VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Federalism, foreign policy and the internationalization of higher education: a case study of the International Academic Relations Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada
Keywords: International education, Canada
Education, Higher, Canada
Higher education and state, Canada
Federal aid to higher education, Canada

This thesis provides a historical case study of the International Academic Relations Division within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and fills a gap in the existing literature on the internationalization of Canadian higher education. The research questions focused on understanding the mandate and role of the Division since its inception in 1967 to 1995, the changes in its policy and program approaches over time, the strategies or mechanisms developed for national policy coordination, and more broadly how the Department's foreign policy framework influenced the Division. A comparative analysis of the Canadian case with the departments of foreign affairs in Australia and Germany assisted in highlighting the uniqueness of the Canadian approach. Literature on federalism and internationalization and globalization provided a theoretical framework for the study. The three country comparison highlighted the importance of the overall framework of a country's foreign policy, the presence or absence of ICR, and a country's unique historical and cultural context, in directly impacting its approach to international education. In addition, it suggested that higher educational policy is a result of a nation's federal structure and the presence or absence of federal-state level coordination mechanisms. The International Academic Relations Division has engaged in the internationalization of higher education in one form or another, albeit its specific role and mandate and its program and policy approaches have changed over time. These changes were highlighted through three historical time periods. Several of the initiatives and policy approaches discussed in this thesis, in particular the successes of the Canadian Studies Program Abroad, have not been addressed in the literature on the internationalization of Canadian higher education. The thesis concluded that the internationalization of higher education policy agenda although influenced by ICR in a country's foreign policy is much more directly linked to a country's higher educational policy structure and mechanisms, and challenged the accepted view that DFAIT should provide leadership in developing a national strategy for internationalization. It proposed a range of policy, program and research recommendations, the most important being the need to further understand internationalization as a broader Canadian higher education policy issue.
Solution-focused parent groups: a new approach to the treatment of youth disruptive behavioural difficulties
Keywords: Behavior disorders in children
Behavior disorders in adolescence
Parent and child
Adolescent psychopathology, Treatment
Problem children, Counseling of
Emotional problems of children, Prevention
Children with social disabilities
Developmental psychology

Collective research suggests that treatment efforts aimed at parents of youth with disruptive behavioural difficulties need to be collaborative and encourage parents to take the lead in formulating their own solutions in improving familial interactions and the management of their adolescent's behaviour. Foster parents of foster youth exhibiting a variety of disruptive behavioural difficulties and challenges were assigned to an experimental ( n = 9) or no-treatment comparison (n = 7) group. The respective foster youth of the foster parents in each group were also assigned to a treatment (n = 18) and no-treatment ( n = 12) conditions. A pre-and post-test design using the Devereux Scales of Mental Disorders (DSMD), Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), Family Adaptability And Cohesion Scales II (FACES II), Parent Adolescent Communication Scales (PAC), Clinical Rating Scales (CRS) and measures of Total Problem Behaviours and Psychotropic Drug Use were used to assess change. Only the foster parents in the experimental group received a six-session Solution-Focused Parenting Group (SFPG) intervention. Pre-and post-training semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to assess the SFPG training program's effect on the participants' perceptions and experiences of their foster-parenting challenges, their own personal factors, their relationships with their foster youth, and the functioning of their foster familial system. Statistical results indicate that SFPG foster parent participants demonstrated adherence to the training program, showed minimal resistance, and actively participated. Foster parent participation in a SFPG did not result in any indirect effect on the foster youth's emotional, behavioural, and social skills difficulties. Foster youth's display of problem behaviours and use of psychotropic medication also remained unchanged. The foster parents made qualitative gains in their ability to manage their foster youth's problem behaviours, resolve dysfunctional foster parent-foster youth interactions, and maintain effective parental roles. These gains appear to have reduced the foster parents' experience of stress-related factors in parenting foster youth with disruptive behavioural difficulties, increased their sense of parental competence, and also enabled them to maintain moderate levels of familial functioning in terms of cohesion, adaptability, and effective communication.
Impact of education on culture: case study of the Vietnamese women immigrants in Southwestern Ontario from 1975-1995
Keywords: Women, Vietman
Women immigrants, Ontario
English language, Study and teaching
Educational sociology
Vietnamese, Ontario
Minority women, Education
Minority women, Ontario

The purpose of this research was to study the culture changes of a group of Vietnamese women immigrants in Ontario from 1975 to 1995. The first objective was to investigate if these women changed their perceptions of the Vietnamese culture described in eleven concepts. The second objective was to find out if these women transferred these culture changes into their families. The sample comprised a group of women who fitted the criteria of the study: having an education in Canada (formal, informal, and non-formal), emigrated to Canada from 1975 to 1995, from the age groups of 20 to 60. A total of 34 respondents participated in the research. The methodology included the pilot study of the questionnaire, a survey of an open-ended questionnaire sent to the participants using the convenience and snowball sampling techniques. Some interviews, over the telephone and face-to-face, were needed for data clarification. Participant observations and written documents were also used in the data collection to back up the research. The data findings indicate that the participants more or less changed their perceptions of the Vietnamese culture in every category, and the changes also occurred within their families. But the complete changes with 100 percent happened in three areas: bigamy, decision-making rights, and relationships between parents and children. Education had an impact on the culture for these Vietnamese women immigrants as they came into contact with Canadian people. It provided them the necessary awareness that they could liberate themselves from male oppression, and become equal partners with Vietnamese men.
Validation of two standard risk assessments (RRASOR, 1997; STATIC-99, 1999) on a sample of adult males who are developmentally disable with significant cognitive deficits
Keywords: Sex offenders, Psychological aspects
Recidivism
Cognition disorders, Psychological aspects
Abnormalities, Human
Men, Sexual beharior
Sex crimes
Intellectual disability

Problematic sexual behaviours in men with developmental disabilities often severely stigmatize, restrict, and limit the success of these individuals in our communities. Two actuarial risk assessments, the Rapid Risk Assessment of Sex Offender Recidivism (RRASOR) and the STATIC-99, developed for men with average intelligence, were applied to a population of men with significant cognitive deficits (N = 76). Analyses revealed that many factors that predict sexual reoffence in normative samples also predict reoffence in this sample. The 4 item RRASOR, outpredicted the 11 item STATIC-99. This may indicate a wider latitude of application to more diverse populations for the more generalizable RRASOR. Actuarial risk assessment can be used to better rationalize treatment and supervision resources thereby improving quality of treatment, community access and community safety. Future research should increase sample size and focus on the prospective investigation of dynamic predictors in samples of individuals with developmental disabilities.
Organizing narratives: an exploration through friendship and mourning in women's stories of becoming feminist community organizers
Keywords: Community organization
Feminists
Social change
Social planning

In this thesis I explore the stories of nine white, middle-class women, including myself, who have at one time or another identified ourselves, and our work, as feminist community organizers/ing. The thesis began as an attempt to map and analyze feminist organizers as we were coming to terms with the government cuts and ‘restructuring’ in Ontario in the late 1990s. I had in mind a study that could make visible the ways in which a particular group of women responded to neo-liberalism. Soon, however, I began to see that such an approach would take for granted the category ‘feminist community organizer,’ and the ways in which (some) women come to take it up as their/our own. As I listened to the emotional investments in women's stories of ‘un/becoming’ feminist organizers, I felt compelled to take seriously their passionate emotional attachments. The thesis, therefore, has become a critical reflection on the making and un-making of identities in the often ambivalent practices and dynamics of contemporary ‘feminism,’ ‘community’ and ‘organizing.’ Through a post-structuralist feminist lens that makes use of concepts of mourning and friendship, I overlay our conversations with three narrative structures. These narratives illuminate the central themes that we, in the small group convened for the study, use to know ourselves and understand our work: skepticism, radicalism and professionalism. I explore how histories, memories and social location shape the ways we make sense of feminist community organizing and our shifting locations in relation to ‘it.’ I then map how white, middle-class feminist organizing is made possible in excess of binary constructions of good vs. evil, as a practice of friendship and, finally, as an identity produced through an interweaving of secular and sacred representations. I do not propose resolutions to the tensions of white, middle-class activism or ways out of the stories we tell. Instead, I suggest that more complex and varied journeys into and with feminist organizing are essential to our ambivalent desires for anti-oppressive practice.
An investigation of the moisture sorption and permeability properties of mill-fabricated oriented strandboard
Keywords: Civil engineering
Wood, Research
Materials science

This thesis brings the disciplines of Building Science and Wood Science together in the study of the moisture-related properties of oriented strand board (OSB). Using controlled mill-manufactured panels specifically made for this project, this research reveals how the sorption and permeance properties of OSB are affected by several variables including production parameters and physical panel properties, moisture- history, and relative humidity exposure. Since OSB varies in composition through its thickness, this study isolated and tested various core and surface components. Permeability and sorption properties of individual OSB layers, intact panel sections, and panel sections that had undergone cyclic wetting and drying or relative humidity cycling prior to testing, were evaluated.
Towards a model for liberalizing telecommunications: A study based upon the use of the essential facilities doctrine in Canadian and European experiences
Keywords: Telecommunication, Law and legislation
Telecommunication, Canada
Telecommunication, Law and legislation
Telecommunication, European Union countries

When a dominant firm or monopolist controls a facility that is essential to compete on a downstream market, it is logical that it denies access to would-be competitors. According to the essential facilities doctrine, access can be mandated at a reasonable and nondiscriminatory price upon condition that the facility is indispensable to compete and impossible to duplicate. Although the application of this doctrine has been controversial, it is often said to be a useful tool in the liberalization of telecommunications. The comparison of the use of the doctrine in Canadian and European liberalizations reveals that neither system could constitute a model for the application of the essential facilities doctrine to open up telecommunications to competition, mainly because of the negative effects of the doctrine on investment and innovation and the policy choices that it implies.
Non-hierarchical organizing and international women's NGOs: An exploratory study
Keywords: Social service
Women's studies
Organizational behavior

The primary goal of this research project was to examine how non-hierarchy operates in women's/feminist international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Using grounded theory method, the study looked at nine women's/feminist INGOs that had experience with non-hierarchical organizing. The sources of data included in-depth, unstructured interviews with 20 female key informants from the participating INGOs, a wide variety of organizational documents, and video materials. Along with the organizational INGO analysis, this research addressed a series of conceptual questions pertaining to hierarchy, non-hierarchy, feminism, women's/feminist organizations, and international women's movement.
The politics of exclusion: an examination of graduate student funding experience in Ontario
Keywords: Universities and colleges, Graduate work
Universities and colleges, Ontario
Student aid, Ontario
Discrimination in higher education, Ontario
Educational equalization, Ontario
Graduate students, Ontario

This dissertation examines the funding experiences of graduate students from diverse backgrounds. Data are collected through in-depth interviews with students pursuing Masters and Doctoral studies at three universities in Ontario. The students' experiences are discussed in the context of funding through an examination of various sites and sources, such as scholarships, assistantships, loans and paid employment outside the university. The sample reflected both funded and non-funded students in order to understand how they negotiate graduate studies and the implications for completion and career choice. Although the funding of post-secondary students has been debated at great length, much of this discussion has been focused at the undergraduate level. Graduate education and graduate students have been largely absent from these debates. Furthermore, critical discussion on social differences in Canadian graduate funding remains unaddressed. Employing qualitative methodology, this study analyzes students' experiences at various stages of their graduate studies. The findings indicate that funding is instrumental to students' progress in graduate education. Generally, students secured awards or scholarships consistently were well adjusted within their departments. These students were also more likely to complete within a reasonable time frame, but having scholarships did not necessarily mean that students complete within the required 4-year time frame specified by universities. The study also indicates that the funding provided was wholly inadequate and was a source of stress for most students. Non-funded students, especially racial minorities, working class, females, and single-parents were not only more likely to be under-funded, but they were also more likely to feel marginalized in their department. The findings suggest that graduate funding has multi-dimensional roles with important effects on the student body. Ultimately, these findings relate to issues of equity and access in the allocation of funding resources in graduate studies.
Protecting society from dangerous patients: the proper limits of a public safety exception to psychiatrist-patient confidentiality
Keywords: Dangerously mentally ill, Legal status, laws, etc
Dangerously mentally ill, Canada
Confidential communications, Psychiatrists
Confidential communications, Canada
Risk assessment

This thesis examines the extent to which an exception to psychiatrist-patient confidentiality should be recognised to warn or protect third parties from dangerous psychiatric patients. In Part One, I discuss the existing Canadian jurisprudence and its implications for psychiatrist-patient confidentiality in Canada. In Part Two, I analyse the United States approach and the ramifications of the influential Tarasoff decision which imposes a tort law duty on psychiatrists to protect potential victims from dangerous patients. In Part Three, I consider the contrasting discretionary approach of the United Kingdom which affords psychiatrists discretion to warn potential victims. In Part Four, I suggest the proper limits of a Canadian exception to psychiatrist-patient confidentiality.
Entertaining subalternity: the performance of nation and the politics of Indian classical dance
Keywords: Dance, Political aspects
Dance, India
Devadāsīs, India
Sex discrimination against women, India
Nationalism, India
Imperialism

The critical gaze of Victorian morality and colonial bureaucracy affected many of India's cultural and artistic practices, including dance. As a result, reconstructing 'lost' art forms and invoking the 'real' traditions of pre-colonial India were central to nationalist movements rallying for political independence. However, in reconstructing the dance, elite artists largely ignored the lives of the actual women who practiced it. This contradictory appeal to a sanitised 'glorious past' has had significant impact on historical and contemporary representations of Indian dancers. This thesis examines questions of nationalism, citizenship, gender, subjectivity and power through a study of Indian classical dance to interrogate the tradition/modernity binary vital to colonialism and subsequently multiculturalism. I argue that the interconnected ways in which dancers were/are imagined through colonial, nationalist and contemporary multicultural discourses have shaped race and gender relations alongside notions of national belonging in the larger and related contexts of postcolonialism and multiculturalism.
The university in a global age: economy, culture, and democracy
Keywords: Universities and colleges, Social aspects
Universities and colleges, Economic aspects
Information technology, Social aspects
Information technology, Economic aspects
Culture and globalization
Democracy

While it might be clear that a global knowledge-based economy is restructuring many of the world's universities, it remains unclear how access to education can be made available to people who cannot afford to pay. I will offer peer-based technology as a promising medium for enabling democratic modes of education and training. More specifically, I will endeavour to show that the distributed nature of peer-based technologies can provide a concrete infrastructure in support of global modes of cultural production.
Child protection and the discursive construction of the pedophile: genealogical investigations
Keywords: Child molesters
Pedophilia
Children and sex

In this thesis, I make use of genealogy to investigate the social construction of a moral panic surrounding the sexual abuse of children. The focus of my work is the discursive construction of the "pedophile." I wish to investigate how the figure of the pedophile serves as a catalyst and engine for multiple social effects that impact on our understanding of issues surrounding child protection, sexual abuse, families, policing, and human sexuality, to name a few. I will focus on the emergence and operation of discourses of the pedophile as a "constitutive outside" to dominant discourses of the social and the family. Representations of the abject subject that is the pedophile also serve as a nodal point for social anxieties which become concentrated and telescoped onto particular social actors. This thesis is an attempt to make some space for critical examinations of a set of social and discursive practices that assemble an image of the pedophile and the threat it signifies. I hope this thesis will serve as a way to expose the ideological work behind our culture's maintenance of this figure, and to point to some of the effects that particular configurations of knowledge about pedophilia authorize with respect to the management of this phenomena.
A study of the principles and practices of community based vocational rehabilitation and its implications for Ethiopia
Keywords: Vocational rehabilitation, Ethiopia

This study investigates the conceptual frameworks for understanding disability and strategies for vocational rehabilitation of people with disabilities from various world perspectives. It examines the state of rehabilitation of persons with disabilities in Ethiopia. The thesis argues that institutional based rehabilitation has not proved to be a sufficient strategy for rehabilitation, while on the other hand community based rehabilitation is in many ways a better strategy for rehabilitation of people with disabilities in Ethiopia. The study covers the most pressing issues of disability rehabilitation with a special focus on vocational rehabilitation and establishes theoretical grounds or guidelines for choosing between community based rehabilitation and institutional based rehabilitation. Finally, the thesis suggests strategies for addressing disability issues, and models for planning, establishing, managing and evaluating vocational rehabilitation services as part of the community based rehabilitation programs in Ethiopia.
Experience in early childhood education programs and later school adjustment: the role of parent involvement
Keywords: Parenting, Study and teaching
Parenting, Ontario
Education, Parent participation
Education, Ontario
Readiness for school, Ontario
Academic achievement, Ontario
Early childhood education, Parent participation
Early childhood education, Ontario

This study reports on the long-term impact of a parenting and school readiness program on children's academic achievement when the children were 7 to 9 years of age. Children who attended the program had their current academic records compared with children who had other types of early childhood education experience. The program's impact on parents' sense of efficacy, perceived role in their children's education, and level of involvement was investigated via a questionnaire using scales developed by Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey and colleagues, and by Epstein, Salinas and Horsey (1994). Analyses examined whether previous participation in the program is associated with high levels of parent involvement and whether involvement is associated with high levels of academic achievement in children. Analyses also examined relations among parent involvement constructs and determined whether the relations, found by Reed, Hoover-Dempsey and Flynn (2001) are the same for the multi-ethnic sample in this study.