VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Discourse Itineraries in an EAP Classroom: A Collaborative Critical Literacy Praxis

This classroom ethnography documents the developing critical literacy pedagogy of an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructor over the course of several terms. My research, which involved extensive collaboration with the EAP instructor, explores how specific classroom practices and discourses are enacted and mediated through dialogic intertextualities, material objects, and social actions that frame representations about language, literacy, and what Lefebvre (1988) called “le quotidien” – the everyday, and how these affect the students’ meaning-making potential in specific ways. It also traces the contours (and detours) of the instructor’s classroom practices after the researcher’s mediation in the form of collaborative inquiries on functional grammar and critical literacy, and the effects of these classroom practices on making meaning in her EAP classes. I consider several issues from an integrated theory and practice perspective. Because of an urgent need to understand the students’ practices and epistemologies as they engage in ever newer forms of multimodal text productions, I contend that EAP classroom practices must be reshaped to facilitate more (inter)active engagements of the multimodal texts that saturate students’ lives, both inside the class and outside. Related to this, I highlight in my classroom data what actually counts as the ‘critical’ or the ‘uncritical’ in this EAP classroom and argue why these distinctions matter. Lastly, I suggest ways in which the role of a critical multiliteracies education in EAP can meet the pragmatic needs of both students and teachers. My research contributes to a much-needed dialogue between critically oriented researchers and practitioners in the field of TESOL/Applied Linguistics by bridging the gap between theory and practice. The lessons learned from this collaborative classroom praxis point to concrete ways to help EAP teachers and students utilize their meaning-making potential. This involves equipping them with an expanded social semiotic tool-kit that can enable them to not only meet their immediate academic needs, but also help create a more active and possibly transformative role in the social constructions of discourse, language, and society. This doctoral dissertation has implications for those who are involved in EAP teaching and research, curriculum planning, teacher training, and student needs assessment.

Keywords: English for Academic Purposes (EAP)
Critical English for Academic Purposes (CEAP)
Critical pedagogy
critical literacy
globalization
neoliberalism
multiliteracies
multimodality
functional grammar
social semiotics
classroom ethnography
Critical applied linguistics
systemic functional linguistics
collaborative research
action research
academic literacies
curriculum studies
identity
academic discourse
critical discourse analysis (CDA)
mediated discourse analysis (MDA)
intertextuality
multimodal discourse analysis
Advisor: Labrie, Normand
How Undergraduate Students Think about Higher Education and Prepare for Employment

This study explores of how university students understand the relationship between a liberal arts undergraduate degree and becoming employment-ready. The study employs a phenomenological approach. Surveys and interviews of students were conducted on the Faculty of Arts and Science students at the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto. Supplementary data were obtained from National Survey of Student Engagement. By employing Bourdieu‟s theory of practice (especially with regard to capital, habitus and field), the study reveals how students went about preparing for the labour market differed by their social class, immigration status and race. Students‟ abilities to secure skill-enhancing extracurricular activities and maintaining high GPA scores appeared related to their cultural capital. Most racialized first generation students experienced levels of difficulties in securing skill-enhancing extracurricular skill activities and maintaining high GPAs, which affected their employment readiness, clarity about occupational direction and their entry to graduate studies. New immigrant students were least aware of the extracurricular activities needed to prepare for employment. The study concludes that most liberal arts undergraduate students are not ready for employment at the completion of their studies and that social class and race may be related to their ability to make themselves employment-ready

Keywords: Higher Education
Employment
Cultural capital
Economic capital
Social capital
Habitus
University field
symbolic power
Minorites
Occupational decision
Student experiences
preparing for employment
Advisor: Bascia, Nina
Holistic Approaches to Creative Problem Solving

This qualitative research study explores the complex phenomenon of intuition within the Creative Problem Solving process. The first part of the study utilized 100 alumni, students, professors, and visiting professors of the International Center for Studies in Creativity (ICSC). These participants were asked a series of questions in order to help the researcher answer the questions: How do creativity practitioners construe intuition? What role does intuition play in the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) (Miller, Vehar & Firestein, 2001; Noller, Parnes & Biondi, 1976; Osborn, 1953; Puccio, Murdock & Mance, 2006) process? The second part of the study involved eleven graduate students enrolled as Creative Studies majors at ICSC who were participants in a course on holistic approaches to Creative Problem Solving. The study explored the questions: Are intuitive tools and techniques effective in CPS? If so, when are they effective? When CPS is taught from a holistic perspective, is transformation likely to occur? Four theoretical models, including: a definitional model of intuition; a skill set for intuition, a process to improve the effectiveness of intuitive tools; and a transformational model of learning, were developed. These models were designed as a way for creativity practitioners to understand this phenomenon and to incorporate it into their practices.

Keywords: creativity
intuition
problem solving
Advisor: Cameron, Linda
More than a New Country: Effects of Immigration, Home Language, and School Mobility on Elementary Students' Academic Development

Few studies have quantified the effects on academic performance; none has investigated, as this study does, the effects of immigration, home language, and school mobility on academic development over time. What makes this study unique is its melding of sociological and psychometric perspectives – an approach that is still quite new. Logistic regression was used to analyze data from Ontario’s 2007-2008 Junior (Grade 6) Assessment of Reading, Writing and Mathematics, with linked assessment results from three years earlier, to investigate students’ academic achievement. The focus of this study is on whether the students maintained proficiency between Grades 3 and 6 or achieved proficiency in Grade 6 if they were not proficient in Grade 3. The results indicate that Grade 3 proficiency is the strongest predictor of Grade 6 proficiency and that home language or interactions with home language are also significant in most cases. In addition, students who speak a language other than or in addition to English at home are, in general, a little more likely to be proficient at Grade 6. Most students who were born outside of Canada were significantly more likely than students born in Canada to stay or become proficient in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics by Grade 6. These results highlight the importance of considering the enormous heterogeneity of immigrants’ experiences when studying the effects of immigration on academic performance.

Keywords: Immigrant education
standardised testing
home language
immigrant schooling Ontario
Advisor: Childs, Ruth A.
The Effects of Parent-child and Teacher-child Relationships on Diverse Children's Transition to School

The transition to school marks an important developmental step for children and families. Coping and competence during such a transition begin long before the child enters the classroom and effects last for many years. Although children are born with the capacity to learn, it is the quality of relationships, particularly the relationship with the primary caregiver that shapes early learning experiences. This study examined the links between the attachment relationship between mother and child on the developing teacher-child relationship, the effects of the adult-child relationships on child outcomes and on children’s perspectives of their kindergarten experience. Contextual factors were considered in relation to adult-child relationships and child outcomes. Despite a robust literature on mother-child relationships and teacher-child relationships, no empirical studies have examined these relationships with parallel instruments and few studies include the children’s voices. For this study, participants included mothers and their kindergarten children (N= 74) and kindergarten teachers (N=7) from five schools that differed in linguistic and socio-economic profiles. Mothers and teachers completed a Q-Sort measure of child attachment security and dependency, and children participated in three early literacy tasks and a child interview. The lack of significant association between mother-child attachment quality and dependency and direct child literacy outcomes was a surprising finding. Nevertheless, child interviews revealed that children who were less secure and more dependent with their mothers expressed difficulties with the academic aspects of school. The quality of teacher-child relationships was positively related to children’s early literacy outcomes. These findings were interpreted in light of contextual factors as suggested by Bronfenbrenner’s social-ecological theory. Adult reports of children’s attachment security and dependency were related to children’s participation in childcare or in a preschool program for more than 10 hours a week and to attendance in a private school that offered a full day preschool and kindergarten program. The implications of these findings point to the important role of high quality early childhood experiences that support attachment relationships with caregivers as children make the transition to school.

Keywords: attachment
transition to school
Attachment Q-Sort
parent-child realtionships
teacher-child realtionships
preschool
kindergarten
childcare
Advisor: Pelletier, Janette
Spiritual Diversity in Modern Ontario Catholic Education: How Youth Imbue an Anti-colonial Identity Through Faith

Approximately one in two parents across the province of Ontario, regardless of personal religious beliefs, now choose to enrol their children in a public Roman Catholic secondary school over the public secular school counterpart. The Ontario Roman Catholic school system has historically struggled for recognition and independence as an equally legitimate system in the province. Students in modern schools regard religion and spirituality as critical aspects to their individual identities, yet this study investigates the language and knowledge delivered within the systemic marginalization and colonial framework of a Euro-centric school system and the level of inclusivity and acceptance it affords its youth. Using a critical ethnographic methodology within a single revelatory case study, this study presents the voices of youth as the most critical voice to be heard on identity and identity in faith in Ontario Roman Catholic schools. Surveys with students and student families are complemented with in-depth student interviews, triangulated with informal educational staff interviews and the limited literature incorporating youth identity in modern Ontario Roman Catholic schools. Through the approach of an anti-colonial discursive framework, incorporating a theology of liberation that emphasizes freedom from oppression, the voice of Roman Catholic secondary school youth are brought forth as revealing their struggle for identity in a system that intentionally hides identity outside of being Roman Catholic. Broader questions discussed include: (a) What is the link between identity, schooling and knowledge production?; (b) How do the different voices of students of multi-faiths, educators, administrators, and so forth, contradict, converge and diverge from each other?; (c) How are we to understand the role and importance of spirituality in schooling, knowledge production, and claims of Indigenity and resistance to colonizing education?; (d) What does it mean to claim spirituality as a valid way of knowing?; (e) In what way does this study help understand claims that spirituality avoids splitting of the self?; (f) How do we address the fact that our cultures today are threatened by the absence of community?; and (g) What are the pedagogic and instructional relevancies of this work for the classroom teacher?

Keywords: Youth Identity
Anti-Colonialism
Roman Catholic Schools
Spirituality
Advisor: Dei, George Jerry Sefa
Workplace Learning in Secondary Schools: An Examination of Ontario's Venture into Formal Career Education

Employing Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this study will examine the origins, creation, and implementation of Ontario’s Career Studies course as it relates to existing economic and workplace practices. Specifically, two broad aspects of the course will be addressed. First, the expectations for the course will be examined to determine the general approach to workplace education as outlined in course curriculum documents and approved-for-use textbooks. Also included in this analysis will be the ways Career Studies teachers interpret and deliver course material. Secondly, this study will uncover the opportunities students have to control and empower themselves in their career development. This includes an exploration of the alternatives to current workplace and economic practices as presented in the course materials, as well as the strategies emphasized for students to adopt in their career planning. At the moment Career Studies, like other career education and guidance programs in Canada, presents current neo-liberal market and labour trends as permanent and outside the control of human agency. In response to these trends, students are expected to improve their marketability for employment through individual and competitive career-development practices, in effect distancing themselves from others through formal credential attainment and attitudinal adjustments that best suit employers. Opportunities for students to experience collective empowerment through alternative workplace and economic practices are noticeably absent from the course. This study wishes to shed light on some of the shortcomings of career education in Ontario and to propose recommendations that truly situate students as architects of their career planning. Employing Hyslop-Margison and Graham’s (2003) Principles for Democratic Learning (PDL), this study concludes that opportunities for students to critically examine and question current workplace practices, explore alternatives to the status quo, and, most importantly, understand the social elements behind current workplace and economic conditions, will better position students to control their future work lives.

Keywords: career education
secondary schools
Ontario
Advisor: Livingstone, David W.
An Investigation of the Impact of Mentoring on Students' Decisions to Pursue Professions in Medicine/Health Sciences: A Sociocultural Framework for Multicultural Science Education

In the 21st Century and beyond, it is clear that science and technology will be a catalyst in strengthening economic competitiveness and fostering social cohesion. However, some minoritized students are not engaged in science or related careers in science such as medicine. This study addresses the systemic issue of equitable and accessible science education as a requisite for career acquisition such as medicine. Mentoring is presented as a sociocultural participatory activity for engaging students in science learning. The purpose of this study is to assess the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine Summer Mentorship Program (SMP) and to use the data to theorize on the mentoring phenomenon. In 1994, the SMP was established as a means of ameliorating the traditionally low participation of Aboriginal and Black students in medicine and other health sciences. For the first 10 years (1994 – 2004), 250 participants enrolled in the program. Recently, ten past mentees of the program matriculated into various medical schools (5 in the Class of 2008 at the University of Toronto, this is significant, as the norm is usually 0 or at most 2). The study utilized a qualitative approach, requiring the collection of semi-structured one-on-one interview data and an interpretive phenomenological methodology to evaluate the data. There was an increased level of school and community involvement when students returned to high school and an increased awareness of the academic and career choices available to protégés. Mentees indicated that the influence of the SMP followed them much further than the end of the summer and considered it to be an important and defining moment in their educational journey. Communication could be improved so that mentors get a sense of their own impact and for professional development. Recommendations include conducting a study more focused on the impact of the SMP on Aboriginal students who completed the program. Finally, from a theoretical perspective, further work is recommended in order to fine-tune the proposed Mentoring Oriented Teaching and Learning Strategy (MOTALS) framework that incorporates students as natives in a welcoming community of science practice rather than immigrants in a strange land of non-contextual science knowledge.

Keywords: mentoring
sociocultural framework
activity theory
multicultural science education
medicine and health sciences careers
career acquisitions
Advisor: Wallace, John
Design, Implementation, Modeling, and Optimization of Next Generation Low-Voltage Power MOSFETs

In this thesis, next generation low-voltage integrated power semiconductor devices are proposed and analyzed in terms of device structure and layout optimization techniques. Both approaches strive to minimize the power consumption of the output stage in DC-DC converters. In the first part of this thesis, we present a low-voltage CMOS power transistor layout technique, implemented in a 0.25µm, 5 metal layer standard CMOS process. The hybrid waffle (HW) layout was designed to provide an effective trade-off between the width of diagonal source/drain metal and the active device area, allowing more effective optimization between switching and conduction losses. In comparison with conventional layout schemes, the HW layout exhibited a 30% reduction in overall on-resistance with 3.6 times smaller total gate charge for CMOS devices with a current rating of 1A. Integrated DC-DC buck converters using HW output stages were found to have higher efficiencies at switching frequencies beyond multi-MHz. In the second part of the thesis, we present a CMOS-compatible lateral superjunction FINFET (SJ-FINFET) on a SOI platform. One drawback associated with low-voltage SJ devices is that the on-resistance is not only strongly dependent on the drift doping concentration but also on the channel resistance as well. To resolve the issue, a SJ-FINFET structure consisting of a 3D trench gate and SJ drift region was developed to minimize both channel and drift resistances. Several prototype devices were fabricated in a 0.5µm CMOS compatible process with nine masking layers. In comparison with conventional SJ-LDMOSFETs, the fabricated SJ-FINFETs demonstrated approximately 30% improvement in Ron,sp. This is a positive indication that the SJ-FINFET can become a competitive power device for sub-100V rating applications.

Keywords: power MOSFETs
Superjunction
Advisor: Ng, Wai Tung
Memory Aids as Collaboration Technology

The loss of memory can have a profound and disabling effect on individuals. People who acquire memory impairments are often unable to live independent lives because they cannot remember what they need to do. In many cases, they rely on family members who live with them. When I carried out ethnographic fieldwork to explore this domain, I observed that individuals with amnesia were surrounded by family members who provided extensive memory support (e.g. reminders). I found that such families very worked closely together to accomplish everyday activities, such as coordinating a family outing or planning a doctor’s appointment. However, these activities were often undermined by family members forgetting. This led me to view memory aids as collaboration technology, rather than as tools that only support an individual’s memory. My dissertation explores this idea and how it can lead to more appropriate designs of assistive technology. To design collaborative assistive technology, I involved persons with amnesia and their family members in a process of participatory design. The design team included six individuals with amnesia, two neuropsychologists, and myself. Five family members were also involved in later stages. This team envisioned the design of a shared calendar application, called Family-Link, that I implemented for Palm mobile devices. I evaluated Family-Link by comparing it to the commercially available Palm Calendar in a six-month study with four families. I found that participants had significantly more shared events when using Family-Link than when using Palm Calendar. Qualitative evidence suggests that Family-Link increased all participants’ awareness of other family members’ schedules, provided caregivers with a greater a sense of security by enabling them to track their family member with amnesia, and reduced the amount of effort that caregivers needed to coordinate. Family-Link also fulfilled the individual needs of persons with amnesia by providing an information storage and retrieval mechanism. However, persons with amnesia and caregivers differed in their opinions about which features were useful. Family-Link can be a particularly important tool for families where members are not co-located throughout the day.

Keywords: Assistive technology
Amnesia
Memory aids
Collaboration
Design
Distributed cognition
Advisor: Baecker, Ronald