VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
“No Mere Child’s Play”: The Canadian Cadet Movement and the Boy Scouts of Canada in the Twentieth Century
Keywords: Boy Scouts
Cadets
Gender
Imperialism
Militarism
Youth

This dissertation examines the Canadian Cadet Movement and Boy Scouts Association of Canada, seeking to put Canada’s two largest uniformed youth movements for boys into sustained conversation. It does this in order to analyse the ways in which both movements sought to form masculine national and imperial subjects from their adolescent members. Between the end of the First World War and the late 1960s, the Cadets and Scouts shared a number of ideals that formed the basis of their similar, yet distinct, youth training programs. These ideals included loyalty and service, including military service, to the nation and Empire. The men that scouts and cadets were to grow up to become, as far as their adult leaders envisioned, would be disciplined and law-abiding citizens and workers, who would willingly and happily accept their place in Canadian society. However, these adult-led movements were not always successful in their shared mission of turning boys into their ideal-type of men. The active participation and complicity of their teenaged members, as peer leaders, disciplinary subjects, and as recipients of youth training, was central to their success. When this participation was withdrawn adult leaders were forced to react to the desires of the boys or eject them from the program altogether. For much of the twentieth century the Cadet and Scout movements represented the two largest uniformed youth movements, together training hundreds of thousands of Canadian boys. As such, studying these movements together offers important insights into the ways in which youth were organized in English Canada. Both movements had their origins in, and contributed to, Canadian understandings of Canada as a white settler colonial state within the British Empire and Commonwealth. They were also united by their goals of forging particular types of heterosexual masculine imperial and national subjects. Together, these movements provide insights into the ways in which particular conceptions of gender and nation have been inculcated into young people, traditionally viewed as more malleable than adults and who would potentially carry their youth training with them into adulthood.
Phase Aware Performance Modeling for Cloud Workloads
Keywords: Anomaly Detection
Cloud Computing
Performance Modeling

Cloud computing is gaining enormous popularity every day. But with the growing demand of cloud computing systems, comes the challenge of efficiently managing the vast amount of workloads that are run on the cloud infrastructures. Quick detection in case of failures of any component of the complex system becomes essential for ensuring that the users of the cloud services are getting the best possible performance for their workloads. For achieving this goal, a proper and accurate method that can learn the performance of workloads and can predict the future performance becomes inevitable. Traditional approaches for characterizing workload and learning their performance either depend on the vast amount of monitored resource profiles, application log data that are collected at regular intervals of the cloud system or a combination of both. But these approaches suffer from (1) faulty predictions, (2) inaccurate models, (3) storage overhead, (4) throughput degradation due to the amount and complexity of generated data. In this thesis, we provide methodologies for accurately learning workload performance on-the-fly. Our method is fully automatic, lightweight, does not require access to application source code and can learn the workload performance – starting from zero knowledge and getting more sophisticated as more data are collected for the system, therefore eliminating the necessity for storage cost and also the analysis complexity of huge amount of offline profile data. In stead of modeling in a human agnostic manner, we assign the heavy and complex work to the machines, and the human is brought into the loop to provide minimal feedback so that the machine can enhance its learning over time, life long. We provide a wide range of solutions depending on how much information is supplied by the user of the workload as well as the workload characteristics, and we compare and contrast each method. Our methods rely on integrating resource usage profiles with periodically collected thread-dumps. We leverage several popular online machine learning methods to build and update our models. We show use cases of our generated workload performance models in anomaly detection e.g. to detect real world hardware faults and software bugs.
The Decline of Corporate Oversight: How All Three Branches of Government Lost Their Ability to Prevent Abuses of the Corporate Form
Keywords: Business Law
Canada
Constitutional Rights
Corporate Personhood
Incorporation
United States

This paper explores how the legislature, executive and judiciary have lost their ability to prevent abuses of the corporate form. The legislature lost its ability to act as gatekeepers when general incorporation statutes replaced the special charter process. The executive lost some of its power to regulate businesses when the judiciary expanded constitutional protections for corporations. The judiciary lost its ability to find corporations liable for the wrongs or debts of their subsidiaries or affiliates through the development of the common law. These trends have allowed people to abuse the corporate form, which was initially intended to be a tool for maximizing public welfare. These opportunists undertake risky behaviors to maximize their private welfare at the expense of the public. This paper explores the normative, doctrinal and theoretical consequences of this problem and offers a solution to these issues.
The peerScholar Process: Using Formative Peer and Self-assessment to Enhance and Quantify Critical Thinking Skills, Metacognitive Awareness, and Sense of Community
Keywords: critical thinking
formative feedback
metacognition
peer assessment
self-assessment
skill development

Postsecondary institutions are responsible not only for teaching their students the subject-specific knowledge related to their field of study, but also for providing them with transferable skills such as critical thought, creative thought, and effective communication. However, the reality of increased class sizes and reduced levels of financial support has created challenges for institutions to provide these learning outcomes. Efficient content-focused assessment methods (e.g., multiple-choice testing) are embraced over hard-to-assess skill development methods that can be costly in terms of both time and resources. In this thesis I propose and assess a novel process created specifically to provide an efficient yet powerful approach to skill development and measurement. The approach combines three powerful pedagogical tasks - peer assessment, self-assessment, and the formative use of feedback - within a process that provides repeated and structured practice needed to support the development of skills. The process is embodied in an application I developed called peerScholar. After introducing this process in Chapter 1, the remaining chapters of this thesis describe studies that assess the potential impact of the peerScholar process. Chapter 2 describes how a core component of critical thought, quality-based discrimination, can be quantified as students engage in peerScholar activities. Results show that students’ ability to perform such discriminations is enhanced with repeated exposure to the peerScholar process. Chapter 3 follows the same logic with a focus on metacognitive awareness: a student’s understanding of the quality of their own work. The results show that students’ accuracy in rating the quality of their work is improved with a single exposure to the peerScholar process. Chapter 4 reveals that, although the peerScholar process was created with skill development in mind, the use of this process also enhances students’ sense of community. The final chapter describes the implications of my work and highlights the potential that such applications have on informing research in education. Next I discuss putting evidence into practice and how I have mobilized my research on a global scale. Finally, I outline additional research that has been inspired by the work presented in this thesis, along with some next steps.
The Impact of Co-occurring Psychosocial Health Conditions and Attitudinal Familism on Condomless Anal Sex among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men (gbMSM) in Taiwan
Keywords: Condomless anal sex
Coping strategies
Familism
Men who have sex with men
Psychosocial health conditions
Syndemic

Backgrounds: Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) constitute the majority of HIV incidence in Taiwan. To understand the social determinants of health among MSM in Taiwan, this thesis aims to examine the impact of co-occurring psychosocial health conditions (PHCs) and attitudinal familism on condomless anal sex among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in Taiwan. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was implemented using convenience sampling and distributed from July–September 2017 through collaborative partnerships with five community-based LGBTQ organizations in three metropolitan cities and two rural cities in Taiwan. Informed consent was obtained before the survey. Participants completed questions about socio-demographic characteristics, attitudinal familism, adverse childhood experiences, intimate partner violence, sexual minority stress, methamphetamine use and 14 coping strategies. HIV infection and condomless anal use were operationalized as outcome variables and analyzed using multivariable logistic regression and path analysis, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics. Results: One thousand MSM completed the online survey. Taiwanese MSM with more than one PHC had greater than twofold higher odds of being HIV-positive; those with three or more PHCs had twofold higher odds of having condomless anal sex. Positive reframing, acceptance and spiritual belief coping partially mediated the pathway from co-occurring PHCs to condomless anal sex. Spiritual belief coping partially mediated the association between co-occurring PHCs and HIV infection. The results also revealed that lower levels of attitudinal familism were associated with more co-occurring PHCs, which were, in turn, directly associated with greater use of the substance use coping strategy, which was itself directly associated with more condomless anal sex. Conclusion: The results highlight the importance of preventing co-occurring PHCs, including working to diminish exposure to violence and to reduce minority stressors among MSM in Taiwan. Taiwanese MSM living with co-occurring PHCs would benefit from trauma-informed counselling, which involves emotion-focused approaches and elements of positive reframing, acceptance and spiritual belief coping. Additionally, evidence-based research among MSM in Taiwan should further examine the effect of other coping strategies and social norms on HIV risk-taking behaviours.
Special Education Workers in Action: Stories of Special Educators Building Relationships with Racialized Youth Who Demonstrate Challenging Behaviours
Keywords: anti-black
inclusion
indigeneity
policy
spirituality
well-being

In special education, relationships are considered fundamental to fostering school success and well-being for students. In special education literature, there is also an ongoing conceptual debate about the compatibility of academic standardization with individual well-being. There were no studies that I found that examined this debate from the perspective of Special Education Workers (SEWs). In a climate of increased standardization, school marketization, teacher accountability, the politicization of education, and a push in Ontario schools for curriculum centering, indigeneity, and curriculum challenging the racialization of students, these mandates have considerable value when addressing issues around equity and inclusion. Hence, the objective of this multiple case study is to explore the perceptions of exceptional Special Education Workers of how they foster well-being for their most challenging students. Consequently, I report an in-depth examination of how five SEWs have been successful in (re)establishing relationships with students who demonstrate challenges. Data collected via two semi-structured interviews with each SEW were coded and analyzed using Kuckartz’ (2014) seven steps to qualitative text analysis designed for analyzing qualitative interviews. Each participant exemplified themes involving (i) lifelong learning, (ii) practices for well-being of students, (iii) collaborating with other professionals, (iv) finding creative solutions, (v) relationship consolidation with students, (vi) constructing solidarity with students, (vii) expanding resources to promote empathy among students, (viii) championing/sponsoring well-being and high achievement, (ix) promoting empathy to change resistors, and (x) promoting social justice practices (for example, anti-black racism, inclusivity, and equity). Although well-being and academic success are parallel goals in special education literature, SEWs distinguish between the two as they prioritize student well-being over academic benchmarks, especially with students labeled as behavioural (SLBs). The notion of prioritizing well-being over academic benchmarks is central to African Indigenous Knowledge, which promotes reciprocal relationship building, a strong sense of community, and community well-being. Therefore, the insights gained from the evidence suggest that there are important attitudes, values, and skills to be mastered that correspond to humanistic principles found in Special Education Workers who engage with these particularly challenging students.
Human and the Machine: Vulnerabilities and Biases in Automated Data Analysis Pipelines
Keywords: Bias
Head and neck cancer
Machine learning
Outcome prediction
Radiomics
RTx-omics

Accurate prediction of a cancer patient’s outcome is imperative to treatment selection and decision support. Recently, automated data analysis pipelines have been explored to model and predict complex patient outcome relationships using information extracted from existing data sources; for example, radiomics features that are designed to quantify patient images. However, consideration of biases imposed by human knowledge and interactions with these systems, and their resulting models, is required to obtain robust and informative results. In this thesis, automated data analysis pipelines are developed for exploration and prevention of unintended biases. A comprehensive radiomic pipeline was established and validated during an in-depth analysis of a highly cited radiomic signature; concluding that the signature was a surrogate for tumour volume and that intensity and texture values were not pertinent for prognostication. Safeguards were subsequently suggested to refine methodologies and ensure productive radiomic developments. Based upon the recommended safeguards, automated image quality classification methods were developed. In particular, convolutional neural networks (CNN) were trained to automatically classify head and neck (H) computed tomography images based upon the presence of dental artifacts. The CNNs were additionally validated using six external datasets and demonstrated increased classification performance with transfer learning. The suggested safeguards were also enforced in the development of operator-controlled data analysis pipelines with different levels of human interaction requirements. The pipelines predicted loco-regional failure in H patients using combinations of clinical, imaging (i.e. radiomic) and radiation therapy (i.e. RTx-omic) information. These pipelines provided insights into the importance of data curation and quality, as well as operator, data and methodology bias awareness as it pertains to result interpretation in operator-controlled pipelines. Overall, this work demonstrates the utility of automated data analysis pipelines for cancer patient outcome prediction using combinations of traditional and emerging features. Future work standardizing data governance processes will be required to actualize clinically impactful implementations of automated data analysis pipelines.
The Art of Conviction: A Film-based Study of the Rehearsal Techniques of Herbert von Karajan
Keywords: Central European Conducting Tradition
conducting
Herbert von Karajan
rehearsal
Schumann Symphony No. 4
video analysis

In order to gain insight into the art of conducting, this dissertation examines the rehearsal techniques of Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan as portrayed in the 1965 filmed rehearsal of the Schumann Fourth Symphony in d minor, Op. 120, with the Vienna Symphony. The film is part of a series entitled Die Kunst des Dirigierens, or The Art of Conducting, a project on which Karajan collaborated with French film director Henri-Georges Clouzot. Observing experienced conductors in rehearsal is a well-established aspect of conducting pedagogy. Likewise, with increased availability of filmed documentation of orchestral performances, students and researchers now commonly turn to film to analyze conducting practice. Notably, most studies (and, indeed, most films) focus on performance, while rehearsal study continues to be done in-person. By focusing on a filmed rehearsal, my analysis not only highlights Karajan’s approach to performance preparation and musical interpretation more broadly, but it also provides a basis for expanding conducting pedagogy through the critical study of film. My video analysis examines Karajan’s rehearsal technique through two analytical lenses: linear and conceptual. The linear approach traces the rehearsal as it unfolds, documenting Karajan’s rehearsal of many of the Symphony’s principal themes and transitions in chronological order. It includes several close analyses of the score situated against his words and gestures while communicating with the musicians in the orchestra. The conceptual analysis approaches Karajan’s rehearsal technique by topic. In so doing this analysis adds to the body of work related to not only Karajan and this particular symphony but also the Central European Conducting Tradition.
Case Study of an Indigenous Teacher’s Writing Instruction: Tensions and Negotiations Among Western Discourses of Writing and 8 Ways Aboriginal Principles
Keywords: culturally responsive
Indigenous
reconciliation
social justice
writing development
writing pedagogy

This research investigated an Indigenous teacher’s pedagogy in a rural First Nation school in order to gain insight into culturally responsive writing instruction. Pre-service and in-service educators have identified significant challenges in the teaching of writing, feeling unprepared and/or lacking confidence to teach this essential skill. Additionally, many teachers feel uncomfortable and/or ill-equipped to incorporate Indigenous content and perspectives into their classrooms. Resulting from generations of on-going colonial oppression, educational disparities in literacy development have been identified between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Along with a focus on traditional language and cultural revitalization, Indigenous families in Canada have advocated education for their children in the dominant literacy practices of schooling. With a growing Indigenous population, educators are seeking ways to respectfully and successfully integrate cultural perspectives, content, and traditional ways of knowing/learning into their classrooms. This study addressed the paucity of research on writing development in Canada conducted within rural areas and with Indigenous Peoples. Case study methodology was utilized. Qualitative data was collected and analyzed in the form of classroom observations, formal and informal interviews, and collection of artifacts (e.g., student writing, curricular resources, etc.). An initial objective of this study was to identify which of six evidence-based discourses of writing (Ivanić, 2004) were employed in the teacher’s instructional approaches and beliefs about writing instruction. Findings revealed that she utilized all six at varying times over the course of the classroom observations, reflecting a comprehensive approach to teaching writing. Tensions were revealed between conflicting discourses, some remained unresolved while others were successfully negotiated. The second question in this study sought to determine which of the 8 Ways Aboriginal pedagogies (Yunkaporta, 2009) did the teacher utilize in her writing instruction. In addition to incorporating local cultural content she utilized all instructional methods identified through the 8 Ways framework. Examination of classroom practices revealed an overlap between Western discourse theory and the Indigenous 8 Ways pedagogy framework. Utilization of Indigenous instructional strategies directly address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (2015d) call to action regarding the integration of Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms.
A Study Exploring the Narratives of Gay and Lesbian School Principal in Ontario
Keywords: coming out
gay
identity
leadership
lesbian
queer

I investigate the narratives of Gay and Lesbian Ontario school principals. No research has been conducted specifically on school principals navigating their Gay or Lesbian identity in Ontario, Canada. Queer Theory, coupled with the conceptual framework of coming out of the closet, are used to understand the Ontario principals who identify as Gay or Lesbian and who grapple with coming out at work. Analyzed by a qualitative thematic approach, eleven principals from non-denominational, public school districts were interviewed. This research shows that there needs to be continual and purposeful systemic work towards in support of Queer principals by school districts and the Ontario Principals’ Council. The research also invites the formation of Queer employee resource groups in each school district together with specific language in district and provincial policies explicitly supporting principals to come out at work. Lastly, there needs to be purposeful actions led by the Ontario Ministry of Education specifically empowering Queer principals to be out with all educational stakeholders identified in my research is one of the recommended next steps. Silence is seldom the answer, yet some of these school principals find themselves in perpetual silence.