VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Developing an online community of practice: a case study of professional development needs for ESL practitioners working with the Canadian Language Benchmarks
Keywords: English language, Ability testing
English language, Canada
English language, Study and teaching
English language, Canada
Educational tests and measurements, Canada
English teachers, Training of
English teachers, Canada

This case study explored the potential for development of an online community of practice for the Canadian Language Benchmarks. Participants included 10 teachers, 2 teacher administrators, 1 assessor and 1 teacher resource staff from 2 LINC centres and 1 organization offering adult ESL instruction in the Toronto area. Results from a questionnaire, focus group interviews, and semi-structured individual interviews indicated the participants thought that current approaches to professional development would benefit from integrated models and theories of teacher education. Results suggest the need for a professional learning framework for ESL practitioners to further their professional knowledge and skills. Findings also revealed primary barriers to technology-supported professional development in terms of cost, time, users' motivation and attitudes in addition to factors related to format and design standards. A number of recommendations were made for the development of an online community of practice for the Canadian Language Benchmarks.
The analysis of antisemitism in the theological, historical and sociological criticism of James Parkes
Keywords: Antisemitism, History
Christianity and antisemitism

The Rev. James William Parkes, M.A., D.Phil., Hon. D.H.L., D.Litt., was born in 1896 on the Island of Guernsey. After serving as an officer in the British Army during World War I, he graduated in theology from Oxford, later being ordained in The Church of England. His social and political concerns led him to accept a position with the Student Christian Movement and, later, the International Student Service in Geneva, where he became aware of the prevalence of antisemitism among European university students. He determined to devote his career to understanding and eradicating this social malignancy, so he returned to Oxford, where he received his doctorate in 1934; his dissertation was published under the title: The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue. The thesis of the present work is that Parkes is unique as a Christian scholar who has studied antisemitism in such a way as to provide a systematized analysis of its various aspects as a means of counteracting its influence. This analysis includes its history, a substantive definition, a formal distinction between antisemitism and the Jewish problem, the division of antisemitism into three (strictly speaking four) elements on an historical continuum: religious, economic, political/racial. Each of these categories provides a basis from which the actual causes of antisemitism can be determined and thus be eliminated. In this analysis his major premise is that the socio/political circumstances of Jews are not the result of innate characteristics but the result of their abnormal history. This study will critically examine all these categories in order to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses in Parkes' approach to the subject. Included in this examination will be a summary of his programme aimed at effecting a change in the attitude of Christianity towards Jews and Judaism as one of the major agents in instigating and fostering antisemitism over the ages.
Reflections in the glass: television and the elderly
Keywords: Television and older people
Older people on television
Ageism, Psychological aspects
Older people in mass media

One hundred and six individuals ranging from seventy to ninety-three years old were asked about the amount of television they watched per day as well as about their demographic characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, education level, family and community involvement and general state of health. The first part of this investigation painted a portrait of these individuals' television viewing behaviour in relation to these various demographic factors. The second part of this thesis explored two popular theories of emotional responding, a theory from the communication literature-Empathy theory proposed by Zillmann and a theory from the social psychology domain-Social Comparison theory proposed by Festinger. Zillmann's theory emphasizes empathetic matching of participant's responses with the bias of a television program's content. Zillmann therefore would predict for example that negatively biased programs should produce negative affects. Social Comparison theory suggests that negative messages can have positive effects if they allow individuals to make self-enhancing comparisons through downward social comparison. To assess the impact of TV on affect, the participants were divided into a Lonely group and a Less Lonely group, based on their responses to a loneliness measure. They then randomly viewed either a negatively biased video program depicting an unhappy, socially isolated, elderly man or a positively biased video program depicting the same man but this time as a happy, socially integrated, elderly man. The only differences between the two videos related to the audio component. Viewing the negative video had a powerful effect in creating a strong negative affect on all of the participants. The loneliness level however was not related to the degree of their emotional responses to the video. Overall, neither of the two theories received consistent support. The third component of the study was a qualitative analysis of the preference patterns for various program TV genres and TV program scenarios. Again the preferences were analyzed as a function of the various demographic characteristics of the participants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Italian Canadian youth and the negotiation of identities: the discourse on italianità, language and the spaces of identity
Keywords: Italians, Canada
Italians, Languages
Italians, Canada
Italians, Race identity
Italians, Canada

This thesis analyzes the identity politics (Hall 1990) and multiple discourses of being and becoming Italian Canadian among second/third generation Italian Canadian youth in Toronto. Using Giddens (1991) terms centre and periphery, this thesis investigates, firstly, the Italian Canadian/Italian centre(s)' various contradictory discourses on italianita (i.e., representations of italianness), definitions of the "right" forms of cultural and linguistic capital (Bourdieu 1977), and who can legitimately claim to be and become the "right" Italian Canadian. These local and transnational discourses produced across the Italian Canadian/Italian centre(s) define italianita and its spaces. The analysis shows how those dominating the Italian Canadian/Italian centre(s) essentialize italianita, use linguistic and cultural capital (i.e., Standard Italian, Italian culture and representations of present-day Italy) as a way of controlling who is included and excluded from the Italian Canadian/Italian worlds. Along the periphery, Italian Canadian groups reproduce and contest centre-discourses in order to redefine italianita and its spaces. Italian Canadian youth manoeuvre for access to forms of linguistic and cultural capital and positionings as legitimate possessors of such capital in order to tap into symbolic and material resources and the spaces of italianita across multiple worlds. Secondly, this thesis investigates those along the periphery: Italian Canadian youth organizations and other groups, and specifically how eight second/third generation Italian Canadian youths manage, negotiate and challenge identities (e.g., ethnicity, language, religion, gender and sexuality) through the discourses on self-identification, language, culture and italianita across and within discourse sites (e.g., home, university campus, university Italian language classrooms, peer group social sites and workplace) and multiple worlds (i.e., Italian Canadian, Canadian and Italian). In sum, this research uncovers the tensions and contradictions of what it means to be and become Italian Canadian across a multi-generational immigrant community that is undergoing change and re-analysis within a globalizing world. Critical ethnography and multiple field methods were used to explore the politics of identity. The data was analyzed using discourse analysis (Chouliaraki Fairclough 1999), focusing on the discourse on language, culture and the representations of italianita and primarily examining content with references made to linguistic practices when they revealed social positionings.
Environmental educators as agents of change in elementary schools
Keywords: Environmental education
Environmental protection, Study and teaching (Elementary)
Educational change
Teachers, Attitudes

Visions of transformative approaches to environmental education are informed by discourses of radical ecology. These visions help lead to the development of ecological models of change. This thesis seeks to explore how teachers relate their views of environmental education and change to their actions as change agents, predicated on the view that an exploration of significant life experiences provides insight into why teachers do what they do. A qualitative study was conducted with this goal in mind, exploring the worldviews of three teachers, and how their worldviews manifested themselves in their environmental practices and their attempts to effect change in their respective schools. The study illustrates how participants' worldviews influenced, to a significant degree, the extent that their environmental practices are transformative, and the quality and effectiveness of their attempts at change agency. Implications of this study for educational change are explored, focusing on the meaningfulness of the research process to the participants, and the development of an ecological model of change based on the research. The ecological model of change is presented as a basis for reflection.
Four Blickling homilies
Keywords: Literature, Medieval
Religion, History

This thesis offers editions of four of the Old English homilies found in the Buickling manuscript, Princeton, Scheide Library ms 71. The four homilies edited are those numbered I, XIV, XV, and XVI, composed for the feasts of the Annunciation, of the birth of John the Baptist, of Saints Peter and Paul, and of Saint Michael, respectively. Each of these homilies is uniquely transmitted in the Buickling manuscript, follows known Latin sources, and presents many textual problems largely neglected in earlier editions and studies. Careful comparison of the various Latin sources, here printed together with the edited texts of the homilies, reveals the extent of these textual problems and is the basis of many of the emendations newly proposed.
The role of a court-driven reorganization scheme under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act in corporate governance
Keywords: Corporate reorganizations, Canada
Debtor and creditor, Canada
Corporate governance, Canada

This thesis is concerned with Corporate Reorganization under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (R.S.C. 1985, c. C-36; the "Act"). While empirical studies fail to show conclusive results, it is argued in this paper that reorganizations under the Act may have resulted in the demise of private governance mechanisms and the subsequent increase in interest rates and monitoring costs; that management has a strong incentive to turn to reorganization in order to preserve their jobs; that the employees of the firm are not necessarily better off under the Act's regime, and concludes with stating that the creditors' consent to the plan, does not in itself justify the procedure that is deemed inefficient. Thus, this paper suggests that the free market, as a catalyst to restructure, would serve as a better solution to the problem of troubled firms and calls for the decreased use of the Act, as well as for a more narrow, rigid and self restrained interpretive approach towards the Act.
The aftermath of Canada's implementation of the Doha Declaration on the future of pharmaceutical innovation
Keywords: Drugs, Canada
Technological innovations, Law and legislation
Technological innovations, Canada

Pharmaceutical product patents have recently become the focus of attention for health activists and governments worldwide, largely because of their direct effect on people's lives and survival; particularly the thousands of people suffering from HIV/AIDS. On 30 August 2003, pursuant to the adoption of the Doha Declaration on TRIPS Agreement and Public Health [on 14 November 2001], the WTO Council for TRIPs met to find a solution to the difficulty faced by countries with insufficient or no capacity to manufacture drugs. It was resolved, during this meeting, that developed countries could now issue compulsory licenses for purposes of exporting HIV/AIDS drugs to developing countries. Prior to this resolution, compulsorily licensed products were restricted only to the domestic market of the country issuing the license. Canada became the first developed country to take the bold step of pledging that they will amend their patent laws for purposes of providing drugs to developing countries. This paper analyses the possible implications of Canada's decision with respect to other developed countries, drug manufacturers, and the future of international patent protection generally.
Criminal law on the aboriginal plainsthe First Nations and the first criminal court in the North-West Territories, 1870-1903
Keywords: Indigenous peoples, Criminal law
Indigenous peoples, Northwest Territories
Criminal courts, Northwest Territories

This study undertakes an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the First Nations and the criminal law in the 'Saskatchewan' region of the North-West Territories, taking as its temporal point of departure the creation of the Territories in 1870. Through data derived from criminal court records from Hugh Richardson's tenure on the territorial bench (1876–1903), this study analyses the role of Canadian criminal law in a watershed period of social and legal transformation in and for the lives of the First Nations. The dissertation critically engages with discourses of criminalization in the historiography and calls for greater precision in the use of 'criminalization', where distinctions between criminal law and other forms of law are recognized. Specifically, it argues that offences under the Indian Act offences did not criminalize but rather 'Indianized' the First Nations. They were prosecuted as "Indians" - not as criminals - for not conforming to the behaviour required of Indians by the Indian Act. The dissertation departs from a conventional approach to criminal law, as forms of Aboriginal participation, rather than legal categories, were used to identify themes. Through an analysis of the criminal cases where Aboriginal people were prosecuted for criminal offences, as opposed to offences under the Indian Act, and in cases where the relationship between Government Indian policy and the administration of criminal justice can be discerned, the dissertation demonstrates the importance of attention to the specificity of different legal forms and actors and the relationship between them. The study has also found that Richardson's court could be a site of resistance to government policy by different actors, including Aboriginal people and even Richardson himself, as he did not always acquiesce to the entreaties of government officials, even as he admonished the Aboriginal people before him. Aboriginal participation in the criminal court is also analysed through court records in which Aboriginal persons were informants, victims or witnesses in criminal prosecutions. The dissertation re-situates criminal law within the law-state relation and concludes that criminal law operated in complex and contradictory ways that included the mediation as well as enforcement of relations of inequality.
The missing link: the impact of low biliteracy skills on bilingual linguistic identity
Keywords: Bilingualism, Psychological aspects
Bilingualism, Social aspects
Identity (Psychology)
Ethnicity
Literacy

Studies examining biliteracy have concentrated predominantly on the positive contributions biliteracy makes in maintaining the first language. However, very few studies have examined how not achieving a high level of literacy in the community language (CL) affects the identity of adult, second generation immigrant Canadians. This study involved individuals from three different language groups including Cantonese, Polish and Urdu and examined whether their literacy abilities affect their perceptions of being bilingual. Through interviews and focus groups, insight was generated into these individuals' definitions and perceptions of ethnicity, language and identity. The findings reveal that social, political and educational factors all play a role in the amount of CL literacy an individual has been exposed to. The majority of participants stated that a lack of biliteracy skills neither makes them feel less bilingual nor weakens strong ties to aspects of their ethnic identity.
Human rights protection in Canada: A unique, multi-dimensional approach
Keywords: Human rights, Canada
Human rights, Provinces
Human rights, Canada

This thesis explores the human rights model that exists in Canada from the perspective of an outsider. It argues that the existence of three distinctive features reflects the uniqueness of the Canadian model: a shared jurisdiction between federal and provincial governments over human rights, a plurality of human rights-protecting instruments, and a protection of basic rights and fundamental freedoms at the provincial level. It describes each of these features and highlights the fact that sub-national legislation protects people not only from the state but just as importantly, from private individuals. Accordingly, it suggests that the strength of the provincial protection of human rights lies on the support given by the community. It concludes that states currently strengthening their human rights systems could draw significant lessons from what Canada has achieved on this matter.
Collaboration in high schools: understanding cultures and overcoming barriers
Keywords: High school teachers, Ontario
High school environment, Ontario
High school teachers, Attitudes
High school teachers, Ontario
Educational change, Ontario
School management and organization, Ontario

This doctoral study's aim was to examine the development of teacher collaboration in two high schools that were striving to become professional learning communities. Pounder (1998) identified five dilemmas which constrain collaboration. These provided a framework for understanding the barriers to collaboration. They were: the need for change vs. the need for predictability; resource gains vs resource costs; professional interdependence vs. autonomy and discretion; balanced involvement vs. over-contro/under-involvement; and shared influence vs. the need to be accountable. The study was conducted during a time of intensive curriculum change and labour disruption which inhibited the staff's ability to formally work together. The findings illustrate how school-wide and department cultures are affected by teacher sanctions and curriculum pressures. In one school where teachers enjoyed strong staff supported relationships and a student-centred focus, collaboration persisted. In the other school where these conditions did not exist, the pressures of curriculum change and union sanctions inhibited teacher collaboration.
A critical analysis of public participation in health policy choice in Brazil
Keywords: Medical policy, Citizen participation
Medical policy, Brazil
Health boards, Brazil
Medical laws and legislation, Brazil

Participation of the community within health policy choice attempts at enhancing accountability to the citizenry in terms of transparency related to the processes within and outcomes of the system. Public participation occurs in the form of Health Councils. This thesis examines whether public participation in the form of Health Councils is really providing a meaningful voice to communities in health policy development. I argue that in reality, the organizational structure of the Health Councils is dominated by governmental choice coupled with professional expertise; and users have only a limited say and weak influence, which is filtered through organized interest groups1. To advance accountability in terms of transparency, this thesis suggests that patterns of the equal participation can be achieved through collaborative network of interdisciplinary organizational partnerships.1Perhaps those famous lines "Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right" by Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You" makes sense here.
Advocacy and reform in support of technical education and vocational training in Canada, 1880--1920
Keywords: Educational change, Canada
Educational leadership, Canada
Vocational education, History
Vocational education, Canada
Technical education, History
Technical education, Canada
Education, Curricula
Education, Canada
Technical education, History
Technical education, Canada
Education, Curricula
Education, Canada
Vocational education, History
Vocational education, Canada
Vocational education, Curricula
Technical education, Curricula

Technical education and vocational training became an established part of Canadian elementary and secondary schooling during the period of 1880--1920. In light of the growing reality of a new industrial and commercial order for Canada and the world during these four decades, reform of traditional curriculum, which had been directed up to this period only to a limited number of students destined for professional careers, was of critical importance to secure a place for the new nation of Canada in the twentieth century. Using a model of social change developed by Kurt Lewin, this paper examines the key roles played by the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Royal Commission on Technical Education and Vocational Education in advocating for such reform and reducing opinions and attitudes of resistance held by federal government leaders as well as vested interest groups within the nation's secondary and post-secondary educational structures.
Non-native speakers of English in a Canadian teacher education program: needs, experiences, and policies
Keywords: Student teachers, Language
Student teachers, Canada
Teachers, Training of
Teachers, Canada
Native language and education, Canada
Student teachers, Social conditions
Student teachers, Canada
Linguistic minorities, Education
Linguistic minorities, Canada

This study considered the experiences of newcomer NNES candidates in a Canadian K--12 pre-service teacher education program. Having no prior experience in the Canadian school system, these candidates confronted the challenges of learning new content, negotiating through the system, and coming to terms with a new linguistic and cultural classroom environment. Through portraiture methodology, the researcher generated profiles of three NNES candidates from China and Argentina over the course of one year. Cross-case analysis revealed that candidates required additional support in developing their oral and written proficiency skills, strategic competence, and self-confidence. Candidates also needed assistance in shifting to less familiar student-centered methodologies and learning about popular culture. In addition, candidates gained by accessing support networks, drawing explicit connections to their past experiences, and developing strategies for coping with discrimination. Suggestions are offered on how program developers, educators, and mentors, can help NNES candidates succeed in their pre-service programs.