freedom), were hardly better off than the emancipated slaves. ^

An analysis of student and instructor perceptions of students' writing skills at the university level

This study examined university students' writing skills as perceived by university students and their English instructors. The goal of the study was to provide English instructors with objective, quantified information about writing perceptions from both the students' and instructors' viewpoints. ^ A survey instrument was developed based on a survey instrument created by Newkirk, Cameron, and Selfe (1977) to identify instructors' perceived knowledge of student writing skills. The present study used a descriptive statistical design. It examined five writing skill areas: attitude, content, grammar and mechanics, literary considerations, and the writing process through a questionnaire completed by a convenience sample of summer and fall admitted freshmen who were enrolled in Essay Writing and Freshman Composition courses and English Department instructors at a large South Florida public university. ^ The study consisted of five phases. The first phase was modifying of the Newkirk, Cameron, and Selfe (1977) questionnaire. Two versions of the revised survey were developed - one for instructors and one for students. The second phase was pilot testing the questionnaire for evaluation of administration and scoring. The third phase was administering the questionnaire to 1,280 students and 48 instructors. The fourth phase was analyzing the data. The study found a significant difference in the perceptions of students and instructors in all areas of writing skills examined by the survey. Responses to 29 of 30 questions showed that students felt they had better attitudes toward writing and better writing skills than instructors thought. ^ The final phase was developing recommendations for practice. Based on findings and theory and empirical evidence drawn from the fields of adult education and composition research, learner-centered, self-directed curriculum guidelines are offered. ^ By objectively quantifying student and instructor perceptions of students' writing skills, this study contributes to a growing body of literature that: (a) encourages instructors to acknowledge the perception disparities between instructors and students; (b) gives instructors a better understanding of how to communicate with students; and (c) recommends the development of new curriculum, placement tests, and courses that meet the needs of students and enables English instructors to provide meaningful instruction. ^

Lions and roses: An interpretive history of Israeli-Iranian relations

This multi-disciplinary research project explores the religious and cultural foundations within the "master commemorative narratives" that frame Israeli and Iranian political discourse. In articulating their grievances against one another, Israeli and Iranian leaders express the tensions between religion, nationalism, and modernity in their own societies. The theoretical and methodological approach of this dissertation is constructivist-interpretivist. The concept of "master commemorative narratives" is adapted from Yael Zerubavel's study of ritualized remembrance in Israeli political culture, and applied to both Israeli and Iranian foreign policy. Israel’s master commemorative narrative draws heavily upon the language of the Hebrew Bible, situating foreign policy discourse within a paradigm of covenantal patrimony, exile, and return, despite the unrelenting hostility of eternal enemies and "the nations." Iran’s master commemorative narrative expresses Iranian suspicion of foreign encroachment and interference, and of the internal corruption that they engender, sacralizing resistance to the forces of evil in the figurative language and myths of pre-Islamic tradition and of Shi'a Islam. Using a constructivist-interpretive methodological approach, this research offers a unique interpretive analysis of the parallels between these narratives, where they intersect, and where they come into conflict. It highlights both the broad appeal and the diverse challenges to the components of these "master" narratives within Israeli and Iranian politics and society. The conclusion of this study explains the ways in which the recognition of religious and cultural conflicts through the optic of master commemorative narratives can complement the perspectives of other theoretical approaches and challenge the conventions of Security Studies. It also suggests some of the potential practical applications of this research in devising more effective international diplomacy.

Identity, Ideology, and Cinema: Making Sense of Japan's Foreign and Security Policies in the 1950s and 2000s

Japan is an important ally of the United States–the world’s third biggest economy, and one of the regional great powers in Asia. Making sense of Japan’s foreign and security policies is crucial for the future of peace and stability in Northeast Asia, where the possible sources of conflict such as territorial disputes or the disputes over Japan’s war legacy issues are observed. This dissertation explored Japan’s foreign and security policies based on Japan’s identities and unconscious ideologies. It employed an analysis of selected Japanese films from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, as well as from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. The analysis demonstrated that Japan’s foreign and security policies could be understood in terms of a broader social narrative that was visible in Japanese popular cultural products, including films and literatures. Narratives of Japanese families from the patriarch’s point of view, for example, had constantly shaped Japan’s foreign and security policies. As a result, the world was ordered hierarchically in the eyes of the Japan Self. In the 1950s, Japan tenaciously constructed close but asymmetrical security relations with the U.S. in which Japan willingly subjugated itself to the U.S. In the 2000s, Japan again constructed close relations with the U.S. by doing its best to support American responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by mobilizing Japan’s SDFs in the way Japan had never done in the past. The concepts of identity and unconscious ideology are helpful in understanding how Japan’s own understanding of self, of others, and of the world have shaped its own behaviors. These concepts also enable Japan to reevaluate its own behaviors reflexively, which departs from existing alternative approaches. This study provided a critical analytical explanation of the dynamics at work in Japan’s sense of identity, particularly with regard to its foreign and security policies.

Tittmann and the 'Tiger Car' : competing conceptions of modernity in Haiti, 1946-50

The purpose of this project was to address the lack of scholarship on mid-twentieth century Haitian history and illustrate its significance. It employs primary and secondary sources in shaping a Gramscian historical narrative. Ideas of "everyday resistance" and internal and external politics are also be of significance to this work. In mid-twentieth century Haiti, the black-nationalist rhetoric of noirisme became the dominant political ideology. Blackness was amorphous and its application to politics was dependent upon class. In proclaiming blackness the average Haitian was attacking the class schism that beleaguered the island. Yet for the elite noirismewas a conduit to modernity and a useful tool for muting the division between rich and poor. With the election of Dumarsais Estimé in 1946, dialogue between the U.S. government, the Haitian elite, and the masses, relative to definitions of modernity played out within the new political reality of noirisme.

Identity, ideology, and cinema: Making sense of Japan's foreign and security policies in the 1950s and 2000s

Japan is an important ally of the United States–the world’s third biggest economy, and one of the regional great powers in Asia. Making sense of Japan’s foreign and security policies is crucial for the future of peace and stability in Northeast Asia, where the possible sources of conflict such as territorial disputes or the disputes over Japan’s war legacy issues are observed.^ This dissertation explored Japan’s foreign and security policies based on Japan’s identities and unconscious ideologies. It employed an analysis of selected Japanese films from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, as well as from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. The analysis demonstrated that Japan’s foreign and security policies could be understood in terms of a broader social narrative that was visible in Japanese popular cultural products, including films and literatures. Narratives of Japanese families from the patriarch’s point of view, for example, had constantly shaped Japan’s foreign and security policies. As a result, the world was ordered hierarchically in the eyes of the Japan Self. In the 1950s, Japan tenaciously constructed close but asymmetrical security relations with the U.S. in which Japan willingly subjugated itself to the U.S. In the 2000s, Japan again constructed close relations with the U.S. by doing its best to support American responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by mobilizing Japan’s SDFs in the way Japan had never done in the past.^ The concepts of identity and unconscious ideology are helpful in understanding how Japan’s own understanding of self, of others, and of the world have shaped its own behaviors. These concepts also enable Japan to reevaluate its own behaviors reflexively, which departs from existing alternative approaches. This study provided a critical analytical explanation of the dynamics at work in Japan’s sense of identity, particularly with regard to its foreign and security policies.^

"To Hold the World in Contempt": The British Empire, War, and the Irish and Indian Nationalist Press, 1899-1914

The era between the close of the nineteenth century and the onset of the First World War witnessed a marked increase in radical agitation among Indian and Irish nationalists. The most outspoken political leaders of the day founded a series of widely circulated newspapers in India and Ireland, placing these editors in the enviable position of both reporting and creating the news. Nationalist journalists were in the vanguard of those pressing vocally for an independent India and Ireland, and together constituted an increasingly problematic contingent for the British Empire. The advanced-nationalist press in Ireland and the nationalist press in India took the lead in facilitating the exchange of provocative ideas—raising awareness of perceived imperial injustices, offering strategic advice, and cementing international solidarity. Irish and Indian press coverage of Britain’s imperial wars constituted one of the premier weapons in the nationalists’ arsenal, permitting them to build support for their ideology and forward their agenda in a manner both rapid and definitive. Directing their readers’ attention to conflicts overseas proved instructive in how the Empire dealt with those who resisted its policies, and also showcased how it conducted its affairs with its allies. As such, critical press coverage of the Boxer Rebellion, Boer War, Russo-Japanese War, and World War I bred disaffection for the Empire, while attempts by the Empire to suppress the critiques further alienated the public. This dissertation offers the first comparative analysis of the major nationalist press organs in India and Ireland, using the prism of war to illustrate the increasingly persuasive role of the press in promoting resistance to the Empire. It focuses on how the leading Indian and Irish editors not only fostered a nationalist agenda within their own countries, but also worked in concert to construct a global anti-imperialist platform. By highlighting the anti-imperial rhetoric of the nationalist press in India and Ireland and illuminating their strategies for attaining self-government, this study deepens understanding of the seeds of nationalism, making a contribution to comparative imperial scholarship, and demonstrating the power of the media to alter imperial dynamics and effect political change.