VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Teachers’ Ongoing Profesional Learning: A Ten-year Qualitative Longitudinal Study

This qualitative longitudinal study investigates changes in teachers’ professional learning over the first ten years of their careers. I explore how teachers’ personal lives, their school context, and the larger policy context shaped their professional learning during this period. The main data source consisted of yearly interviews with four Ontario teachers from 2004 to 2014. Five main findings emerged from the analysis. First, the participants’ learning in years 1 to 3 was largely driven by their efforts to survive in the profession, and it was focused on building their classroom teaching practice. Second, I identified a major change in teachers’ learning in their third and fourth years of teaching, specifically the participants developed an ability to become self-directed in their learning. They became more selective in choosing learning opportunities that helped them to diversify their teaching repertoire and to re-examine their vision of teaching. Third, teachers’ learning was shaped by their passions; these focused on subject matter, student engagement, learning, and personal interest. Fourth, the school context and teachers’ learning mutually influenced each other. Whereas the school shaped teachers’ learning, teachers’ leadership roles, while conducting professional development for their colleagues, shaped the context in return. Fifth, the policy context was driven by an accountability agenda that established links between teachers’ learning and students’ achievement on standardized assessments. This mandate guided the policy priorities to focus on the grades and curricular areas assessed (i.e., Grades 3 and 6, literacy and mathematics). This had the effect of restricting teachers’ learning. These findings contribute to our understanding of the ongoing and complex nature of teachers’ learning. One of the major implications for teacher education programs is the acknowledging of the necessity of exploring the connection between the personal and the professional dimensions of teaching through eliciting teachers’ passions. Implications for schools include the importance of promoting conference-like events where teachers can share their pedagogical innovations and learning, and also contribute to whole school learning. Implications for teacher learning policies point to the value of providing space for teachers’ voice and choice in professional development programs.

Keywords: Ontario
Qualitative Longitudinal Methodology
Self-directed Learning
Teacher Development
Teachers' Professional Learning
Advisor: Kosnik, Clare
Directionally Sensitive Low-noise Neural Recording Using Tetrapolar Nerve Cuff Electrode

Differential measurement of efferent and afferent peripheral nerve activity offers a promising means of improving the clinical utility of implantable neuroprostheses. The tripolar nerve cuff electrode has historically served as the gold standard for achieving good signal-to-noise (SNR) recordings and suitable for chronic implant. However, the symmetrical geometry of this electrode array – electrically-shorted side contacts – precludes it from measuring electrical signals that can be used to obtain directional information (e.g., differentiate efferent and afferent neural activity). To this purpose, the focal point of this study will be to integrate a minimum number of electrode contacts nerve cuff electrode (e.g., tetrapolar) and a robust machine learning classifier to differentiate efferent and afferent physiological neural activity changes. This thesis presents the design of a tetrapolar cuff electrode that can achieve sufficient SNR neural recordings, comparable to that of conventional tripolar cuff electrodes. The rational of this design was based on the use of a bipolar nerve cuff electrode for differentially recording efferent/afferent neural activity. However, we have replaced each contact with a (lower noise) tripolar recording configurations. In this manner, we are obtaining two low-noise signals that are subtracted to differentiate efferent and afferent neural activity. Based on the obtained tetrapolar measures, a robust classifier was achieved that can differentiate afferent and efferent data. This bi-directionally feature is particularly noteworthy, because the design constraints of conventional state-of-the-art nerve cuff electrodes (i.e., tripolar configuration) made it impossible to achieve bi-directionally nerve recording. Furthermore, the recording of neural activity related to specific physiological parameters will be extremely useful for translating this technology to clinical disorders such as VNS for epilepsy and resistant hypertension treatment, investigating respiratory disturbance related to neural recording (e.g., obstructive sleep apnea).

Advisor: Yoo, Paul B
The Neural Substrates of Tics vs. Obsessive-compulsive Behaviours in Tourette Syndrome

Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of tics and is often comorbid with obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS). Tics and OCS share many phenomenological similarities as they are both characterized by repetitive behaviours that are often preceded by sensory phenomena; however, it not known how tics and OCS in TS differ neurobiologically from one another. Accordingly, 40 TS patients with varying severities of tics and OCS, as well as 20 healthy controls, completed an fMRI scan comprised of three functional tasks to probe different aspects of TS+OCD symptomatology. Firstly, to elucidate the neural correlates responsible for the development and modulation of urges, participants completed an emotional blink suppression paradigm. During the emotional inhibition of blinks, tic severity was found to be associated with activity in the superior frontal gyrus, whereas there were no significant associations with OCS severity. Secondly, participants completed an OCS provocation paradigm with stimuli from the checking, washing and symmetry symptom dimensions to determine the neurobiology of OCS in TS. In the patient group, negative associations between OCS severity and activity in the supramarginal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, sensorimotor cortex and precuneus were common among all the provocation conditions. Conversely, tic severity was only associated with activity in the anterior cingulate cortex for the symmetry condition. Finally, resting state functional connectivity analyses were conducted with seeds placed in the supplementary motor area (SMA), orbitofrontal cortex, insula, caudate and putamen. Within the patient group, tic severity was associated with greater connectivity between the putamen and the sensorimotor cortex; OCD severity was associated with less connectivity between the SMA and thalamus and between the caudate and precuneus. In general, the studies revealed that patients with greater symptom severities exhibited less activity in regions responsible for cortical control over cognitive and motor processing, and the activation of areas that may be more directly responsible for the occurrence of tics and OCS. The results suggest that tics and OCS are characterized by partially overlapping neural substrates that may explain why they are highly comorbid and phenomenologically similar, but also why they are still considered distinct symptom domains.

Keywords: fMRI
Functional Connectivity
Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms
Sensory Phenomena
Tourette Syndrome
Urge Inhibition
Advisor: Sandor, Paul
On Braidors: An Analogue of the Theory of Drinfel'd Associators for Braids in an Annulus

We develop the theory of braidors, an analogue of Drinfel’d’s theory of associators in which braids in an annulus are considered rather than braids in a disk. After defining braidors and showing they exist, we prove that a braidor is defined by a single equation, an analogue of a well-known theorem of Furusho [Furusho (2010)] in the case of associators. Next some progress towards an analogue of another key theorem, due to Drinfel’d [Drinfel’d (1991)] in the case of associators, is presented. The desired result in the annular case is that braidors can be constructed degree be degree. Integral to these results are annular versions GTa and GRTa of the Grothendieck-Teichmüller groups GT and GRT which act faithfully and transitively on the space of braidors. We conclude by providing surprising computational evidence that there is a bijection between the space of braidors and associators and that the annular versions of the Grothendieck-Teichmüller groups are in fact isomorphic to the usual versions potentially providing a new and in some ways simpler description of these important groups, although these computations rely on the unproven result to be meaningful.

Keywords: Annulus
Associator
Braid
Braidor
Grothendiech-Teichmüller
Quantum Algebra
Advisor: Bar-Natan, Dror
Examining Education Outcomes for Justice-involved Youth

School is one of several critical points for breaking the cycle of offending. Although probation officers are addressing issues related to youths’ schooling at a greater rate than other – perhaps more pressing – criminogenic needs with which youth may present, there is limited empirical evidence to inform such practices, including what academic achievement looks like for justice-involved youth. In this dissertation I examined the school characteristics of 721 14-19-year old justice-involved youth serving probation sentences in Ontario, Canada, including relationships between demographic, criminal justice system, and school variables. Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), I examined whether there were distinct classes of youth characterized by academic and behavioural at-risk indicators, and – if so – whether classes differed in terms of demographics, criminal justice system, and school variables. Using linear mixed effect modelling, I examined the longitudinal pattern of achievement over time, including whether achievement changed over the time spent on probation. Results indicated that youths struggled academically from the start of grade 9, with little improvement throughout high school. By age 17 they had earned, on average, a third of the credits required to graduate, and – of those old enough – only 27% actually graduated, compared to the provincial average of 82%. Compared to youth who did not complete high school, youth who graduated had fewer difficulties with family and substance abuse, more productive use of leisure time, lower levels of procriminal/antisocial attitudes, lower levels of involvement with criminally- involved peers, and less justice system involvement. Using risk indicators for school dropout found within the broader education literature, the LCA produced three classes of school risk. Classes differed in intensity of criminogenic needs and total credits earned in school. The effect of probation on credits earned over time was moderated by levels of substance abuse and antisocial peer relationships. Implications for case management of youth on probation include the potential usefulness of prioritizing criminogenic needs outside of (but related to) school in order to improve school outcomes.

Advisor: Badali, Michele
Improving Disease Diagnostics using Microfluidics

Microfluidic techniques have the potential to greatly improve global healthcare through the development of devices for disease diagnosis and characterization. This thesis explores a number of elements relating to the use of microfluidics to develop devices for biosensing. A droplet microfluidic device was used to perform phenotypic profiling of single and multi-surface biomarkers on live individual cancer cells. The device demonstrated the ability to identify subpopulations of cancer cells that expressed differential expression levels of biomarkers from the main population. This device also detected the combined presence of two biomarkers of interest on cell surfaces. Next, an electrochemical assay that can interface with synthetic gene circuits to detect nucleic acid targets was developed. The capabilities of this system were demonstrated through the multiplexed detection of mobilized colistin resistance genes that impart antibiotic resistance to colistin in a microfluidic channel. A readout system was also created to convert electrochemical currents from the detection of a target into a visual colorimetric readout. Using this system, clinically relevant concentrations of nucleic acid targets can be detected in 10 min. Additionally, an integrated and simple-to-use microfluidic device was designed to translate a laboratory assay for detecting viral nucleic acids into a format suitable for point-of-care diagnostics. This device demonstrated the ability to detect viral nucleic acids from blood in 30 min using passive fluidic actuation methods with minimal sample handling from the user. Together these studies explore the use of microfluidic techniques to provide improvements for disease monitoring.

Advisor: Kelley, Shana O
The Ligand Acidity Constant Method Applied to Transition Metal-Hydride Complexes and Hydrogenation Catalysts

This thesis primarily focusses on the expansion and application of the Ligand Acidity Constant (LAC) theory for the prediction of the acidity of metal hydride and dihydrogen complexes, particularly with respect to complexes bearing NHC ligands. Computational studies were carried out on a series of iron complexes, [FeH(CO)x(PR3)(5−x)]+ and their conjugate bases, and the data supported the additive effect of ligands on pKa and were used to determine the accuracy of computational methods. The linear correlation between the computed and measured pKa values produced a correction value that was further applied to the computational derivation of ligand acidity (AL) values for a series of neutral ligands, including PF3 and various NHC ligands in chapter 3. This chapter explored the relative AL values of NHCs to study steric and electronic trends arising from substitution at both the NHC backbone and wing-tip positions. Chapter 4 reports the use of a Ru-NCN complex as a CO2 hydrogenation catalyst. Although catalytic activity is modest, LAC theory is combined with experimental observations to elucidate a potential catalytic mechanism. EXSY NMR spectroscopy reveals interesting dynamic processes, including a “roll-over” of a ligand picolyl arm which may occur via a Perutz-Sabo- Etienne complex assisted metathesis (CAM) mechanism. Lastly, two novel protic-NHC ligands were synthesized and characterized. Metallation to Ru by redox tautomerization cleanly yielded air and moisture stable Ru-pNHC complexes. These Ru complexes were fully characterized and more work is required to further explore their potential as catalysts for ketone hydrogenation.

Advisor: Morris, Robert H
Exploring the Construction of Entrepreneurial Identity among University Students

Entrepreneurship education (EE) aims to instill tacit knowledge to increase entrepreneurial motivation, intention and behaviour. Extant research suggests that self-identity is also related to these outcomes, raising the possibility that entrepreneurial identity is an outcome of EE interventions. Identity construction is particularly salient in education since it provides insight into the cognitive processes undertaken by students and allows educators to design interventions around them. But there is very little literature on the development of entrepreneurial identity among students and the role, if any, of educational interventions in that process. This study closes this gap by addressing the question: “How does exposure to entrepreneurship education influence entrepreneurial identity construction among undergraduate students?” Approximately 40 one-hour semi-structured interviews were conducted at three universities with significant entrepreneurship programming. Interview participants were in their first or last year of undergraduate studies, were from business, engineering and arts and science faculties, were 30% female and had differing levels of exposure to entrepreneurship education programming. These interviews reveal that students create entrepreneurial identities in response to many forces beyond the reach of educational interventions but that interventions often act as triggers to crystallize these forces. Students reported forces that “pulled” them towards entrepreneurship (e.g., parental encouragement) but they also reported many forces that “pushed” them toward entrepreneurship as a potential resolution to an internal conflict or social/occupational dissonance (e.g., a lack of “fit” with peers). Some students also reported factors that impeded these forces (e.g., peer antipathy). The negotiation of these forces led to three dominant entrepreneurial identity patterns: Students with an “instrumental” entrepreneurial identity viewed EE as a tool for enabling their nascent ventures, students with a “functional” entrepreneurial identity viewed EE as training in a specific mode of behaviour (to be exercised in a new or existing organization), and students with a “contingent” entrepreneurial identity viewed EE as a way to achieve personal agency in the form of long-term career options. Understanding these patterns, and the entrepreneurial identity construction process will enable educators to design more targeted interventions, policy makers to establish better metrics and students to gain deeper self-insights.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship Education
Social Identity
Student Development
Advisor: Sa, Creso
Detecting Consistency Violations in Distributed Storage Systems

As cloud computing becomes increasingly popular, there is a growing need for replicated distributed storage systems. These distributed storage systems provide various consistency models for client applications. Nonetheless, potential software bugs and security attacks can lead to consistency violations, the contravention of the guarantees promised by consistency models. Consistency violations can cause client applications to make incorrect decisions leading to devastating results. Therefore, it is critically important to detect consistency violations. In this dissertation, we show it is possible to significantly improve existing detection measures against consistency violations by making contributions in two areas: 1) detecting consistency violations caused by software bugs in distributed storage systems and 2) detecting consistency violations caused by security attacks against cloud services hosting distributed storage systems. Previous solutions related to finding software bugs in distributed systems use systematic state-space exploration, but the explored state-spaces are too generic to directly find specific types of bugs. Existing solutions relevant to detecting consistency violations caused by security attacks require either direct communication between clients or a highly available client device. However, emerging end-user devices often do not meet these requirements because these devices may be sitting behind a firewall that prevents direct communication or running on batteries. We designed and implemented two novel systems to overcome the limitations of existing solutions: 1) Modulo to detect consistency violations caused by software bugs and 2) Caelus to detect consistency violations caused by security attacks. Modulo takes a targeted approach to state-space exploration. It focuses on exploring various scenarios of diverging replicas to see if replicas successfully converge again regardless of how they have evolved. We found eight bugs, leading to convergence failures, in three well-known open-source distributed storage systems. Caelus detects consistency violations using battery-powered end-user devices that do not have direct communication channels. The proposed solution employs a novel combination of cryptographic, network security and distributed systems techniques to enable near real-time detection on limited end-user devices. Our empirical study demonstrated that it can effectively detect simulated attacks on the Amazon S3 service and significantly reduce battery consumption for end-user devices.

Keywords: Consistency
Distributed Storage Systems
Reliability
Security
Advisor: Lie, David
A Comparison Between Cervical and Thoracic Spinal Cord Injury: Critical Level-dependent Differences in Pathobiology

Introduction: Despite advances in acute medical and surgical care, there are no effective regenerative or reparative strategies for traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Patients with SCI experience a lifetime of neurological impairment, respiratory and cardiovascular distress. While incomplete injuries to the cervical cord are amongst the most common, preclinical and clinical efforts—driven by ease-of-access-have mostly focused on the modeling and treatment of the thoracic injuries. While translational efforts remain difficult, no comparative study of level-dependent SCI pathogenesis exist. In this thesis, I have examined the local, systemic and peripheral responses to a clinically-relevant model of cervical and thoracic SCI with the overarching hypothesis that baseline differences between the levels of injury will result in distinct vascular pathologies following SCI and trigger contrasting profiles of downstream secondary injury locally and systemically. Methods: Female Wistars rats were subjected to either moderate-severe C6-7 or T6-7 SCI, RNA-sequencing, Western blot, ELISAs, Luminex arrays, immunohistochemistry and high-resolution ultrasound were used to characterize the local and peripheral changes in the spinal cord, spleen and plasma. Results: We found reduced baseline levels of collagen, fibronectin and astrocytic laminin in the cervical relative to the thoracic cord. This corresponded to rapid tissue clearance, increased neuroinflammation and gliosis after cSCI. Secondly, we found that there were profound reductions in the concentration of circulating cytokine and chemokines after cSCI. Finally, we found a dramatic surge in splenic norepinephrine, cortisol and cleaved caspase-3 and a corresponding reduction in leukocyte trafficking molecules to the spleen after thoracic, but not cervical, SCI. Discussion and Impact: Taken together, this work demonstrates that: 1) vascular disruption after cervical SCI should be a critical acute therapeutic target as it results in irreversible tissue and thereby functional loss following traumatic injury; 2) circulating reductions in cytokines and chemokines are likely due to a pooling at local injury sites; and 3) the level-dependent phenomenon of SCI-immunodeficiency syndrome (SCI-IDS) which has not been consistently shown in patients is reversed in our model of incomplete SCI, suggesting that incomplete injuries result only in local deafferentation and reconciles the reason why SCI-IDS has not been consistently shown in patients.

Keywords: cervical
RNA-seq
sequencing
spinal cord injury
thoracic
Advisor: Fehlings, Michael G.