VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Adolescent understanding of narrative-television: a hermeneutic phenomenological study
Keywords: Adolescent psychology
Television and teenagers
Television programs, Plots, themes, etc

The context of this research is adolescent literacy: exploring how adolescents make meaning from the narratives they watch on the medium of television. The purposes of my research are to gain a deeper understanding of the lived-experience of adolescents watching their favorite narrative-television show; to offer "the possibility of plausible insights" (VanManen, 1990, p.9) into this literacy event in the interpretive world of some adolescent learners; and to suggest pedagogical ties to literacy curriculum. My approach to this inquiry is twofold: (a) to explore the interpretive skills which adolescents employ when watching narrative-television, and (b) to address the findings of this exploration as implications for educators for employing narrative as a bridge over the gap between school knowledge and adolescents' popular culture knowledge. Using theories of literacy, reading, narrative, reader response, television, and media reception to form the conceptual frame of this study, I apply the methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology to the situation of adolescents watching narrative-television. Participants for this research are five teenagers, aged 15 and 16 years. I collected data by conducting a series of in-depth interviews and taking field notes from an hour's close observation of their television viewing, and I used phenomenological reflection and data reduction to analyze the data and determine the essential themes (essences, structure) of this lived experience. Findings indicate five essential themes inter-woven to essentialize this adolescent interpretive event. Implications are that the way adolescents use literacy to construct meaning from narrative on television may hold correspondence with their constructing of meaning from the narratives in school-required print texts.
Wing anti-icing system control modelling and sensitivity analysis: a system identification based approach
Keywords: Aerodynamics, Mathematical models
Airplanes, Ice prevention
Airplanes, Wings
Heat, Transmission

Accretion of ice along the wing leading edge can pose a serious threat to aircraft safety. Thermal anti-icing systems are commonly used to prevent ice formation along the wings. University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies has initiated a research project in developing a generic wing anti-icing control and simulations system. As part of this research initiative this thesis presents the development of a dynamic model of an anti-icing system using a system identification based approach, and an investigation of the sensitivity of the system to changes in the control parameters and location of the temperature sensor. The results of this sensitivity analysis were used in tuning the controller and finding an optimum location for the feedback temperature sensor. This study indicates that the system identification approach is an effective tool for modeling dynamic systems based on test data for the purposes of controller sensitivity analysis and tuning.
Informal learning and quality child care practice among regulated home child care providers in Toronto
Keywords: Family day care, Ontario
Day care aides, Education
Day care aides, Ontario
Educational attainment, Ontario

Home child care in Ontario is regulated under the Day Nurseries Act, but there has never been a legislated educational requirement for providers. Research indicates that there is a relationship between provider education and quality child care provision. In urban areas such as Toronto, there are indications that the occupation has become the work of new immigrants and other women who experience barriers to employment in the public marketplace. This qualitative study explores informal learning among regulated providers who have no post-secondary education yet provide exemplary child care. This work is influenced by David Livingstone's (2004) research demonstrating that informal learning contributes to increased expertise in paid and unpaid work, which goes largely unrecognized. Using quality assessments, time diaries and interviews, the working conditions and learning strategies of five urban providers are examined to consider how home child care providers compensate for barriers to formal education by learning informally.
Learning processes inherent in building national consensus: selected South African perspectives
Keywords: Public opinion, South Africa
Apartheid, South Africa
Learning
Consensus (Social sciences), South Africa
South Africans, Attitudes

In 1994, South Africans exercised their newly acquired universal franchise and voted for a democratically elected government. This historic event marked an end to a 350-year history of race-based power relationships, conflict, and national discord. This relatively peaceful political transition and transfer of governance suggested learning on the part of the key decision-makers and leadership, which shifted the country from a path of dissensus and potential destruction to a path of consensus and national reconciliation. This qualitative study identifies learning processes inherent in building national consensus in South Africa viewed from the perspectives of a selected group of 'elite' South Africans considered influential, prominent, and well informed organizational or community representatives. The premise of this study purports that a learner's learning environment, that is the learner's daily experienced reality creates conditions conducive to the development of consensus or dissensus, peace or conflict. Interviewees included senior members of South Africa's National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC)---a quadripartite stakeholder consensus building partnership mandated and charged by Act of Parliament to institutionalise consensus building and formulate policy and development---parliamentarians, business and trades union representatives, and educators. The key themes and frameworks used in this study include: learning as a need directly linked to organic survival viewed in terms of specific objectives and outcomes; political analyses which provide an insight into the interplay between antagonistic and non-antagonistic tensions and contradictions in constant movement; the cultural context of learning; and interdependence in divided societies. The three main threads of thought, which have independent and collective importance to this study, include learning, consensus and democracy and, planning, national development and the role of education. This study identifies South African anomalies and scenarios of 'elite consensus and mass reality' learning including: a growing dissensus between the 'masses' and the new elite; South Africa as a social development role model; institutionalized consensus building exemplified by NEDLAC; and, conditions and experiences leading to accord, unifying goals, and consensus.
The experiences of women who engage in self-inflicted skin cutting
Keywords: Self-injurious behavior
Self-mutilation
Abused children, Mental health
Women, Psychology
Abused women, Mental health
Psychotherapy

This study examined the experiences of women who engage in self-inflicted skin cutting and who have not received a major psychiatric diagnosis. The goal was to understand the complex nature of the experience of self-inflicted skin cutting based on first-person descriptions and its familial and social context. A life history, qualitative methodology was adopted. Seven women of diverse backgrounds and life experiences in their early 20s to early 30s participated in this study. While the specific circumstances around each of the women's skin cutting behaviour were unique, common themes were apparent. The most prominent theme was pain and the extent to which these women have lived with emotional and physical pain in their lives. Most importantly, all of the women suffered multiple traumas and traumatic stress in childhood, such as, physical, verbal, and/or emotional abuse in the body domain. In addition to having suffered traumatic experiences as children, these women did not receive appropriate care or help with these events or their physiological and emotional responses to them. They subsequently engaged in a spectrum of self-harm behaviours, including skin cutting, as a way of coping with their pain. The multiple functions of skin cutting included an externalization process whereby inner emotional pain was made more concrete and tangible. This process was complex, providing relief, validation, power, and soothing. Skin cutting functioned as a release and expression of intense feelings of anger and anxiety, and as a means of gaining control and personal power. By targeting their bodies and cutting their skin, these women coped with intense feelings of self-hatred and worthlessness. In addition, the findings show that these women experienced painfully isolating experiences in relation to their skin cutting behaviour. In particular, they described negative and inappropriate reactions from health care providers who acted in a manner that intensified their feelings of isolation. The findings also suggest the importance of recognizing constructive coping strategies used by these women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Successful leadership practices in an accountable policy context: influence on student achievement
Keywords: School principals, Ontario
Educational leadership, Ontario
Educational accountability, Ontario
Academic achievement, Ontario
Educational change, Ontario

Ontario's education system is currently undergoing a profound change, the scope of which has not been seen since the last great global movement of economic and educational restructuring that occurred more than a century ago (Leithwood et al., 1999). Changes in the accountability policy context of schools are taking place as the education system aligns itself with the demands of preparing students for success in the twenty-first century. This study explores the leadership practices of successful school principals in this accountable policy context and the influence these practices have on improving student achievement. Four questions are addressed in this study. (1) What leadership practices aimed at improving their schools do successful school principals employ? (2) How does the accountable policy context influence their practice? (3) What beliefs and values shape the nature of these practices? (4) What forms of professional development and ongoing learning will assist principals in acquiring these practices? A framework demonstrating the interdependencies of these processes on the principals' leadership practice provides the perspective through which these questions are addressed. Results serve to illuminate the changing role of principals in an accountable policy context. Not only must principals be leaders of instruction, they must also be leaders who transform the culture of their school to focus on improved student learning. In addressing the demands of this context, these leaders demonstrated six broad categories of successful leadership practice. These included: a focus on improving student outcomes; articulating this focus in a planned, deliberate manner; supporting and empowering teachers; building positive relationships with parents and community; fostering a safe and supportive learning environment; and projecting an encouraging and motivating attitude. Results also demonstrated a strong relationship between the values of these principals and their leadership practices--a relationship that has been referred to as demonstrating "authentic leadership" (Begley, 1999). Finally, results pointed to the need for new approaches to professional development for principals in this context. The research sample consisted of twenty-three participants comprised of parents, teachers and principals from six schools in one school district in Ontario. Data collection was carried out using interviews to address perspectives about the successful leadership practice in their school.
Reasons for, challenges and consequences of raising a child in a second language: A case study on Anglophone parents raising their children in French
Keywords: French language, Study and teaching
French language, Canada
Language acquisition, Parent participation
Language acquisition, Canada
Bilingualism, Canada
Parent and child, Canada
Parents, Language
Parents, Canada

This Master's thesis focuses on a case study of Anglophone parents using French in their parenting relationship with their children in the area of Ottawa-Gatineau, with the purpose of understanding their reasons for, challenges and consequences of using their second language with their children. Data were collected from nine families, eight of whom are in linguistically mixed marriages, through semi-structured interviews and observed interactions. Results demonstrated that in most cases, participants felt that the main reason they chose to speak French first was based on their belief that Ottawa is an essentially Anglophone city; in order to become bilingual, some special efforts are required in the acquisition and practice of French. The immediate challenges, such as lack of French language support in the community, and long-term consequences, for example, improvement in the Anglophone parent's proficiency, varied from family to family.
Emotion matters in educational leadership: examining the unexamined
Keywords: School supervision
School management and organization
Educational leadership
Teacher-principal relationships
Organizational behavior
Teachers, Job satisfaction
Interpersonal relations

This thesis is a concerted attempt to understand the emotional dimension of leaders' and teachers' experiences of educational leadership. It employs an interpretivist perspective using qualitative data gathering methods in two phases. The recollections of 50 Ontario teachers were studied from transcribed interviews about their positive and negative emotional experiences with administrators. In the second phase, over a seven-month period, 25 school leaders from New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Canada, England and Ireland logged into an anonymous, asynchronous, private, online forum to discuss the emotional dimension of their leadership experiences. Findings from the teachers' phase of the study were shared with the online leaders, providing a direct link between the two data sources. All data were analyzed using grounded theory techniques and where sample sizes would allow, were submitted to a supplementary statistical analysis for further descriptive and interpretive purposes. For the teacher data, the first level of analysis considers domains of convergence and concern: career, students, leadership style/type and emotional climate, organizational procedures, colleagues and parents. The second level of analysis considers leader provocations in conjunction with teachers' emotional inferences and generated three categories: respect, care and professional support. The third level of analysis considers communication patterns: medium and level of engagement. The findings help to reveal the causes, configurations and consequences of leaders' emotional significance in teachers' working lives. The leader data are considered under two broad categories: ‘leaders and others’ and ‘leaders and the self’. Patterns of conflicting pressures from a variety of sources put strains on the leaders' self and are associated with both the problems and the positive potential in relationships with teachers and others. Additionally, the online experience had transformational effects for the leaders. An incipient theoretical framework of emotional epistemologies is proposed. The thesis underscores the emotional and professional value of creating safe spaces for leaders to consider together, the emotional dimension of their work. Implications for theory, research, policy and practice are discussed.
Western education and modernization in a Buddhist village of Bangladesh: a case study of the Barua community
Keywords: Education, Western influences
Education, Bangladesh
Education, Bangladesh
Buddhism and education

Through a case study of a Buddhist village in the southeastern part of Bangladesh, this research examines the issues of Western education and modernization within the socio-political context of Bangladesh. This study exclusively focuses on the Barua community. It adopts an anti-colonial discursive framework. This framework offers both theoretical and practical responses to the issues of education and modernization. The anti-colonial approach acknowledges the value of local knowledge, cultural history and the daily life experiences of the people in understanding social reality. The research participants confirmed that the education they received is contradictory to the Buddhist culture and traditions. They reflected that the Buddhist educational values are different from the Western educational values. Furthermore, the participants mentioned that Buddhist education advocates the principles of compassion and generosity for the welfare of all creatures. It does not believe in domestication. The participants also stated that this scheme towards massive modernization tends to disconnect the Barua community from the practice of Buddhist ethics. They pointed out that the Western form of education pulled community members away from their own social environment and economy. This education created an image of Western materialistic ways of life as well as forced them to adopt the views of the dominant power in the name of modernization. The restoration of Buddhist ethics and educational values in the country is a great challenge for the minority Barua community. It was observed that their political representation was absent at the national level, although community resistance for social identity and cultural rights existed within the case study village.
Connecting bioinformatics analysis to scientific practice: an integrated information behaviour and task analysis approach
Keywords: Bioinformatics

The advent of bioinformatics has significantly impacted biomedical research, with the need for scientists to become proficient in bioinformatics analysis. However, research has not considered how to make these complex resources accessible to laboratory scientists. There were common characteristics in the approaches to bioinformatics analysis. Participants used a series of resources in a step-wise approach. Their information seeking was very focussed and directed, with no browsing or exploration. The study followed a qualitative approach, with data collected through semi-structured interviews and web-based surveys. Twenty bioinformatics experts described the bioinformatics analysis process they each followed to conduct a functional analysis of a gene. The individual approaches were merged into a single, consensus protocol, which was validated by both the original participants, and a new cohort of eighteen additional experts. The consensus protocol describes a series of fourteen analytical steps, linked in three alternate sequences. Each step provides details of the analysis, including: rationale, input/output data, tools used, and interpretation of the results. The protocol provides a connection between a series of bioinformatics analyses, and the application of the findings to solve a scientific problem. This is a departure from traditional bioinformatics research focussed on the details of one particular type of analysis. This research contributes to bioinformatics by linking bioinformatics analysis to solving a scientific problem, and to information science by explicitly linking information use to an information task. One goal of this research was to understand, within a framework of information behaviour and task analysis, the application of bioinformatics analysis to a specific scientific problem, that of conducting a functional analysis of a gene. The other was to examine the relationship between information behaviour and task. The integration of information behaviour and task analysis approaches provides a powerful means for studying information tasks, with the information behaviour approach providing a rich, broad, high level picture of the information environment, and task analysis providing the direct link to the objective or goal for which information is needed and sought. This novel approach for information science research provides an approach for explicitly studying how information is used to accomplish a goal.
You do what you are: a case study of the manifestation of science teacher identity in a curriculum development project
Keywords: Science teachers
Teacher participation in curriculum planning
Educational sociology
Identity (Psychology)

Recent secondary school reforms, mandated by Ontario's Ministry of Education and Training (the Ministry) have drawn attention to the technician/professional debate; on-going in education for at least thirty years. This qualitative case study in the critical tradition, investigates how teachers' conceptions of their own identity influence their curricular decisions. I examine the experiences of a curriculum writing team, which included the investigator, as it developed a new Philosophy of Science and Technology course to replace the Science and Society course that the Ministry had removed from the high school curriculum. We found that our conceptions of our own identity conflict with the Ministry's expectations of us as classroom teachers and that this conflict is aggravated by a major communication problem between teachers and the Ministry. The participants concluded that meaningful reform can only occur through working with the Ministry as professionals. Ways of facilitating this change are explored.
Transnational dislocations: the use of deportation as crime control
Keywords: Deportation, Canada
Alien criminals, Canada
Criminals, Jamaica

In a theoretical exploration of the notion that societies often construct marginalized groups and/or persons as criminal Other, not only through hegemonic discourse but through various legal forms, this thesis engages the question of how laws help to construct a particularized notion of specific racialized groups as Criminal Other. The study draws on previously published research that focuses on the issue of deportation from Canada, and examines the ways in which deportation policies, designed to serve the domestic interests of powerful states, impact on nations with relatively little power to escape the global reverberations of such practices. Located within an emergent field of transnational criminology, this thesis extends beyond the confines of the nation-state that has traditionally constituted the realm of criminological enquiry and engages a cross-national perspective that questions the possible implications of "domestic" policy on regional, and increasingly global, dimensions of security. The data presented extends the field of knowledge in this area of research with an analysis of the effects of Canada's 1995 deportation provisions, as seen from the perspective of those deported, and from a vantage point that considers the impact of such policies on receiving countries. The study's original contribution to the subject area is two-fold. Firstly, it examines the previously unexplored international implications of Canadian deportation policy through a documentation of its potential impact on another sovereign nation. Informed by post-colonial and critical race theories, this study is perched on the margins of an exploratory transnational theoretical framework that focuses on the use of deportation as a method of crime control, and examines the effect of the relocation of large numbers of criminal offenders on Jamaican society. Secondly, the study fills a gap in the current literature by providing primary research data on a vulnerable population, and aiding in a process of "coming to voice" for those whose stories often remain untold. Through an in-depth examination of the lives of the deported foreign-born criminal offender, the study pursues a path that seeks to encourage further criminological enquiry on the under-explored yet vexed issue of deportation and its discontents.