VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Victimization and bullying in children with attention-deficit
Keywords: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
Bullies, Attitudes
Victims, Attitudes
Attribution (Social psychology) in children

This study explored the occurrence of victimization and bullying among 9–14 year old children with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The relationship between attributional style, victimization and bullying was also explored by having children complete self-report measures. Parents and teachers provided ratings of bullying behaviour. Children with ADHD reported higher overall levels of victimization and equivalent levels of bullying behaviour as children without the disorder. Children with ADHD were also categorized as victims, bullies, and provocative victims significantly more often and reported higher levels of verbal, relational and physical aggression than comparison children. Verbal aggression was experienced more often than relational and physical aggression. When examining children's attributional styles for negative social outcomes, attributions to task difficulty accounted for the most variance in self-reported victimization and attributions to own personal qualities accounted for the most variance in self-reported bullying for children with and without ADHD.
Living an elementary school curriculum: rethinking reform through a narrative classroom inquiry with a teacher and her students into the learning of mathematics : life lessons from Bay Street Community School
Keywords: Elementary schools, Curricula
Education, Elementary, Curricula
Mathematics, Study and teaching (Elementary)
Educational change

This study, situated in a long-term Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Research Project, explores teacher knowledge and reform in education. I work with one teacher, Janine O'Neil, examining her mathematics education practice as it unfolds in her classroom. My study spans two years of classroom participation and observation followed by another year of research in Bay Street Community School's larger community. My research phenomena emerges in response to the reform environment shaping the North American context of education. I examine how reforms to mathematics education are experienced in an elementary classroom. As my narrative classroom inquiry progresses, complexities of classroom life with Janine and her students in Room 34/35 enfold me. The complexities create tensions that are layered throughout my research and writing. Section I, a narrative analysis, begins with a description of a grade 3/4 mathematics lesson, Remembrance Day Math. Then, I explore the meaning of this classroom experience using a three-dimensional axes of narrative inquiry: place, temporality and the personal and social relationship. The importance of teaching and learning mathematics as contextualized in experience emerges as a pivotal understanding. Section II, a curricular analysis, begins with a description of a grade 3/4 mathematics lesson based on an exploratory activity into relationships between whole numbers, fractions, and ratios (third grade), and a problem-solving activity (fourth grade). Using the notion of curriculum commonplaces to reconstruct a mathematics education experience in an elementary classroom, I analyze this lesson from the perspectives of the teacher, social milieu, subject matter, and learner. I find that classroom curriculum results from the negotiation of tensions between the learner, curriculum, and community needs. Section III, a narrative reconceptualization of reform in education, consists of three chapters. The first is a study into the relationship between personal and social influences in the construction of teacher knowledge. The second is an account of a school-based reform and how this initiative becomes part of a teacher's practice. I argue that framing notions of education reform in terms of learning and growth is beneficial. The final chapter looks backward into and forward from this inquiry.
The creation of a psychometric instrument to measure the religious Jewish construct trust in God: a first step towards researching the relationship between religious Jewish beliefs and psychological variables
Keywords: Knowledge, Theory of (Religion)
Judaism
Orthodox Judaism
Jewish ethics
Prejudices
Psychology, Religious

While the past several years have seen a great increase in the number of psychological studies concerned with religion, there is still a great lack of psychological knowledge about Orthodox Jews. Of the available published research, there has yet to be an empirical analysis of the relationship between religious Jewish beliefs and psychological variables. Furthermore, the potential for research on Orthodox Jews is limited as there are few psychometric instruments that are suitable to use with this population. This thesis created the “Trust in G-d Index”, a statistically valid and reliable instrument to measure the religious Jewish construct Trust in God. It is hoped that the Trust in G-d Index will be used to increase the epistemic place of Orthodox Judaism within the rubric of psychological empirical inquiry, by expanding the potential for research to be conducted on Orthodox Jews.
Socio-ethical Issues of Prenatal Counselling: A Qualitative Study of Women's Experiences with Prenatal Counselling in the Greater Toronto Area
Keywords: Pregnant women
Prenatal care
Childbirth, Psychological aspects

This thesis focuses on the results of qualitative research surveying the verbal information pregnant women received from their family practitioners and obstetricians. It explored socio-ethical issues of prenatal counselling. The general results of this research suggest there is a marked absence of prenatal counselling surrounding all aspects of prenatal care, which ultimately affected labours and deliveries. The absence of counselling, in some cases, combined with breaches of guiding ethical principles, even led to trauma, by any accepted definition of “trauma” in the mental health context. These were the results found in a sample of “good outcomes” where no babies were stillborn, born with birth defects or congenital health problems, and no babies were kept in neonatal units due to complications. The trauma suffered by some women was so severe, it led to a postponement of second pregnancies as a means of avoiding further trauma at the hands of medical practitioners. This thesis suggests that not only are women being harmed by the accepted prenatal standard of care in Toronto hospitals (which, a thorough literature review suggests, has not substantially changed since the 1890s), but legal remedies for unnecessary pain and suffering ought to be made available to traumatized women, known as wrongful labour and delivery. “Wrongful labour and delivery” would define a labour and delivery that was unnecessarily traumatic, a labour that involved unnecessary pain and suffering, which could include fright due to the omission of pertinent information that could have easily prevented the trauma, or lessened the trauma.
Parental emotion processes, family risk status, and patterns of emotionality in children
Keywords: Emotions in children
Parent and child
Child psychology

The present study investigated relations amongst parental emotion processes, family risk status, and emotion biases in children. Participants included 94 mothers, 39 fathers, and their children between 3–6 years of age (41 girls, 53 boys; M age = 4 years, 4 months) from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Eighty-three families were followed up one year later. Parental appraisal styles were assessed via a naturalistic story-reading and explanation method, and maternal anger response and emotion regulation were measured by semi-structured interview and self-report questionnaire, respectively. Children's Time 1 and Time 2 emotion biases included teacher and mother ratings of emotion, peer ratings of emotion, as well as classroom and playground observations of emotion. Mothers using a disproportionate number of hostile appraisals over prosocial appraisals when speaking with children was associated with children's sad/fearful biases at school. Responding angrily to their children's negative emotions was associated with both anger and sad/fearful biases at school. On bivariate correlation, paternal hostile appraisal styles were associated with children's sad/fearful biases at home. As predicted, mothers in high-risk families utilized fewer prosocial appraisals than low-risk mothers when explaining events to their children, and they tended to use a higher level of hostile appraisals than mothers in low-risk families. Similar patterns were found for fathers' hostile appraisals. Mothers in the high-risk group also demonstrated significantly more angry responses and less emotion regulation to their children's sadness than mothers in the low-risk group. Finally, longitudinal analyses showed a strong continuity of children emotion biases over a one year period, particularly with regard to anger biases. Maternal anger responses and emotion regulation at Time 1 had no predictive effect on a change in children's emotion biases over time; however, a hostile balance of maternal appraisals was found to predict change in children's anger biases in the home and school, with different effects in high- and low-risk families. These findings and future directions are discussed in the context of current theoretical, empirical, and clinical work.
Students' perceptions of online asynchronous discussion and group learning in graduate distance education courses
Keywords: Distance education
Distance education students, Attitudes
Graduate students, Attitudes
Computer conferencing in education
Group work in education

This grounded study examined students' experience with two types of interaction in asynchronous online courses: ones in which students engaged in seminar-style discussions (Issue-based) and ones in which students worked together on a common project (Project-Building). Ten students, who had participated in both types of interactions, were interviewed. Qualitative analysis uncovered that in both discussions, themes of student diversity, the asynchronicity of the environment and a sense of community affected the students' experience. In Issue-Based discussions, students' diversity was advantageous as it exposed them to a variety of experiences and perspectives. The asynchronous nature of the environment allowed the students to focus on, and pursue, ideas of personal interest, provided flexibility and facilitated reflection and deeper learning. However, their interactions were not truly collaborative, since there was little impetus for students to develop shared understandings or pursue a common line of inquiry. In Project-Building discussions both diversity and asynchronicity proved to be a negative influence on students' experience as it caused stress and frustration due to difficulties in negotiating meaning and consensus. This frustration was often amplified by a need to complete the project by a particular deadline. As a result, many groups in the Project-Building condition abandoned collaborative work in favour of a "divide-and-conquer" cooperative work approach. From these findings, an extension and elaboration of Murphy's (2004) six-stage model of collaboration is developed. It is further proposed that while the term, "collaboration" is often used to describe the kinds of activities that take place online, most group activities only reach stage 2 or 3 of Murphy's scale. Deeper levels of collaboration can be fostered through the design of group activity structures that minimize, or avoid, the problematic conditions identified in this research. Two such activity structures are outlined.
Methods for inclusion: employing think aloud protocols in software usability studies with individuals who are deaf
Keywords: Deaf
Computer software
Gesture
Sign language

This thesis explores the viability of collecting gestural protocols from study participants who are deaf using the think aloud protocol method. Two studies were carried out: (1) a comparative study and (2) a usability case study. In the comparative study, gestural and verbal protocols were collected from deaf and hearing participants respectively while playing a game of computer solitaire. The protocols were compared and the viability of gestural TAP (GTAP) as a usability evaluation method was considered. In the usability case study, the GTAP method and outcomes were assessed further. As expected, no differences were found between verbal protocols and gestural protocols and deaf participants were able to sign their thoughts while manipulating a computer interface. Also, the quality, content and quantity of gestural protocols collected were not noticeably or statistically different from their verbal counterparts. The results of the solitaire task and the law video usability study support the viability of gestural TAP as a usability evaluation method and provided additional evidence that the cognitive systems used to produce successful verbal protocols in people who are hearing seem to work similarly in people who speak with gestures. The challenges for adapting the TAP method for gestural language related to how the data was collected and not to the data or its analysis. Methods for collecting protocols using GTAP and considerations for analysing gestural protocols are discussed.
Abused women's experiences of a 7-day wilderness trip: exploring processes of empowerment
Keywords: Abused women
Adventure therapy
Wilderness survival, Psychological aspects

The purpose of the present study was to better understand the meaning and role that therapeutic wilderness trips can have in the lives of women who have been abused. Central questions guiding the inquiry included: how do women who have been abused experience a particular 7-day wilderness trip and what contributes to women's healing and empowerment? Using a qualitative methodology, these and related questions were explored with 9 participants who had experienced various forms of abuse. Results describe how participants have been affected by abuse, activities that have helped women deal with the adverse effects, and experiences of the wilderness trip. Most participants benefited from the trip such that they were able to live with more freedom from the adverse effects of abuse. Experiences on the trip that facilitated positive outcomes included: physical and social engagement, and a context of safety, support, fun, wellness, and being outdoors in the wilderness.
A critical ethics of reading: Freirean literacy, literacy, and democracy
Keywords: Literacy
Literary ethics
Literature and morals
Reader-response criticism
English teachers
English language, Study and teaching (Secondary)

The purpose of this dissertation is to challenge the current direction of Ontario's educational directives, and to offer a participatory social democratic approach as an alternative. I will be specifically looking at an approach to teaching English literacy at the secondary level that focuses on ethics, and that leads to a meaningful democracy, one that involves the opportunity for people to manage their own collective and individual affairs (Chomsky 136). The inspiration for the alternative approach is largely inspired by the spirit and thinking of Paulo Freire. His insight has lead me to understand that literacy is not merely being able to read and write words, nor is it merely syllabification1, nor is it merely the learning of mechanical skills, but literacy is being able to read the word and the world. It is the ability to engage in praxis—reflection and action. Teaching English at the secondary level, therefore, needs to include ethics and the ability to read the word and the world, to be able to understand a reading of the status quo and to be able to challenge it, and thereby transform society. Ultimately, the goal in teaching literacy is the amelioration of society, in part, by striving toward the elimination of discrimination against those who are being oppressed, either due to class, race, sexual orientation, sex, globalization and so on. By a reading of the word and the world teachers need to direct students by engaging them in dialogue and reflection in a comfortable environment where both teachers and students feel free to speak, participate, and learn. The hope in offering this alternative approach is not to offer a “recipe” for teaching English at the secondary level, but to share the gift, understanding, and spirit that Freire's thinking has given to me, with others. I argue that the school system has a vital role to play in this process of empowering our citizens and preparing them to participate in the democratic process. 1Literacy is not just about decoding the written word, but it is intertwined with knowledge of the world.
Trust, leadership, and organizational renewal
Keywords: Trust
Leadership
Organization
Social groups
Organizational behavior

This research examined the process of employee trust building, as influenced by the behavior and practices of leaders, during a period of organizational renewal. Specifically, the research answered the following questions: (a) what behaviors did leaders report undertaking to build trust? (b) did High and Low Trust leaders differ in the practices they undertook to build trust, based on Ghoshal and Bartlett's (1997) model? and (c) are the variables equity, competence, and involvement, identified by Ghoshal and Bartlett, a sufficient account of High Trust leaders' trust building? A case study approach was used in the context of a large Canadian financial institution's technology division. Initially, secondary analysis was applied to employee survey data in order to identify High and Low Trust leader groups. The primary research consisted of qualitative interviews conducted with both the High Trust and Low Trust groups. The findings indicated that the High Trust leaders reported engaging in more trust-building practices than did the Low Trust group. The research elaborated specific components of involvement, competence, and equity related practices. Involvement practices comprised of informing, identifying issues, problem solving, decision making, and future planning. Competence building involved leaders setting clear accountabilities, assessing, providing feedback, assigning, mentoring, coaching, developing, and training staff. Equity was evidenced through consistency, fair assessment in downsizing, career support, and fair compensation practices. Further, the research proposed additions to the Ghoshal and Bartlett (1997) model. Organizational context building through collaboration and communication, as well as relationship building through integrity, caring, and consistency, were identified as High Trust leader practices supporting trust. Practice implications suggest leadership development in the specific practices supporting high levels of trust. As well, this research recommends attention to leaders' trust-building practices to build and sustain trust during organizational change and renewal.
From discursive essay to expressive writing: stories of a student and a teacher
Keywords: Rhetoric
Creative writing
Rhetoric, Study and teaching
Creative writing, Study and teaching

This thesis examines my academic journey through narrative as a student and a teacher in the writing classroom at a major university in Poland and at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education of the University of Toronto in Canada. I employ an auto-ethnographic approach and arts-based inquiry to discuss and explore my own experiences of learning to write and of learning to teach others to write. I also recount how I rediscovered writing and found my own voice after taking an Expressive Writing course at OISE/UT. I show how personal narrative has taught me to trust my words and reclaim my writing and my teacher-self. My intention for this thesis is to raise awareness that through expressive writing pedagogy and through personal narrative, students develop their voice and confidence.
Hiding from the moon: living with panic disorder
Keywords: Panic disorders
Mentally ill women

This paper outlines the experiences of panic disorder in women and their interactions with the larger world. Panic disorder is examined within the context of disability and mental health. Through the study of panic disorder, a critique of the medical model reveals the shortcomings of traditional thought on the experiences of panic disorder, and mental illness in general. The social model of disability offers an analysis of disability and mental health within a contemporary context. Women who have experienced panic disorder are interviewed and their stories shared to reveal the daily experiences faced by a few of the millions of women suffering from panic disorder in Canada.
A study of special education during the interwar years
Keywords: Special education, History
Special education, Ontario

An examination of the creation, development and expansion of Special Education during the interwar years in Ontario is long overdue. For the purpose of this study, legislation, scientific practices, the development of rights, and the role of women as professionals, volunteers and mothers have all been analyzed. As will be demonstrated, legislation during this period was enacted for the purpose of identifying and segregating Special Needs children. The creation of Special Education was cultivated by the discovery that scientific procedures could assist with and determine the identification of Special Needs children. Although my research indicates that emergence of Special Education was fundamentally linked to the eugenics movement, the eugenical perspective does not sufficiently explain the development of rights. This paper will demonstrate that during the interwar years, a significant development and expansion occurred in Special Education, and the transformation was principally attributable to the role women played.
From spiritual theory to anti-racist praxis: Rastafari spirituality as an emancipatory pedagogy for schooling and educating Black/African other minority youth in Ontario
Keywords: Rastafari movement, Ontario
Blacks, Education
Blacks, Ontario
Minorities, Education
Minorities, Ontario
Racism in education, Ontario

This study examines the meaning and role of RastafarI spirituality for schooling and educating Black/African and other minority youth. It presents RastafarI spirituality as a vehicle through which to address issues of inclusiveness within mainstream schools in Ontario. I argue that RastafarI spirituality provides one useful way in which to prepare students to name, critically analyze and challenge multivariate forms of oppression experienced in schools and society. Through a critical content analysis of contemporary Rasta orature (music, (dub) poetry and language), I illustrate how Rastas articulate their meaning of spirituality, spiritual practices, spiritual experiences and how these articulations become a basis for the decolonization of the African selfhood. I also explore the pedagogic, communicative and instructional relevance of the philosophies of RastafarI for educating youth in Ontario.
Effects of hydrostatic pressure and water activity on the stability of double-stranded DNA polymers
Keywords: Chemistry, Physical and theoretical
Biochemistry

The methods of elevated hydrostatic pressure (HP) and osmotic stress (OS) are often employed to study the stability of biopolymers. What these two methods have in common is that their effects on biopolymers are modulated by the action of water, and hence are particularly suitable for studying hydration. These methods were utilised to study the helix to coil transition of several double-stranded DNA polymers; poly[d(A-T)], poly[d(I-C)], poly[d(G-C)], and salmon sperm DNA.