VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Culturally Relevant Teaching in Rural Communities: An Ethnographic Case Study of three International Volunteer Teachers in Ecuador
Keywords: culturally relevant teaching
indigenous education
comparative international and development education
international aid education
education for all
cross-cultural teaching

This thesis explores how three international volunteers taught in rural Indigenous communities in Ecuador. It positions this exploration in the complexities and dilemmas of International aid education (IAE) projects and cross-cultural volunteer teaching. The study uses literature on anti-colonial theories, Indigenous knowledges and culturally relevant teaching (CRT) as a conceptual framework to understanding IVTs perceptions of and approaches towards cross-cultural teaching and its relationship with Indigenous students’ lived experiences. Onsite observations and interviews with international volunteer teachers’ (IVTs) and discussions with local teachers and volunteer program director are used in a cross-comparative analysis, which examines how their teaching was sensitive to and reflective of these Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing and learning. The findings show that the three IVTs varied greatly in their understanding and enactment of CRT. The thesis concludes by exploring the implications of IAE and sets out recommendations for creating more culturally relevant education for Indigenous students.
Balancing the Double Bottom Line of Social Enterprise: An Evaluation of the Business Cost Recovery Metric
Keywords: social enterprise
social accounting
business cost recovery
social purpose enterprise

This study examines the utility of the Business Cost Recovery (BCR) metric, a social accounting tool that is used by social purpose enterprises in Toronto Enterprise Funds portfolio to separate their business and social costs. This research builds upon the BCR metric developing definitions for social and business costs and a guide to accompany the metric. The researcher tested the reliability of the metric useing test-retest methods with 20 participants. Three social enterprise experts evaluated the validity of the reliability test. The reliability test proved statistically significant, indicating that the BCR metric accompanied by the BCR guide can be used consistently. The BCR metric is a practical tool for the field of social accounting because of the relative ease with which it can be used to distinguish between social and business costs. The definitions created for this research can help mitigate ambiguity that exists across the field of social accounting.
Knowledge is Made for Cutting: Genealogies of Race and Gender in Female Circumcision Discourse
Keywords: female circumcision
international development
biopolitics
Maasai
gender
race

This thesis analyzes examples of current female circumcision discourse within U.S. feminist contexts and western-based anti-circumcision projects operating in Kenya. This analysis reveals that, despite recent critiques from postcolonial scholars and activists, the knowledge produced around female circumcision perpetuates discursive and material violence against Kenyan Maasai communities. I explore how this violence has persisted in neo/colonial eras as part of the white western feminist ‘care of self’ technique of displacing female abjection through the pleasure of whiteness. I trace how these formations of race and gender have become attached to understandings of genitalia through colonial-era race science, Freudian psychoanalysis and some feminist texts from 1949-1970. I suggest that these western feminist constructions of sexual liberation rely on depicting racialized women as primitive and degenerate. Finally, I argue that these racial and gendered constructions now inform concepts of ‘developed’ versus ‘underdeveloped’ bodies and nations in contemporary international development work.
School in Community, Challenges and Transformation: A Beginning Teacher Reflects on Experiences and Collective Histories in a Rural, Southern Ontario School
Keywords: poverty and schooling
rural and small-town education
reflexive inquiry

This research account centers on the life history-inspired narratives of engaged teachers, parents, and community members associated with King Albert Public School (KAPS). Since early 2000 to 2008 staff at KAPS collaborated with students, community parents, businesses, and organizations to meet the needs of students and to make positive connections within surrounding neighbourhoods. In the process KAPS witnessed substantial transformation. Paramount in connecting with the community was the construction of a new school gymnasium. KAPS became a hub for students, parents, and community. In the process of construction and subsequent use of the gym, the school itself developed a new sense of meaning in the community. As I navigate the process of becoming a teacher I use a reflexive inquiry approach to parallel my process of development to the transformation that occurred at KAPS. Also, this project contributes to the rural and small-town Ontario research literature on poverty and schooling.
Walking (or Jogging) the Talk: Healthcare Professionals' Experiences of Taking Care of their Own Health
Keywords: healthcare professional
self-care
arts-informed research
wellness
healthcare worker
health promotion
compassion fatigue
burnout

Many healthcare providers are at risk of compassion fatigue and burnout from prolonged occupational stress, which can adversely affect workers, patients, and the healthcare system. This qualitative research project inquired into eight female healthcare providers’ experiences of sustaining their own wellbeing. Participants (27 to 60 years old) engaged in semi-structured interviews and participant observation of a self-care activity. Themes were found relating to the variety of self-care strategies used, challenges and supports in the work context, and the important role of authenticity in health promotion practice. Self-care strategies included: social support, pacing, taking breaks, exercise, nutrition, emotional self-care, adapting self-care routines over time, goal setting and prioritization. Supports to wellbeing included: flexible scheduling, taking personal responsibility for wellness, workplace wellness programs, and positive relationships with supervisors, colleagues, friends and family. This arts-informed research project is presented in graphic novel form to enhance its accessibility.
Motor Control in Adolescent ADHD
Keywords: motor skills
Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder
fine motor
postural control
adolescence
sex differences
cerebellum
comorbidity
Developmental Coordination Disorder

This thesis presents two manuscripts on motor control in ADHD. The first is a literature review that identifies fine motor control and postural stability as areas of robust abnormality in ADHD. Further, the review suggests that motor performance in adolescence has been understudied, and reveals a paucity of data on sex differences. The second study is an empirical assessment of postural control and fine motor skills in an adolescent ADHD sample, which investigated potential sex differences. This latter study revealed that males with ADHD were especially impaired on fine motor tasks, whereas females with the disorder were particularly impaired on tasks of postural stability. Deficits were most prominent under conditions where visual information was removed, across genders. It is unclear whether motor performance deficits are central features of ADHD or instead artifacts of overlap with Developmental Coordination Disorder and other psychiatric comorbidities.
Oral Language Development in ESL and EL1 Students With and Without Reading Disabilities
Keywords: oral language
reading disabilities
English-as-a-second-language

This study examined the oral language abilities of 100 English as-a-second-language (ESL) and 50 English as-a-first-language (EL1) students in grade 5 with and without reading disabilities. Students with reading disabilities were further divided into two groups: poor decoders and poor comprehenders. A MANOVA was conducted to determine the effect of language group and reading group on the students’ cognitive and linguistic skills. The ESL students demonstrated delays in receptive vocabulary as measured by the PPVT, but were comparable to EL1 students on all other measures. Significant differences were found between reading groups for both language groups. Normal readers performed significantly better than poor decoders and poor comprehenders on all of the oral language measures. The poor decoders performed significantly better than poor comprehenders on an oral language task assessing listening comprehension. This research demonstrates that students with reading difficulties also have difficulties in oral language proficiency, regardless of second language status.
Attribution Processes in Parent-Adolescent Conflict in Families with Adolescents with and without ADHD
Keywords: parent-youth conflict
attributions
ADHD
adolescents

This study examined parent-adolescent conflict and the attributions for conflict. Adolescent participants (29 ADHD; 22 Comparison) aged 13-17 and their mothers and fathers completed questionnaires. Adolescents with ADHD have conflicts over more issues with their parents according to self and parent report. Adolescents who believed that the conflict occurred in many contexts and that their parents were responsible for that conflict reported that they had conflict over more issues. Attributions were not predictive of conflict according to mother report. ADHD status moderated attributions in predicting father reported conflict. Among fathers who believed that conflicts were their son or daughter’s responsibility, fathers of youth with ADHD were less likely to report more issues involving conflicts than fathers of youth without ADHD. Conversely, among fathers who believed conflict was pervasive across contexts and time, having a son or daughter with ADHD was associated with more issues involving conflict.
Career Compromise in Immigrant Professionals in Canada
Keywords: career compromise
immigrant skilled workers
career transition
Canada
career
immigrant professionals
immigrants
career development

This study presents the investigation of the career transition experience of immigrant skilled workers with a focus on their experiences with career compromise and the coping strategies that they used. The grounded theory approach of qualitative analysis method was used to analyze 20 interview transcripts with participants who had received their education/training and had at least 1 year of work experience prior to immigrating to Canada. The interviews revealed that the career transition journeys of immigrant skilled workers were thwarted with acculturation and career-seeking barriers, which made their career transition experiences quite compromising. The findings support the notion of positive compromise whereby the participants utilized their human agency and open-mindedness to deal with their career compromise. An immigrant vocational theory and an immigrant career compromise theory are proposed. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.
Praxis, Informal Learning and Particpatory Democracy: The Case of Venezuela's Socialist Production Units
Keywords: Informal Learning
Social Movement Learning
Marxism
Popular Education
Praxis
Bolivarian Revolution
Venezuela
Political Economy
Social Economy
Community Development
Cooperatives
Popular Economy
21st Century Socialism
Participatory Democracy

Using a Marxist perspective, this thesis examines Venezuela’s Socialist Production Units (SPU). SPUs have emerged as a clear alternative to the neoliberal model that characterized Venezuela and most of Latin America for the past 30 years. However, SPUs exist within capitalism and their political economy remains contradictory, a reality that manifests in the concrete experiences of their workers. Although facing contradictory experiences, SPU workers are acquiring important learning that challenges dominant market relations and builds the preconditions for a new, more just society. This learning is being acquired informally, in particular, through workers’ democratic participation in their SPU. For these reasons, SPUs should be considered important sites where revolutionary praxis is taking place. Therefore, I conclude, SPUs are making a significant contribution to the building of ‘socialism in the 21st century’, but further struggles, in particular, against the state bureaucracy and large local landowners are needed to advance their goals.
Preschools and the Pedagogy of Domestication: The Ideologically Haunted Landscapes of Early Learning
Keywords: Early Childhood Education
Space, Queer Theory

This thesis analyzes the “home area” learning center in open-ended preschool classrooms to address the various forms of gendered learning and pedagogy elicited by its presence in geographies of early learning. I argue that the home and block areas spatially and symbolically mimic the traditional division of public and private spheres of sociality characteristic of the patriarchal social order. I suggest that the gendered enactments of space and place in open-ended classrooms function to socialize children into heteronormative forms of sex-role consciousness through what I identify as a spatial pedagogy of domestication. I suggest that this pedagogy is enforced by ideologically haunted landscapes like the domestic landscape of the home area. By outlining critical, feminist, and queer interventions in early learning I suggest that taking a spatial approach provides a more capacious explanatory frame for analyzing how, in a neo-Marxist sense, the ideo-culturally bound relations of production are reproduced through the socializing apparatus of the preschool.
Assessing the Impact of Peace Education Training Programs: A Case Study of UNESCO-APCEIU
Keywords: Peace Education
Teacher Training
International Education
UNESCO

Each year the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU), operating under the auspices of UNESCO, hosts a peace education training-of-trainer’s program for teacher-educators from across the Asia-Pacific. In this thesis, I examine through a qualitative case study approach the programmatic design and evaluation of the APCEIU training program, seeking to monitor its medium-term impact on educators. The research is framed within a larger study of peace education programs around the world. Frameworks of peace education conceptualized by Betty Reardon and Swee-hin Toh, and critical approaches to peace and development as animated by Paulo Freire and Johan Galtung, provide the theoretical foundations for the study. Research findings are based on consultation records, documentary analysis, observations, and questionnaire responses from evaluations of the 2009 program. In the medium-term impact assessment report, 14 educators offered data pertaining to their post-program implementation of peace education concepts and practices in their work.
Japanese Indigenous Knowledges and Impacts of Vibrating Energy: Pedagogical Implication in Education
Keywords: Japanese Indigenous knowledges
Impacts of Energy
Pedagogical Implication

The purpose of this study is to engage in a discussion that is currently marginalized in academic spaces, about the notions of energy and impacts of it on students' learning process and accomplishment in the educational space. While teachers' low expectations and negation on racialized students, and hostilities from other peers has been studied, not much attention has been paid to how those teachers' and peers' energy such as hostility has impacted on students' learning process and accomplishment. In this thesis, I employ Japanese Indigenous ways of knowing to explore this theme. However, my discussion about the impact of energy on student learning process is not limited to the Japanese context only; I have expanded the discussion to the Eurocentric educational system as well. My thesis aims to contribute to the instructional and pedagogical implication for classroom teachers.
Responding to Alienating Trends in Modern Education and Civilization by Remembering our Responsibility to Metaphysics and Ontological Education: Answering to the Platonic Essence of Education
Keywords: philosophy of education
authentic education
Plato
human
truth
authenticity
west
western
phenomenology
Martin Heidegger
ontotheology
discourse
technology
technologization
jargon of authenticity
Theodor Adorno
cave allegory
unhiddenness
aletheia
ontological education
essence of truth
student alienation
Donald Vandenberg
Stephen Mulhall
enframing
metaphysics
inauthenticity
hiddenness
unhiddenness
the good
nihilism
thrown
Michael A. Peters
Iain Thomson
David E. Cooper
Joan Stambaugh

This thesis explores the most basic purpose of education and how it can be advanced. To begin to analyze this fundamental area of concern, this thesis associates notions of education with notions and experiences of truth and authenticity, which vary historically and culturally. A phenomenological analysis, featuring the philosophy of Heidegger, uncovers the basic conditions of human experience and discourse, which have become bent upon technology and jargon in the West. He draws on Plato's account of the 'essence of education' in the Cave Allegory, which underscores human agency in light of truth as unhiddenness. Heidegger calls for ontological education, which advances authenticity as it preserves individuals as codisclosing, historical beings.
Unequal Opportunities for Citizenship Learning? Diverse Student Experiences Completing Ontario’s Community Involvement Requirement
Keywords: citizenship education
community service
community involvement
secondary school students
social class
socio-economic status
adult role models
teacher mentorship
critical pedagogy
qualitative research
quantitative research
mixed method
Ontario
curriculum
reflection
social justice
service learning
graduation requirement
mandatory
high school students
youth
adolescent
young people
active citizenship
agency
self-efficacy
social change
privilege
volunteer
independent school
private school
public school
alternative school
at-risk
high-income
low-income
social problems
service recipients
mandated
focus group
survey
Canada
citizen
participation
comparative
access

This thesis examined diverse students' experiences completing Ontario's community involvement requirement. An analysis of quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups among 50 current and recently graduated secondary school students from widely contrasting socio-economic settings showed ways in which diverse participants perceived their community involvement activities, the support for community involvement in their schools, and their associated opportunities to develop capacity to make changes toward a more socially just world. Results indicated that low-income participants reported dissimilar experiences from high-income participants, in relation to the support for community involvement provided by school staffs, participants' direct or distant relationships with service recipients, and their sense of individual and collective agency to effect change. Thus, this study challenges the assumption that all students in Ontario have equal access to the citizenship education learning opportunities embedded in meaningful community involvement activities.
The Role of Family and Faith as Resources within South Asian Muslim Newcomer Communities Settling in Canada
Keywords: South Asian Muslim newcomers
Canada
Faith
Islam
Social support
Settlement
Newcomer
South Asian Muslim
Resources
Coping mechanisms

This study examines the psychological and emotional experience of settling in Canada for South Asian Muslim newcomers and the coping systems they use to manage the challenges associated with moving to a new country. Ten South Asian Muslims were interviewed within the Greater Toronto Area. They were posed questions related to the hardships they encountered as they settled in Canada and how they managed those challenges. The data was analyzed using Grounded Theory. A model was developed to illustrate resources used by newcomers to help maintain their mental health and well-being. Upon settling in Canada, the participants experienced psychological stressors and therefore sought help from their Islamic faith, their families, and community services. The combined resources facilitated the immigrants’ resilience and allowed them to maintain a positive outlook towards their immigration experience.
An Examination of Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Programs for Adolescent Males, Teen Boys and Young Men
Keywords: violence prevention
male youth
dating violence
gender bias

This study examined 11 programs designed to prevent violence in youth intimate relationships with a focus on programs for male youth currently or recently used in Ontario. The BIAS FREE Framework was used to reveal hierarchies and biases in the program materials and to help formulate solutions to the identified problems. Gender, race, class, geographic location and at risk factors were considered. Most programs maintained and denied gender hierarchies by failing to examine differences and using double standards, mainly due to second person and gender neutral language. Programs for mixed-sex audiences were found to be biased in favour of male, urban audiences. Programs for male youth were biased in favour of urban audiences. Most programs examined contained many useful elements. Recommendations include the need for gender inclusive practices, audience-specific intimate violence prevention program content, particularly for male youth, communication across involved sectors and consistency in related definitions and terminology.
Narratives of Hope in Anti-oppression Education: What are Anti-racists For?
Keywords: Anti-Oppression Facilitation
Hope
Decolonization
Anti-Racism

This project explores the connections between the worlds we hope for and the worlds we help create. Over the course of several months, I conducted three sets of narrative interviews with three anti-oppression education facilitators, and a self-study with myself. Using narrative inquiry through a specifically anti-colonial lens as my method of analysis, I worked in partnership with my interview participants to draw meaning out of our interviews. Growing from these discussions, this thesis explores the work that discourses of hope do in our practices as facilitators of education for change. How do the things that we learn to hope for inform the way we teach, and the possibilities that are allowed in, or locked out, of our classrooms? In problematizing certain functions of certain discourses of hope, this study also explores the possibilities of anti-colonial hopings as a process of generating decolonizing dreams through education for change.
Solidarity in the Borderlands of Gender, Race, Class and Sexuality: Racialized Transgender Men
Keywords: solidarity
transgender
borderlands
racialized

This qualitative study uses multiple autobiographical narratives of racialized transgender men to examine the intersecting axes of oppression at work in the borderlands of identity. The research contributes more complex understandings of transgender lives by raising questions about how gender, race, class, and sexuality intersect in the lives of racialized transgender men, and how such identities negotiate their place in the various communities constituted by those particular social locations. In particular I look at the ways that solidarity works in the borderlands, the liminal space composed of intersecting subject positions. I ask what constitutes solidarity, and I discover the contingencies operating in the borderlands that facilitate or pose barriers to full participation and solidarity of racialized transgender men. Findings reveal the complex negotiations racialized transgender men must engage in, both within and outside of queer and feminist communities, and challenge us to think through the meanings of solidarity.