VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Development of an extended magnetohydrodynamic model for anisotropic plasmas
Keywords: Plasma (Ionized gases)
Magnetohydrodynamics
Plasma dynamics

An extended magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model capable of modelling anisotropic and non-equilibrium plasma flows is proposed based on a ten-moment approximation to the solution of the Boltzmann equations, having a full second-order pressure tensor. The extended MHD model has been derived using many of the assumptions and methods used to derive the standard MHD equations. The model makes use of separate pressure and energy equations for the ions and electrons and a Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collision operator is used to model ion and electron collisional processes. Eigenstructure analysis is used to explore the mathematical and physical characteristics as well as the hyperbolicity and realizability regimes of the model. A point-implicit finite-volume upwind scheme with second-order time stepping and a limited second-order spatial discretization procedure is used to examine the capabilities of the model and compare its predictions to those provided by the ideal MHD description for several one-dimensional plasma flow problems including a classic shock tube problem, the Brio-Wu MHD test case, and a modified Brio-Wu test case. The numerical results and limitations of the model are discussed along with future directions for this line of research.
The nation and national identity in the folk music revival movement of Canada and the United States from 1945 to 1980
Keywords: History

The thesis explores issues of nation and national identity in the folk music revival of the post-war period in America and Canada, with a particular focus on the apex of the movement in the 1960s. The thesis demonstrates that, during the 1960s, the folk revival promoted a vision of nation which was eclectic, regional and pluralist in character. Revivalists celebrated the diversity of the North American continent and were eager to explore its many cultures. One of the principal sources of this interest was the climate of political idealism of the early decade---civil rights and the New Left encouraged a vision of unity in diversity, a vision which was mirrored in the outlook of the folk revival. This eclectic vision would decline by the mid-1960s, however. Folk revival performers were beginning to drift beyond the bounds of the original movement and experiment with electric and rock music styles. Furthermore, external events were pulling Canada and America apart; as America faced a period of severe societal and political crisis, Canada was celebrating its centennial of confederation. Concerns of nationalism crept into Canadian popular music expression, pulling it away from the 'North American dream' of the early decade and the folk revival. American musicians, meanwhile, frequently retreated altogether from politics, and no longer optimistically celebrated the diversity of their country. The pluralistic vision was now on the wane, and those who did perform North American ethnic and regional music styles in the 1970s tended to do so in a spirit of nostalgia and reaction rather than with an optimistic focus on present and future.
Beliefs and practices of visual arts and aesthetics by non-specialist primary art teachers
Keywords: Art, Study and teaching (Primary)
Art, Ontario
Art teachers, Attitudes
Art teachers, Ontario

This study explores how non-specialist primary art school teachers' beliefs and practices emerge in their teaching of visual art and aesthetics in the classrooms. A literature review suggests that very little research exists in this area. In order to contextualize how teaching may be influenced by art and aesthetic knowledge views are presented of aesthetic philosophy literature, as well as the theoretical models of Walker and Parsons, and the curriculum orientations perspectives of Eisner and Vallance. The three data sources are lenses that interact to inform the interpretations of the problem. Theory triangulation applies to the interpretation of the case studies that are contextualized by the literature review and the interviews with the arts educators. Three cross-case analyses are created to interpret the case studies of the non-specialist primary art teachers: personal experiences and self-images in art, beliefs in art, and practices in teaching art and aesthetics. There are contrasts and similarities among their beliefs and practices of art. The interactions among personal experience, curriculum, and practice are explored throughout the interpretations. School culture emerges as important in shaping their collaboration and teaching practices in art. Very few of the teachers had an awareness of literature that might inform their practices of teaching art. Experiences in their teacher education was a factor in determining their motivation for the teaching of art. It also provides suggestions for further research to improve non-specialist primary art teachers' practices based on the exploration of the non-specialist primary art teachers' art experience and how it influences their teaching. Several different sources of data and methods are used as lenses to inform the problem. The three procedures are: (1) A review of government educational documents: The Formative Years (1975), The Common Curriculum (Revision, 1995) and the predominance of the Ontario Curriculum (1998). (2) Interviews with three arts educators. (3) Case-study analyses using interview and observational data of four non-specialist primary art teachers. This study has implications for changes in teacher education programs because most teachers do not have art backgrounds.
Differential parenting by mothers and fathers
Keywords: Father and child
Parenting
Parent and child
Mother and child
Parental influences

This study focused on the comparison between mothers and fathers and the amount of differential parenting exhibited towards the siblings within the family. I was also interested in the extent to which these differences between parents are affected by characteristics of the sibling dyad (i.e., age and gender composition) and the degree of stress in the parenting context. The sample was derived from the PSID-CDS sample consisting of 238 sibships between 3 and 12 years of age. Gender dyad compositions consisted of same sex and mixed sex dyads. Results found that mothers showed higher rates of differential treatment than fathers and were affected by the age gap between siblings. Periods of high marital conflict demonstrated differential treatment to be greater. Low marital conflict showed more paternal differential treatment than high marital conflict. Suggestions for future studies are given with main focus on fathers during periods of marital conflict.
A matter of fat: an analysis of feminist theories of the fat body
Keywords: Overweight women, Mental health
Obesity in women, Social spects
Feminist therapy
Discrimination against overweight women
Self-acceptance

This work is a poststructural feminist analysis of a genre of feminist theory called ‘fat theory.’ In the thesis, I divide feminist fat theory into ‘early’ (fat theory from the 1970's and 1980's), and ‘contemporary’ feminist fat theory. I demonstrate how theories from both time periods are closely linked to the feminist theories from which they burgeoned. By naming and describing three lines of discourse running through feminist fat theory—the discourse of health, the discourse of fat oppression, and the discourse of identity—I surmise the ways in which feminist fat theory ‘calls for’ resisting fat subjects. In studying who ‘the fat woman’ is in feminist fat theory, and how she is discursively organized, I show that feminist fat theory is not divorced from the very unequal and oppressive relations of power the theory exists to counter.
'The devil made the mulatto': Race, religion and respectability in a Black Atlantic, 1931--2005
Keywords: Racially mixed people
Miscegenation
Race relations

According to The Historical Journal there has only been one scholarly study of mixed-race history. This text---New People: Mulattoes and Miscegenation in the United States---fails to address events after 1930 in any detail, and ends its historical analysis with a discussion of the mixed-race people who committed themselves to a "New Negro" group. In an attempt to cover this gap in the academic literature, my dissertation analyses the creative artistry of individuals who were born after 1930 and were told, by governmental agencies in the US, UK and Canada, that they had a Black father and a white mother. My first case study looks at Philippa Schuyler, the daughter of George Schuyler, the most prominent African American journalist of the early twentieth century. I acknowledge that George Schuyler's journalistic peers marketed his daughter as a "Negro" child prodigy during the 1930s and 1940s, but I also document how she fashioned herself as a "mulatto" writer or a vaguely aristocratic "off-white" femme fatale during the 1950s and 1960s. My second case study looks at Lawrence Hill, a writer who grew up in the suburbs of Toronto during the 1950s and 1960s and has achieved a degree of prominence in Canada by casting himself as a middle-class Black "race man" like his African American father, the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Agency. Subsequent case studies investigate the legacy of the "Black is beautiful" movements of the 1960s on a wider variety of individuals---from working-class folks in Nova Scotia and Merseyside to American idols---and provide further evidence for my argument that a Black identity has been masculinized in opposition to the stigma attached to a "mulatto" identity associated with young "brown girls". In doing so, I draw heavily on the work of Otto Rank, W.E.B Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. In particular, I link Rank's ideas about creative artistry---that it was a masculine attempt to give birth to a new self, community or nation---to the theories of Du Bois and Fanon that defined "honest intellectuals" in a Black Atlantic against mixed-race women and children.
Taking heart: mathematics experiences of girls and women as learners and teachers
Keywords: Math anxiety
Mathematics, Study and teaching
Women, Education
Women in mathematics
Students, Attitudes
Women teachers, Attitudes
Mathematics teachers, Attitudes

While gender difference in mathematics achievement is lessening, a substantial gap in scores remains. This has variously been attributed to girls' lack of interest, onset of adolescence, socio-cultural disenfranchisement, and inherent difference in learning style. This study, through qualitative interpretation of mathematics learning and teaching experiences of eight women graduate students in education, recounted in individual interviews, considers two sets of emergent interwoven themes: the first describes influences that shaped participants' achievement and interest; the second identifies aspects of learning that were affected. Implications suggest that teacher presence, style and relationship are pivotal in promoting girls' confidence, interest, and continued engagement in mathematics learning.
With power from the king and blessing from the church: the representation of a Christian missionary in the Vita Amandi prima
Keywords: Missionaries

St. Amand is popularly regarded as the "Apostle of Belgium and northern France," and the Merovingian prototype of monk/bishop/missionary. The Vita Amandi prima (VA1) portrays St. Amand as a tireless proselytizer, a miles Christi who established monasteries as missionary outposts with the full support of the Frankish church and king. The foundation of St. Amand at Elnone, one of the earliest Merovingian royal endowments, claimed the double legacy of the saint's human remains and a hagiographic tradition which depicted the saint's retirement and death at this favoured monastery. This thesis examines the hagiographic representation of St. Amand as a missionary in the VA1 and how this representation was, in fact, rewritten from an earlier source to promote the secular and spiritual interests of Elnone in the early ninth century. Through a close reading and an analysis of the narrative structure, the VA1 is shown to be a vita of considerable hagiographic richness, thus contributing, at least in part, to its pre-eminence as the authoritative life of the important saint for centuries to come.
Assessment of a professional development program and how secondary school teachers use their understanding of wealth management in the classroom
Keywords: Wealth, Management
Wealth, Ontario
High school teachers, In-service training
High school teachers, Ontario
High school teachers, Attitudes
High school teachers, Ontario

This exploratory study investigates a wealth management (WM) professional development (PD) program and how secondary school teachers' use their understanding of WM in the classroom. Literature search was based on in-service teachers' PD conceptual structure. Theoretical framework for teacher knowledge (TK) focused on four critical assumptions; content knowledge (CK); pedagogical content knowledge (PCK); application knowledge; and assessment knowledge. Data collection was through document review and six teacher interviews. Four themes emerged from the data: preparation for the course; personal reflections of the program; broad understanding of WM to teach across the curriculum; and critical professional development. Findings reveal that teachers increased their WM knowledge by attending the summer institute and enhanced their PCK to confidently integrate WM concepts in different subjects. Teachers found the pre-test was not motivating, but they were satisfied with the evaluation method. Applying WM concepts to non traditional subjects proved a substantial challenge for teachers. A teacher found the program inattentive to French immersion teachers. The program contributed to teachers' understanding of investment issues but insufficient for teachers to self-manage their personal investments. Teachers considered ongoing PD an important learning process. The thesis made five contributions to academic knowledge. A PD program of modest duration can enhance teachers' CK and PCK. Improvements to teacher knowledge facilitate teachers to introduce new methods and materials. WM programs need to provide specific guidance on curriculum integration issues. Although French immersion shortcomings can be addressed by applying additional resources, concerns about male bias may be pervasive in the delivery of WM programs and may impede access of female teachers to opportunities to earn more about WM pedagogy. There are six recommendations that evolved from the study: Redesign the pre-test to increase motivating inquiry; introduce material to cover a wider range of subjects; revise assessments to clearly track changes in teacher knowledge; update content to reflect current events in WM; incorporate teacher designed activities and exemplars; and create a WM community of inquiry to share teacher expertise. A model WM PD curriculum matrix is provided. Tentative reasons for the findings are discussed, with recommendations for theory, practice, and for further research.
A study of performance funding of the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology
Keywords: Educational accountability, Government policy

In 2000, the Province of Ontario implemented performance funding for community college and universities. The stated impetus behind the implementation of performance funding was to ensure that the postsecondary sector would be held accountable for its use of public resources. This thesis provides an examination of how and in what way the introduction of performance funding has affected the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATS). This study relied on a review of the literature, case studies of four colleges, and interviews with key informants in the college sector, to examine how performance funding has impacted both the day-to-day decision-making and long-term strategic direction of the CAATS. The study found that the community colleges were using the information gathered for performance funding for program review and improvement plans, program rationalization, budget allocations and institutional planning. The colleges were also supportive of the funding for performance policy initiative. This study also examined the process for the implementation of performance funding in Ontario and found that its implementation process and the characteristics of the funding policy shared some characteristics found in other jurisdictions identified as having stable performance funding programs. The results of this study will inform policy and decision makers about the impact of performance funding on postsecondary institutions.
The terror: an examination of the emerging discourse on terrorism and its media representations
Keywords: Terrorism in mass media
Terrorism and mass media
Terrorists

This thesis examines the recently emerging discourse on terrorism from a Canadian perspective. I utilize Michel Foucault's ‘discursive formation’ as a method, which allows me to examine how the discourse emerges. I focus on photographs and how they are used to illustrate the threat of terrorism to the ‘Canadian public’. I show that two categories develop, the innocent Canadian and the evil terrorist. One is represented as either a victim or a terrorist but never both. In this discourse the Arab and Middle Eastern race, brow skin and the Muslim religion all come to represent the totalizing category—terrorist. The idea of the Arab as terrorist existed prior to the September 11th terrorist attacks so what I am examining is how this idea is cemented through discursive formation and visual representations and further, how it is codified through the implementation of Bill C-36, the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The role of mental computation and estimation in elementary school
Keywords: Mental arithmetic, Study and teaching (Elementary)

The study sought to investigate how Grade 3 students from two separate schools learned mathematics. The study explores the role of mental computation when students are engaged in sharing their invented strategies. I observed students sharing ideas and teachers implementing mental computation lessons over fifteen sessions. Interviews with students and teachers, copies of students' journal on mental math strategies were used to collect additional data. The findings were organized around descriptive moments; as I described how students were absorbed in mathematical conversation when they were invited to think mathematically and also encouraged to use their own strategies. I drew on the epistemology of constructivism in problem solving, to understand how students develop conceptual understanding of mathematics when given the opportunity to explain their own strategies. Students' cooperation in sharing their inventions was observed in class and group discussions, as well as in pairs with classmates. It was at these levels where the students: (a) eagerly invented numerous strategies for solving addition, subtraction and multiplication problems; (b) made sound arguments in support of their ideas when discussing problem solving strategies; (c) were cooperative in presenting their strategies; (d) learned from each other by listening to one another's explanations; (e) learned from correcting their errors; and (f) used their cognitive backgrounds as useful heuristics in their discussions. The students expressed their satisfaction and enjoyment during their collaborative learning and social interactions. The teachers used questioning strategies, among other teaching principles, to help students to complete their presentations. These included leading questions, probing and follow-ups, checklisting and student-specific questioning strategies. The study informs teachers about how mental mathematics lessons were implemented in the two Grade 3 classrooms to help the students understand mathematics. Teachers should be given courses, workshops and supportive programs on implementing mental computation lessons. This will give teachers the necessary experiences to increase their understanding of how students improve their understanding of mathematics when they are encouraged to share their inventions in class. The study provides a useful template for future studies in all subject areas of mathematics related to mental computation and estimation at all grade levels.
Illiniqatigiit: Implementing a knowledge-building environment in the eastern Arctic
Keywords: Inuit, Education
Inuit, Nunavut
Education, Rural
Computer-assisted instruction
Indians of North America, Education
Education, Nunavut

Between its creation in 1985 and the creation of Nunavut in 1999, the Baffin Divisional Board of Education (BDBE) worked to create an Inuit system of education in the fifteen eastern arctic communities that made up the Baffin region of the Northwest Territories. As a part of this effort to create a school environment that built on Inuit language and culture while preparing students to participate in an increasingly global context, CSILE/Knowledge Forum, a collaborative, network-based computer supported knowledge building environment, was implemented in a number of Baffin schools between 1992 and 2000. This implementation process brings together initiatives that juxtapose two theoretical frameworks. The first, Cummins' intervention for collaborative empowerment, underlies the BDBE's bilingual program development; the second, Bereiter and Scardamalia's emerging knowledge building framework, underlies the design of CSILE/Knowledge Forum. This thesis explores the intersection between these two frameworks through the implementation of CSILE/Knowledge Forum in Baffin schools. Through a combination of personal narrative and examination of CSILE/Knowledge Forum databases, the thesis argues that the intervention for collaborative empowerment brings to knowledge building a focus on the role that power structures play in classrooms such as those in the Baffin where representatives of a dominant minority teach a majority of students from a different cultural and linguistic background. For its part, through its emphasis on collective cognitive responsibility, knowledge building brings a framework for educator self-examination and transformation that is critical to and lacking in the intervention for collaborative empowerment.
Assessing the impact of measurement error in multilevel models via MCMC methods
Keywords: Multilevel models (Statistics)
Markov processes
Statistics

The aim of this thesis is to integrate three areas of statistical research---multilevel modeling, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, and measurement error. Three distinct types of multilevel models are considered: random-intercepts models, random-slopes models, and models with complex variation at level-1. These models are fitted using MCMC and maximum likelihood methods and the fits are compared. Finally, the effects of measurement error in predictors are assessed for different reliabilities and adjusted for using MCMC methods. The results indicate that MCMC samplers with non-informative priors produce similar results to maximum likelihood estimates and adjust for measurement error in predictors effectively. In general, MCMC methods give smaller standard errors, making inferential statements more powerful, and facilitate the use of additional information to guide the measurement and regression process. The simulations were performed using S-plus and the multilevel model problems were formulated and solved using MLwiN.