VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Work and agency in an autonomous women's knowledge centre
Keywords: Knowledge management, Germany
Women, Information services

"This study examined the meaning of the work of collecting sources for knowledge in an autonomous women's knowledge centre (AWKC). By developing a methodology for disclosing important aspects of the actual process of collecting, the aim was to identify factors in the process which contributed to shaping its meaning, and hence account for the agency of collecting. A case study was carried out in a single AWKC, and the data collected during this case study, partly through observation, and partly through interviews with 9 workers at the centre, supported the development of the methodology. An analysis of this data indicated that the key point of interest was the disturbance which occurred in that step of the process which involved the actual selection of the material for integration into the collection; further analysis of this disturbance disclosed it as a kind of ontological negotiation which required a decision to resolve. By applying a set of agential skills, it was possible to see how the skills needed to make this decision could vary, hence accounting for the variation of meaning which this particular work process in fact has, in different settings. This leads to the conclusion that the quality of the meaning of collecting sources for knowledge depends on the agential skills of the person doing the actual collecting, and how these skills are developed and encouraged. This study has direct implications for understanding and improving the work situation in autonomous women's knowledge centres, as well as in conventional archives. It also has implications for research both into the nature of collecting, and in the area of understanding social aspects of work processes. More importantly, however, it provides an initial basis for further exploration of the collecting of sources for knowledge, since it is now possible to see how this kind of activity is necessary for life itself."--Abstract.
Building just, inclusive and equitable communities: cultivating social awareness and responsibility
Keywords: Social ethics
Environmental ethics
Communities
Social values
Responsibility
Equality

This thesis is a community action-based inquiry that explores community member's reflexive process of understanding privilege in relation to themselves and their community. The focus of the research was not to bring the voices of those who live on the margins to the reader but rather to uncover how those who live closer to the centre come to realize that positions such as margin and centre exist. Thus, this thesis is a praxical inquiry that navigates the personal and social complexities of understanding our relationship to privilege and the dangers, risks, and responsibility such an inquiry raises when self-awareness and responsibility are core educational principles. Participants reflected on the intersections between social justice and social responsibility, their relationship within the context of community work, and why this analysis was important. A reflexive analysis of the research process is included for its relationship to current educational research and theory.
The responsibility to protect: a legal perspective
Keywords: Humanitarian intervention
Intervention (International law)
Crimes against humanity

The Responsibility to Protect has evolved with remarkable speed into a substantive norm in the international arena. This paper examines its evolution from a concept included in Boutros Boutros-Ghali's "Agenda For Peace" to its development by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty to its recent adoption by the United Nations General Assembly. The author locates the Responsibility to Protect within two trends in international law: the jus cogens prohibition against genocide and the more emergent push for greater accountability on the part of international organizations, including the United Nations. This latter trend is discussed in some detail as the author examines its institutional and legal framework. The author concludes that the Responsibility to Protect contributes significantly to both the prohibition against genocide and the call for greater accountability of international organizations.
A hierarchical theory for layered beams with piezoelectric actuation
Keywords: Composite construction
Actuators
Piezoelectric devices

In order to realize the full compatibility of advanced composite and sandwich structures an internally consistent and accurate modeling process is needed. Hansen and de Almeida developed a unified hierarchical theory for layered beams which has the ability to accurately predict through-the-thickness stress and strain distributions, as well as displacement moments of all combinations of symmetric laminates and sandwich structures. This theory asserts that these predictions can be developed as a superposition of sets of well chosen fundamental states, where a hierarchical sequence of bending states occurs. Fundamental states are described as numerical experiments performed on an infinitesimal segment of the physical beam. Here, piezoelectric actuation effects are considered and a new fundamental state is developed modeling the actuation within the composite or sandwich structure through the application of a uniform electric field. The capabilities of this fundamental state are shown within the confines of the hierarchical beam theory by solving three problems: a purely actuated system, a system subjected to both electrical and mechanical loads and a system of piezoelectric patches that are embedded within a composite structure. The calculated through-the-thickness stress and strain distributions and the displacement moments yield comparable results to 2-D ANSYS finite element predictions.
School climate improvement: exploratory factor analysis of the Psychosocial Environment Profile (PSE)
Keywords: Factor analysis
School environment, Evaluation
School improvement programs

The concept school climate has gained momentum over the last few years. A very large body of various studies has revealed different dimensions of school environment that promote the concept. Some of the literature unearthed, deal with specific aspects of the school climate, such as concern with the issue of bullying and cooperative learning, which offers students the opportunity to learn from each other, while others deal with the concept as a whole entity. This study investigated an instrument that was developed by the World Health Organization (2002) to help researchers and educators sharpen their focus in understanding and promoting a healthy school environment. The sample for the study was 203 staff members who were asked to rate their school environment based on the instrument that used a Likert scale ranging from 1-5. The psychometric properties of the instrument were investigated to determine its validity and reliability including its usefulness as an instrument that is feasible for use in an elementary school population. The Psychosocial Environment Profile instrument was found to have a very stable factor structure both within schools and between schools. Ratings by the various groups in the schools did not make a significant difference in the research outcomes. The scale exhibited high levels of internal consistency based on Cronbach's (alpha) alpha. The research results suggest that there is a need for future research in this area of school improvement. Research that is more rigorous is required to establish further the PSE profile as a valid and psychometrically sound instrument.
Morality, democracy, and autonomy: appreciating the significance of Lawrence Kohlberg's just community
Keywords: Moral education
Moral development
Communities

This thesis contends that Lawrence Kohlberg's Just Community program of moral education has conceptual significance to his theoretical work in the field of moral development. The argument contends that a perspective recognizing the Just Community as conceptually significant provides a more comprehensive picture of Kohlberg's work than do critical perspectives which limit their critical scope to his Structural Stage Model of moral development. Apprehending the Just Community's conceptual significance provides the opportunity to respond to critics, like Carol Gilligan and Helen Haste, who have suggested that Kohlberg's work is inattentive to notions of attachment in morality, but who either neglect or dismiss consideration of the Just Community in making these conclusions. The argument concludes by stating that a more philosophically comprehensive and mature understanding of morality was developing in Kohlberg's Just Community, a project undertaken well in advance of these major criticisms.
I am, therefore, we are: a narrative inquiry into the stories of experience of three women teachers of Balochistan and the Northern areas of Pakistan
Keywords: Teachers, Social conditions
Teachers, Social conditions
Teachers, Pakistan
Women, Right to education
Women, Right to education
Women, Pakistan
Women's rights
Women's rights, Pakistan
Women, Social conditions
Women, Pakistan
Women, Social conditions

In Pakistan, recent and dramatic shifts in the economic, political, and social contexts of teachers' lives have significantly affected their personal and professional horizons. These teachers, in turn, are now in a position to extend and expand these horizons. My research, entitled, I Am, Therefore, We Are: A Narrative inquiry into the Stories of Experience of Three Women Teachers of Balochistan and Northern Pakistan, deals with the stories of experience of three remarkable Pakistani women teachers: Dr. Naghmana Ansari, Shahida Sultan Shah, and Shama Ali. What they have in common is their heroic struggle to acquire an education and to earn higher degrees, which they achieved only through great personal sacrifice and despite improbable odds. Narrating their unique stories; showing how their lives have been shaped by Pakistan's geographical, historical, economic, political, and social legacy; describing the significance that Karachi, Balochistan, and the Northern Areas (the three research sites) have held for the women; and, finally, interpreting their stories within the frameworks of narrative inquiry, on the one hand, and feminist theory and praxis, on the other (the ‘interpenetration’ of which has resulted in the formulation of a new concept, “narrative feminism”), constitute the four major aims of this thesis.
Communicating mathematics online: the case of online help
Keywords: Mathematics, Computer network resources
Mathematics, Study and teaching

This qualitative and quantitative study intended to define and explore the characteristics of asynchronous online mathematics help environments and look for some evidence that they provide conditions for learning. Data for the study were collected from online contributions on three purposely selected, public mathematics help sites; written reflections of expert tutors; and interviews with them. Peer tutors are found to be mathematics problem-driven and focused in their answers, as opposed to expert tutors who are following general rules of efficiency and honesty, and who are verbose in their answers. Both students and peer tutors are gracious in their acknowledgements, while experts are more direct in theirs. Expert tutors try to adapt their tutoring strategy to a student by holistically approaching the student's question. When a question lacks enough background information to help them to model a student, experts sometimes provide multiple answers. Expert tutors also use probes to gauge and provoke student's comprehension. They prefer to teach general rules and language of mathematics, and provide hints rather than complete work. This study found evidence of learning on mathematics online help sites and potential benefits for participants in discursive activities related to mathematics. The study showed that users of this service have specific goals, that peer tutors and expert tutors teach differently, and that online expert tutors use tutoring strategies that are specific to this medium. The students use mathematics online help primarily to request information. The questions on mathematics help sites are mostly homework related with isolated recorded cases of abuse of online help. In a small percentage of questions students provide feedback to tutors or participate in long discussions. Conversely, students ask a substantial number of deep-reasoning questions. This study also found evidence of achieved comprehension in students' messages and satisfaction with the help received on the Web sites. The study looked into the tutorial discourse with the intent to characterize communicative goals, form, cognitive level, hedging and degree of specification of students' questions in mathematics online help; and to distinguish what and how tutors in mathematics online help teach, do they hedge, and how helpful are their answers.
Numerical simulation of inlet and combustor regions of a real shcramjet flowfield
Keywords: Airplanes, Scramjet engines

The numerical simulation of the three-dimensional flowfield of a shcramjet was performed using the WARP code, in which multispecies Favre-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are closed by the k-o turbulence model and the Wilcox dilational dissipation correction. The hydrogen/air chemical reactions are modeled by Jachimowsky's 9 species, 20 reaction model. This thesis addresses the problem of designing a shock-induced combustion ramjet (shcramjet) engine. Previous studies have investigated cantilevered ramp injectors using a two oblique shock external compression inlet with a hydrogen slot injector to suppress ignition. The present study uses a cowl to generate flow-turning angles of 12° and 16°. The reflected shocks induce combustion after ignition delays of 10.5 cm and 4.5 cm, respectively. It was found that maximum thrust potentials for each case were 203.4 and 218.8 Ns/kg, indicating that an increase in shock strength reduces the ignition delay without contributing to any significant increase in thrust potential.
Huron potters and archaeological constructs: researching ceramic mirco-stylistics
Keywords: Iroquoian Indians, Pottery
Indians of North America, Pottery
Indians of North America, Ontario

This thesis examines the commonplace framework of assumptions that have been in use in Huron ceramic analysis. Customary views on Huron pots, potters and potting systems are revisited here in light of extant ethnographic and ethnohistorical literature pertaining to traditional pottery manufacture, use and discard and, at an analytical level, through the testing of selected ceramic samples from three contact period Huron sites—Ball (BdGv-3), Auger (BdGw-3), and Thomson-Walker (BeGv-3). Using a multi-component, multi-scalar research design, this work singles out three important problems in Huron ceramic analysis - vessel function, population relocations and ethnicity, the organization of ceramic production—and explores the implications of data analysis and corroborating evidence for our understanding of each. Previously, none of these issues have received extensive treatment since it has been thought that: (1) Huron pottery was simply made and did not incorporate functional categories; (2) production was simply organized, carried out in the household and therefore geared toward self-sufficiency, and; (3) women decorated their pots only according to personal or family tradition and choice. A multivariate approach to artifact analysis was used to help identify multiple layers and meanings of “stylistic” attributes on Huron pots. It assisted in the identification of potential functional categories of vessels, including strong correlations between decorative attributes and vessel size classes, which suggests future function-oriented research is needed. When combined with the concept of micro-style (i.e., patterned behaviours in individual, family and community manufacturing practices and traditions), this approach revealed intra-village exchanges and the relocation of potters between successive villages. In the future, a micro-stylistic approach will prove more meaningful for reconstructing tribal or ethnic territories and affiliations. The skill and standardization levels observed on Huron vessels from the Ball and Auger sites were quite high, and alongside the widespread intra-village distribution of products of single potters, hints at a higher level of productive organization than normally presumed. Therefore, this work recognizes the need for a better informed understanding of the nature of craft production in Huron communities and its role in local and regional economies.
Du mot injuste au mot juste: count(er)ing costs of black holocausts, a panAfrikan approach to education
Keywords: Pan-Africanism, History
Wolof language
Antislavery movements, History
Discourse analysis
Communication
Slavery, History
English language, Slang
Racism in language
Race relations in literature
Blacks, Race identity
Twi language
Blacks, Race identity
Blacks, Africa
African diaspora, Social aspects

By accident or intent, commission or omission, 'the word', in recounting panAfrikan histories and the holocausts they reveal, generally masks 'the crime'. This thesis examines hidden costs of Black holocausts on panAfrikan life chances over thirty generations. It analyses texts where 'Others', overwhelmingly, have recorded and told our stories, prescribing the words with which we clothe our collective memory. This study also explores continuities within Afrikan speech and cultural expression in Europe, the Caribbean and the Americas. It reveals aspects of Afrikan culture, lost because of Black holocausts, in ancestral languages like Wolof and Twi and data from museum studies, artefacts, the arts and popular culture. Through careful reflection on panAfrikanist perspectives, this thesis (1) enhances new ways of understanding, of telling, measuring and eventually countering the costs of externally manufactured panAfrikan holocausts and (2) explores the possibilities and significance of education which draws on these panAfrikanist ways of seeing.
Meaning-making through art-making at a community-based art program
Keywords: City children, Services for
Art, Study and teaching
Creative ability in children
Art, Psychological aspects
Art therapy for children

This study explores how children make-meaning through art-making at a community art program in an inner city community in Toronto. Through five months of fieldwork research at A Home for Creative Opportunity, interviews with four of the staff and a literature review, a deepened understanding of the children's experiences in the art program was gained. In this inquiry the contextual forces of the Regent Park community are considered alongside the activities that take place on a daily basis at the Art Centre. Questions that fuelled the inquiry are: how does meaning-making evolve from art-making in a community-based arts program, for the children who participate? And how does engagement in art-making affect these children, particularly in light of the challenging circumstance of growing up in Regent Park? The researcher identifies tangible themes and forces informing the children's experiences in the program, and considers the importance of community-based art initiatives as a mechanism of both personal and communal transformation.
Parents' and teachers' reports of executive function deficits at different chronological ages for children diagnosed with ADHD
Keywords: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
Developmental psychology
Child psychology

Some theories of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have suggested that a deficit in Executive Function (EF) may underlie this disorder. The present study used a new behavioural rating scale to explore executive functioning in children with ADHD in two different settings and at different stages of development. The Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function samples children's everyday executive skills in their natural settings through parent and teacher reports. This study examined archival clinical data of 240 children between the ages of 5 and 15. A comparison of parent and teacher ratings revealed that teachers reported a greater range of EF impairment and greater severity of deficits. Teachers also indicated more change across the five age groups. The profile of executive dysfunction differed among the age groups, with the 7- to 8-year-olds exhibiting the least amount of impairment. Significant differences between genders and ADHD subtypes were found on some scales.
Children's detection and use of cues to infer object displacement
Keywords: Inference
Searching behavior in children
Visual perception in children

Previous research on toddler search using a ramp apparatus revealed that children under 36 months have great difficulty searching for the hidden toy. The object-directed attention account posits that attention spreads from proximal to distal within an object, which means that a cue is most useful if it is both directly connected to and attached closer to the centre of the target object. This study investigated 24-, 30-, and 36-month olds' search for a hidden car under short- vs. long-cue conditions with an obliquely aligned cue. Results revealed that children performed better under short-cue conditions, but the cue's orientation relative to the target object affected children's overall performance, especially for the youngest group. Implications for the object-directed attention account are discussed.
From fish weirs to casino: Negotiating neoliberalism at Mnjikaning
Keywords: Indians of North America, Gambling
Indians of North America, Canada
Gambling on Indian reservations, Canada
Gambling, Government policy
Gambling, Canada
Indian business enterprises, Canada

The results suggest that the casino is contiguous with initiatives such as Land Treaties and the Fur Trade in that the economic arrangements appear equitable, but the results reflect an unequal power relationship. This has been accomplished by a unilateral casino agreement imposed by the Province despite the objections of all Ontario First Nations. Furthermore, Casino Rama is marketed as an "Aboriginal casino," but in reality the Province regulates it, and it is managed by an American casino management company. The success of US Indigenous casinos prompted the Chiefs of Ontario (an Ontario Indigenous political organization) to explore the possibility of creating one First Nations casino to benefit all Ontario First Nations. These discussions and subsequent negotiations with the Province of Ontario led to the creation of Casino Rama located on the Mnjikaning First Nation in south-central Ontario on July 31, 1996. The following study explores the social and cultural impacts of Casino Rama. More specifically, I am concerned with: how the casino relates to historical events such as the Fur Trade and Land Treaties; the problematic of gambling as an economic option; the community's negotiation of neoliberal structures introduced as a result of the casino; and the problematic of the casino agreement that includes the Mnjikaning First Nation, Ontario First Nations and the Province of Ontario. The methodology incorporated in this study includes historical research, life history interviews and participant observation. In the past, Indigenous people engaged in gambling as a group social leisure activity. The casino differs from Indigenous gambling since it operates on an economic model. Individual gambling problems are not significant in Mnjikaning. On the other hand, the neoliberal structures associated with the casino are a significant problem. Such structures include: desired casino expansion, individualization of social relations, and legal policy designed to protect capital. These structures are in opposition to the community's collective identity known as bimaadiziwin, generally defined as a "holistic way of life." Bimaadiziwin functions as a community habitus that negotiates a continued space in the community in spite of the new neoliberal order.