VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Critical Ethnography of a Multilingual and Multicultural Korean Language Classroom: Discourses on Identity, Investment and Korean-ness
Keywords: Identity
Investment
Korean-ness
Korean as a foreign/heritage language
Critical ethnography
Critical discourse analysis

Following critical/post-structural perspectives in conducting ethnographic research on the political dimension of language learning, this study examines language learners’ identity and investment in a post-secondary Korean language classroom in Canada. First, this study explores the ways in which Korean-ness is produced through the curriculum, how an instructor’s linguistic and teaching practices in the Korean language classroom function to include some students and exclude others, and how the students on the periphery cope with their marginalization. I argue that peripheral students’ coping strategies are strongly tied to their investment into certain aspects of Korean language and culture, as well as their desire to gain symbolic resources in the Korean language. Second, my study examines the ways in which Korean heritage language learners (re)negotiate their hyphenated Korean Canadian identities by looking at three different discourse sites - Korean home, Korean church, and Canadian schools - and how their hyphenated identities are connected with their investment in maintaining their heritage language. The data for this study includes classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, bi-weekly written journals and focus group interviews. By adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a means of analyzing the data, this study shows that language learners’ race, ethnicity and gender are salient parts of their identities, and thus impact their learning experiences to varying degrees and levels. My research findings also suggest that the ethnic identity capital that the heritage language learners embrace in relation to their perceptions of their native speech community as well as its status, is intertwined with the maintenance of their heritage language. Pedagogical implications from this study enable educators to equally empower students from diverse backgrounds, and help them to be sensitive to the relations between ideologies and power in the language classroom. Central to these pedagogical implications is that it is the role of the teacher to adequately capitalize on the multilingual and multicultural practices that each student brings to the language classroom, and to identify the social and cultural voices present in the class.
Learning as Socially Organized Practices: Chinese Immigrants Fitting into the Engineering Market in Canada
Keywords: immigration studies
adult learning
social construction of skill
social production of culture
communication
licensure
institutional ethnography
Chinese immigrants
organization of engineering work
organization of engineering workforce
engineering in Canada
racialization
sociocultural learning

My research studies immigrants’ learning experiences as socially organized practices. Informed by the sociocultural approach of learning and institutional ethnography, I treat learning as a material and relational phenomenon. I start by examining how fourteen Chinese immigrants learn to fit into the engineering market in Canada. I then trace the social discourses and relations that shape immigrants’ learning experiences, particularly their changing perceptions and practices and personal and professional investments. I contend that immigrants’ learning is produced through social processes of differentiation that naturalize immigrants as a secondary labour pool, which is dismissible and desirable at the same time. My investigation unfolds around four areas of learning. The first is related to immigrants’ self-marketing practices. I show that core to immigrants’ marketing strategies is to speak to the skill discourse or employers’ skill expectations at the “right” time and place. The skill discourse, I argue, is culturally-charged and class-based. It cloaks a complex of hiring relations where “skill” is discursively constructed and differentially invoked to preserve the privilege and power of the dominant group. The second area is immigrants’ work-related learning. I find that workplace training is part of the corporate agenda to organize work and manage workers. Amid this picture, workers’ opportunity to access corporate sponsorship for professional development is contingent on their membership within the engineering community. To expand their professional space, the immigrants resorted to learning and consolidating their knowledge in codes and standards, which serve as a textual organizer of engineering work. The third area is related to workplace communication. My participants reported an individualistic communication ‘culture’, which celebrates individual excellence and discourages close interpersonal relations. Such a perception, I argue, obscures the gender, race and class relations that privilege white and male power. It also leaves out the organizational relations, such as the project-based deployment of the engineering workforce that perpetuate individualistic communicative practices. My last area of investigation focuses on immigrants’ efforts to acquire Canadian credentials and professional licence. Their heavy learning loads direct my attention to the ideological and administrative licensure practices that valorize Canadian credentials and certificates to the exclusion of others.
An Examination of the Relationships Among Childhood Abuse, Introject Style and Psychotherapy Outcome for Depression
Keywords: childhood abuse
psychotherapy outcome
introject

The current study explored the relationship between client’s history of childhood abuse and psychotherapy outcome, specifically, depressive symptoms, interpersonal problems, dysfunctional attitudes, self-esteem and attachment. The study also explored the relationship between client’s history of childhood abuse and current introject style, as well as the relationship between client introject style and psychotherapy outcome. The current study consisted of a sample of 60 clients and was drawn from an archival database of clients who were diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and received 16 weeks of psychotherapy treatment (Watson, Gordon, Stermac, Kalogerakos & Steckley (2003). Client’s history of childhood abuse was determined using the Traumatic Stress Inventory (TSI short-form; McCann & Pearlman, 1992). Introject styles were established using the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour (SASB; Benjamin, 1974), an observer rated process measure. The middle 15 minutes of an early (session 3) and late session (session 15) were rated using the SASB. Results indicated that women who experienced childhood abuse showed a reduction in levels of their self-accepting introject style in session 15 compared to session 3 while women without childhood abuse showed increased levels of the self-accepting introject style in session 15 compared to session 3. Results also indicated that clients with managing and cultivating of self introject styles as measured at session 3 showed improvements in dysfunctional attitudes, interpersonal problems and self-esteem by the end of 16-weeks of psychotherapy. Having a history of childhood abuse was not related to any of the outcome measures; clients, regardless of history of childhood abuse improved over time. Results did show history of childhood abuse to be related to perceptions of early childhood attachment experiences; specifically, clients with histories of childhood abuse showed higher scores overall for perceptions of experiences with caregivers as rejecting and angry. Finally, results indicated that clients with a history of childhood abuse have a significantly greater number of depressive episodes on average than clients without a history of childhood abuse. Implications for future research and clinical work are discussed.
Natural Born Leaders: An Exploration of Leadership Development in Children and Adolescents
Keywords: Youth Leadership
Leadership Education
Leadership Development

This research aims to identify core elements of leadership development in children and adolescents. Initial focus groups with student leaders in elementary and high schools suggested key differences in students’ implicit theories of leadership and their identities as leaders. A follow-up survey was constructed to measure these differences. Findings suggest age-based distinctions in students’ implicit understanding of leadership, what constitutes leadership behaviour, who has the capacity to lead, and what kinds of leadership they would like to take on. These distinctions form the basis for a conceptual model illustrating four phases or “stories” of leadership identified by children and adolescents: the task-oriented “helper,” the responsibility-oriented “deputy,” the role-oriented “agent” and the identity-oriented “ambassador.”
Underemployment and Health-related Quality of Life
Keywords: Underemployment
Health-related Quality of Life
Work Environment
Occupational Health
Work-Related Stress

Considering the increasing levels of unemployment and underemployment, and the limited evidence concerning the impact of underemployment on health, my study examines the relations between subjective, objective, and time-related underemployment and employees’ health-related quality of life, as manifested through self-rated health, activity limitations and work-related stress. The study compares an expanded model of work-health relations that, along with the factors addressed by control-demand, and social capital theories, includes characteristics of the physical work environment, and employees’ economic class. In addition to the commonly examined factors related to employment and health (control-demand and social capital), my study explores the impact of the work environment (hazards, discomfort and physical demands) and economic class to determine the specific effects of underemployment on an employee’s health-related quality of life. My main argument is that underemployment, in conjunction with lower economic class, higher exposure to a harmful work environment, lack of control over work, and lower social capital, contributes to increased work-related stress and diminishes health-related quality of life. The study applies a mixed methodological approach based on data from the Canadian Work and Lifelong Learning Survey and the US General Social Survey, and qualitative analysis of interviews from the Ontario Survey on Education-Job Requirements Matching. Evidence based on cross-sectional and qualitative data analysis provides consistent findings and confirms the main assumption that high levels of underemployment have a significant effect on employees’ health-related quality of life. The study shows that employees’ economic class, characteristics of work environment and control over work carry the highest associations with health-related quality of life, while underemployment has a significant additive association with health-related quality of life, most importantly with work-related stress.
The Role of Morphological Awareness in Bilingual Children's First and Second Language Vocabulary and Reading
Keywords: reading
literacy
ELLs
morphological awareness
vocabulary
second language
skills transfer
bilingual

The present dissertation research had two main purposes. The first one was to compare the development of morphological awareness between English Language Learners (ELLs) who speak Chinese or Spanish as their first language, and between these two groups of ELLs and native English-speaking children. Participants included 78 monolingual English-speaking children, 76 Chinese-speaking ELLs, and 90 Spanish-speaking ELLs from grade four and grade seven. Two aspects of morphological awareness were measured, derivational awareness and compound awareness. The results indicated that ELLs’ morphological awareness is influenced by the characteristics of their first language. While Chinese-speaking ELLs performed more similarly to English native speakers on compound awareness than Spanish-speaking ELLs, Spanish-speaking ELLs outperformed Chinese-speaking ELLs on derivational awareness. The second purpose of this dissertation was to examine the within and across language contributions of morphological awareness to word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension in Spanish-speaking ELLs. Morphological awareness in Spanish and in English was evaluated with two measures of derivational morphology, respectively. The results showed that Spanish morphological awareness contributed unique variance to Spanish word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension after controlling for other reading related variables. English morphological awareness also explained unique variance in English word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness was observed from Spanish morphological awareness to English word reading and vocabulary, but not to reading comprehension. English morphological awareness did not predict performance on any of the three Spanish outcome measures. These results suggest that morphological awareness is important for word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension in Spanish, which has a shallow orthography with a complex morphological system. They also suggest that morphological awareness developed in children’s first language is associated with word reading in English, their L2. Overall, results indicate that the ability to perform morphological analysis is important for ELLs.
Educators’ Understanding of Child Development in Successful Schools that Face Challenging Circumstances
Keywords: Educators' understanding
Child development
Social-emotional development
Cognitive development

The purpose of this study is to examine how educators who teach in schools that face challenging circumstances understand child development and the school context, and how their understanding of child development is manifested through non-academic responses to these challenging circumstances. Using mixed methods to explore and compare the results of survey data (N = 209) with interview data (N = 48) this study examines 10 schools that face challenging circumstances that have also demonstrated trends of success on provincially administered standardized assessments. Analysis reveals the findings that educators understand the challenging circumstances their students face to be developmental in nature, that educators’ believe that these challenges involve students’ physical, social-emotional, and cognitive development, and that educators respond to these challenges by implementing non-academic and co-curricular programs that are developmentally based. This study finds that all 10 schools have implemented developmental programs that foster the success of students. These findings suggest that educators offset the developmental disadvantages their students face as a result of the community, school, and their home environments. This study finds that these educators believe students’ social-emotional development is intertwined with student cognitive development. Further, these educators have expanded the traditional performance-based construct of student “success” to include a range of success that includes child social-emotional developmental success, and in expanding their understanding of student success, have arrived at an innovative, developmentally-based approach to facing challenging circumstances in schools.
A Little Room of Hope: Feminist Participatory Action Research with "Homeless" Women
Keywords: homelessness
women
homeless women
human rights
social rights
united nations committeee on economic, social and cultural rights
participatory research
feminist
popular education
testimony
empowerment
anti-psychiatry
homelessness - Canada
homelessness - Ontario
homelessness - Toronto

In April 2005, a group of women gathered for a human rights workshop at a Toronto drop-in centre for women experiencing homelessness, poverty, and isolation. One year later, the group sent a representative to address the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This dissertation describes and analyzes the feminist participatory action research-intervention project that began with the workshop and led to the United Nations. Over the course of 15 months, more than 50 participants attended weekly meetings at the drop-in. They learned about social and economic rights, testified about their experiences of human rights violations, and planned and undertook actions to respond to and resist homelessness. This thesis draws upon observations of meetings, documents produced by the group, and interviews with thirteen of the participants, in order to examine the project from a number of angles. First, the project suggests a new understanding of women’s homelessness: testimonies and interviews reveal that homelessness is not only a material state, but more importantly a social process of disenfranchisement enacted through relations of harm, threat, control, surveillance, precarity and dehumanization. Understanding homelessness as a social process enables an analysis of its operations within and for a dominant social and economic order structured by colonization and neoliberal globalization. Secondly, the thesis takes up participants’ assessments of the project’s political effectiveness and its impacts on their well-being and empowerment, and reads these against the researcher’s experiences with the project, in order to explore how feminist participatory methodologies can contribute to resistance. Finally, the thesis concludes with recommendations for theory, research, service provision, and human rights advocacy on women’s homelessness.
The Politics of Higher Education Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. Development Challenges of the Republic of Moldova
Keywords: higher education reforms
transition reforms
comparative higher education
critical policy analysis
Central and Eastern Europe
post-colonial studies

This thesis examines factors that underscored higher education reforms in Central and Eastern Europe during the transition period from 1990 to 2005. The study explores higher education reforms in three national settings – Hungary, Romania and the Republic of Moldova, and presents a detailed analysis of the Moldovan case. Rooted in critical approaches to development, transition reforms and policy analysis in higher education, it addresses the new realities of global capitalism, inequitable distribution of power between the industrialized nations and the rest of the world, and the ways in which this power distribution impacts higher education systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Historical analyses, a qualitative cross-national analysis of HE systems in three nations, and interviews with Moldovan higher education policymakers provided rich data on higher education reforms in the region and selected nations. Higher education evolved from institutions serving very select elite in the Middle Ages to universities driving modernization in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, and to diverse institutional types - universities, colleges, institutes - underscoring the massification of higher education after WWII. Policies pursued by Hungarian, Romanian and Moldovan leaders to expand higher education were informed by the national socio-economic, political and demographic contexts, the dominant global development agenda, and international institutional practices. The capacity of national leaders to carry out higher education reforms was limited by the colonial and post-colonial relationships that were established over centuries between each of these nations and stronger regional powers, such as the Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires, the Soviet Union, and the European Union. Major regional powers had a significant role in the formation of nation states, educational institutions and higher education politics. At the same time, national elites used language and ethnic policies to shape social and higher education developments and build national identities. By bringing an international perspective to the analysis of reforms in Central and Eastern Europe, by focusing on Hungary, Romania and Moldova, and by drawing on critical theory and post-colonial studies, this research study contributes to the international scholarly discussion of higher education and development reforms, enriches methodological developments in the field of higher education, and advances the discourse of comparative higher education.
Fantasy of Empire: Ri Kōran, Subject Positioning and the Cinematic Contruction of Space
Keywords: Cinema Studies
East Asian History
Women's Studies
Cultural Studies
race and ethnicity
imperialism
colonialism
modernity
diaspora studies
melodrama
wartime films
Yamaguchi Yoshiko
Li Xianglan
domesticity
gender and sexuality
hygiene
subject positioning
Japan
China
Manchuria
otherness
family
hybridity
mobility
the gaze
film space

This thesis emerged from my emotional, tactile, and intellectual access to the actress, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (a.k.a. Ri Kōran or Li Xianglan), who embodied the cultural hybridity of Manchuria and represented a ‘modern girl’ on screen. I analyze four wartime melodrama-adventure films, in which she co-starred with Japanese actors: Song of the White Orchid (Byakuran no uta, 1939), China Nights (Shina no Yoru, 1940), Vow in the Desert (Nessa no chikai, 1940), and Suzhou Nights (Soshū no yoru, 1941). The formation of domesticity played an integral part in the making of modern nation-states. Intertexualizing with the discursive formation of the ie (house/family) between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries, I first demonstrate that Japanese film subjects are made to embody the imagined Imperial nation through gendered performances in Song of the White Orchid. The interior and exterior are constructed to mirror the notion of imperial nation and the Asian ‘other’. Next, I extend the analytical framework to the three films, China Nights, Vow in the Desert, and Suzhou Nights, which employ films’ specific locations for different operations of gendered and ethnicized positioning. I also pay attention to some of the climaxes, which unconventionally present psychological dramas outdoors and action scenes indoors. Especially, my interest in this part of analysis is in interrelating metaphors of bodily boundary and national border. As delineating the signification of body and nation, I situate the relay of the gaze in the simultaneous blurring of bodily boundary and national communities that coincides with melodramatic highlights located outdoors. In order to shape a Japanese imperial subject, the films symbolically negotiate with three levels of power dynamics: the establishment of a national identity, the mimicry of the West, and the significance of China in Japanese imperial modernity. The delineation of cinematic space and subject positioning in Ri Kōran’s films reveals that Chinese, Japanese and the West are constituted as shifting positions that respectively represent past/obstructions, present/a mobile agency, and future/the envisioned goal. Ri Kōran attracts spectators’ gaze and mediates multiple locations to identify with, while Japanese male protagonists embody the gaze by making his corporeality absent.