VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Sermones magistri Petri Comestoris: Re-evaluating Peter Comestor’s Preaching with a Critical Edition of Four Sermons

This dissertation is comprised of an historical examination of Peter Comestor’s preaching with critical editions of four sermons. In particular, this dissertation builds on the research presented in Peter H. Tibber's often overlooked thesis, “The Origins of the Scholastic Sermon, c. 1130 - c. 1210,” which identifies and documents the Collection, a grouping of forty-eight sermons by Comestor that is copied across thirty-two manuscripts throughout the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The four sermons edited in this dissertation are part of the Collection and are demonstrative of how Comestor’s sermons served as models for scholastic preaching as well as how those sermons circulated within the medieval scholastic community of Western Europe. Following Tibber’s extensive cataloguing of the manuscript tradition behind Comestor’s preaching, I selected thirteen manuscripts that represent the geographic and chronological breadth of witnesses the Collection. Prior to the critical editions are five chapters of prefatory material that contextualize the historical and intellectual significance of Comestor’s preaching. Chapter One is a survey of the research related to Comestor’s sermons; it compiles four centuries of scholarship and addresses persistent problems concerning attribution, outdated catalogues, and neglected primary source material. Chapter Two traces Comestor’s education and career to properly situate his preaching in relation to his theological writings and professional activities. Chapter Three expands on the manner in which Comestor crafted his sermons for a scholarly audience, touching on his preferred topics, techniques, and source materials; as opposed to previous scholarship, I have limited my analysis of the content and style of Comestor’s preaching strictly to the sermons of the Collection. Chapter Four presents an in-depth study of the four sermons edited for this dissertation, highlighting and discussing specific instances in which Comestor employs the subjects and methods discussed in Chapter Three. Finally, Chapter Five presents the codicology and provenance of the witnesses used for the critical editions together with new insights into the relationships between those manuscripts that are subsequently illustrated by a tentative stemma codicum.

Keywords: Codicology
Notre-Dame de Paris
Palaeography
Peter Comestor
Sermon studies
Textual criticism
Advisor: Andrée, Alexander
History’s Wages – State Formation and Labour Policy in Argentina and Uruguay

In the mid-2000s, left-of-centre governments in Argentina and Uruguay enacted pro-labour reforms, including sector-level collective bargaining. In the following decade, labour incomes rose rapidly and unions regained a central place in politics. Despite this, the labour institutions that structured collective bargaining (corporatism) were contested politically and legally in Argentina, while they became more stable in Uruguay with reforms to strengthen its institutional resilience. This dissertation explores why labour relations in the two countries diverged despite policy convergence. Although both countries instituted innovative policies to address poverty and inequality in the 2000s, they opted to reinstate corporatist labour laws designed in the 1940s: Argentina’s corporatist labour laws allow the state to determine which unions could represent workers during collective bargaining (monopoly representation); in Uruguay, monopoly representation is recognized by the state owing to the democratic will of the workers. I argue that the divergent outcomes in the evolution of labour relations in Argentina and Uruguay in the 2000s is due to differences in the institutional design of corporatism: Argentina’s state corporatism violates the norms of liberal democracy as it limits freedom of association, while Uruguay’s democratic corporatism respects and promotes freedom of association. Why did Argentina and Uruguay design their corporatist institutions so differently in the 1940s? I posit that the variation in the institutional design of corporatism can be traced back to state formation during the nineteenth century. Argentina’s state formation was led predominantly by military elites whose hierarchical worldview filtered into exclusionary political institutions that created an anti-pluralist political culture that by the 1940s had created the conditions for state corporatism. State formation in Uruguay was led by political parties whose elites created inclusive political institutions that cemented a pluralist political culture and that by the 1940s led to the creation of a democratic corporatist framework. The dissertation contributes to the study of how historical processes, like state formation, leave important institutional and cultural legacies that influence choices by policy makers far into the future.

Keywords: Argentina
Democracy
Institutions
Labour
State formation
Uruguay
Advisor: Handley, Antoinette
AN EXPLORATION OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP IN PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS IN KUWAIT: NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY, DIVERSITY AND MARKET INFLUENCES

AN EXPLORATION OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP IN PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS IN KUWAIT: NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY, DIVERSITY AND MARKET INFLUENCES Doctor of Education 2021 Mary Ellen Kelly Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto Abstract The rapid and global growth of the private international school sector has raised demand for qualified school administrators to lead schools in that sector. Many school administrators hired into private international schools enter from national public school systems in other countries. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather data on the experiences of school leaders working in private international schools in Kuwait. It probed ways those leaders transitioned from their original national education systems to teaching and leadership positions in the private international sector. Semi- structured interviews were conducted with 17 international school leaders (Vice Principals, Principals, School Heads and Superintendent) of private, international schools in Kuwait. These interviews explored how their previous experiences informed their transitions and the challenges they faced when navigating their leadership roles, and their strategic adaptations and sensemaking. Three key challenges for leaders emerged in the interviews: (1) the need to navigate highly ambiguous and uncertain roles; (2) being governed by new bureaucratic and institutional norms in highly transient and transnational spaces; and (3) reconciling their roles as educators with new marketing and business dictates. These challenges echo findings from other studies of leadership in international schools. This dissertation ends with suggestions for further research on the development of support and training for school leaders who transition into private international schools.

Keywords: challenges
international schools
school governance
school leadership
sensemaking
transition
Advisor: Davies , Scott
Vertical Oscillations in the Solar Neighbourhood and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy

Galactic dynamics is an important tool for studying what is happening in our Milky Way, because the kinematics of stars can tell us a lot about their history and the forces that have shaped their orbits. From our position in the Milky Way, we are able to accurately observe the positions of billions of stars and the velocities of millions. Observations of the solar neighbourhood have told us that it is currently undergoing an oscillation from a perturbation with unknown origins. We start by examining the Gaia Data Release 2 positions and velocities of stars in the solar neighbourhood to measure this perturbation. We find evidence in the vertical number count asymmetry and mean vertical velocity of a perturbation to the solar neighbourhood of approximately 10\%. One of the leading theories to-date is that the passage of Sgr caused this perturbation to the Galactic disc. We develop a one-dimensional model which predicts the perturbation to the vertical distribution function of the solar neighbourhood given the force from a passing satellite. By investigating a multitude of possible Sgr orbits, Sgr mass models, and Milky Way halo masses, we show that Sgr is not able to reproduce the observed perturbation. We follow this by running an ensemble of thirteen N-body simulations of the interaction between Sgr and the Milky Way. These simulations span the same parameters of the interaction as the one-dimensional model. We then look at solar-neighbourhood-like volumes in our simulations and find that again none were able to reproduce the observed perturbation to the Galactic disc. We also find that the final mass of Sgr consistently exceeds the true mass measurement of the Sgr progenitor. From this we deduce that the true perturbation from Sgr is in fact much smaller than has previously been assumed. We can therefore conclude the observed vertical perturbations to the solar neighbourhood could not have been caused by Sgr acting alone. We suggest that pinning down the origin of the vertical perturbation to the Galactic disc requires much more complicated modelling.

Keywords: Galactic dynamics
Galaxy structure
Milky Way
Perturbations
Solar Neighbourhood
Advisor: Bovy, Jo
Teachers’ Perceptions of Students’ Postsecondary Education Aspiration Capabilities

This study examines how teachers perceive students’ postsecondary education (PSE) aspirations and whether teachers’ perceptions differ depending on the income levels and PSE application rates of students in secondary schools. The study contributes to research about students’ PSE aspirations by analyzing the kinds of perceptions teachers hold of students’ PSE aspirations and why they might support some aspirations over others. The premise was that teachers’ perceptions could be a limiting factor on students’ aspirational capabilities if teachers perceived students as not having the aptitude to be successful, and that this might further be correlated with students’ family incomes. The research used a mixed methods convergent research design: Quantitative data consisted of teachers’ responses (n =113) to a survey about their perceptions of students’ PSE aspirations, and qualitative data were generated from semi-structured interviews (n =12) with teachers. Participants were drawn from three schools of varying income and PSE participation levels from within the same public-school board in southern Ontario. The findings were interpreted using the Sen-Bourdieu Analytical Framework as proposed by Hart (2019), combining both Sen’s capability approach and Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction. The quantitative data revealed that teachers’ perceptions of students’ aspirations and how teachers prepared students for PSE did not significantly differ across schools. The qualitative data, however, showed that teachers evaluated students’ capacity to aspire on the basis of students’ capability sets, as perceived by teachers, and that teachers’ pedagogy and PSE praxis differed depending on the income level of the school in which they taught. Further analysis revealed that teachers were frustrated with policies that limited their ability to effectively support and encourage students’ PSE aspirations. A conclusion drawn from this study was that, to increase students’ capacity to aspire, teachers must adjust their pedagogy and praxis to address the distinct needs of students with different levels of access to forms of capital and different family habitus; however, secondary and PSE leaders must also collaborate with teachers when developing policies and protocols that enhance students’ aspirational capabilities and functionings so all students, regardless of income level, have equitable opportunities to aspire to a PSE.

Keywords: Bourdieu
capacity to aspire
postsecondary aspirations
Sen's Capability Approach
Sen-Bourdieu Analytical Framework
teachers' perceptions
Advisor: Childs, Ruth
Refugee Parental Involvement: A Study of Refugee Parents in the Greater Toronto Area

Parental involvement enhances student learning and educational experiences and can specifically increase equitable access in education. Refugee parental involvement supports children’s learning and development, as well as the child’s and family’s integration into Canadian society, culture and institutions thereby providing the parents and family with beneficial social and cultural capital. This study investigates how refugee parents in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) want to be involved in their children’s education using a critical qualitative research design in order to explore their views, experiences and knowledge. The conceptual framework incorporates key ideas from literature on parental involvement approaches, barriers and applications in order to understand refugee experiences. Twelve refugee parents from GTA schools were interviewed using semi-structured interviews that included questions on involvement practices, knowledge, and desires. The data revealed consistencies and discrepancies with literature on parental involvement, illuminating similarities in the forms of involvement, while revealing differences in how refugee parents participate. In addition, refugee parents had similar barriers, but also had additional challenges due to migration related stressors, and language and cultural abilities. Refugee parents shared their preferred forms of involvement, including effective knowledge sharing, increasing parental agency through collaboration, removal of barriers and inclusion of their needs, and strengths-based and respectful opportunities for involvement. These preferred forms of involvement are the recommendations of this dissertation, and include a discussion on practical applications and implementation. They provide significant changes in practice which should be integrated into policy to ensure that refugee parents can access and use their cultural and transcultural capital.

Keywords: critical qualitative research
cultural and social capital
parental involvement
preferred forms of involvement
refugee
transcultural capital
Advisor: Flessa, Joseph
It’s not, “let’s do more”. It’s, “let’s do different”: Recognizing the Important Associations between Children’s Reading Skill and their Motivation and Engagement in the Elementary School Classroom

This dissertation contains a collection of three studies that examined young children’s engagement and motivation for reading concurrently in the context of word reading achievement. Participants across the three studies included students in grades 1 and 2, and their teachers, from public and Catholic elementary schools in the Greater Toronto Area. The goal of the first study was to assess how reading motivation and engagement relate to each other and whether they help to explain variance in children’s reading achievement together as a shared unit, or whether they each contribute something unique. Results showed that reading self-concept, reading interest, and emotional engagement are unique dimensions, but that they have a shared component that is related to children’s word reading skills. The goal of the second study was to explore individual differences in early readers’ motivation and emotional engagement. Using person-centered analyses, results identified more than one profile of reading motivation and emotional engagement in grades 1 and 2. The motivation and engagement construct that most informs these profiles appears to change over time, with reading interest being especially important in grade 2. A latent transition analysis suggested that a student’s motivation and engagement profile in grade 1 is important for their later motivation and engagement. Most students did not change profiles over time—maintaining either positive or poor motivation and engagement from grade 1 to 2. The goal of the third study was to assess teacher autonomy support as an instructional approach that may enable positive reading motivation and emotional engagement by offering choice and teaching relevance of learning tasks. Results showed that the pathway between students’ reading achievement in grade 1 and their later reading self-concept in grade 2 was explained by teacher autonomy support and its relation to students’ emotional engagement and reading interest. The contributions of this dissertation are to enhance an understanding of what young readers’ motivation and engagement looks like in grades 1 and 2. By considering different dimensions of motivation, specifically self-concept and reading interest, in addition to children’s general emotional engagement when learning, we may be able to explain some of the observed differences in children’s reading behaviours and achievement.

Keywords: Autonomy Support
Engagement
Interest
Motivation
Reading
Self-Concept
Advisor: Martinussen, Rhonda
Optimization Models and Algorithms for Nonconvex Planning, Pricing and Operational Problems in Power Systems and Energy Markets

Optimization models are widely used in power system engineering to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness. The main challenge in power system optimization is nonconvexities that arise from various sources, such as binary decisions for investment or commitment for power generators and nonlinear physical constraints for electric current. The primary focus of this thesis is on important nonconvex planning and operational optimization problems in power systems and energy markets. We improve decision making for such problems by proposing suitable models and developing algorithms to efficiently solve them. We illustrate their benefits by extensive case studies. First, we study a generation capacity expansion problem that combines investment planning with unit commitment. We incorporate revenue adequacy constraints in a two-stage generation expansion planning model. After making generation investment decisions in the first stage, we determine the commitment schedule and production levels, as well as electricity prices, in the second stage. To approximate a market equilibrium, we use the duality gap between the second-stage nonconvex unit commitment model and its linearly-relaxed dual as a regularizer. Next, we propose a framework to derive solutions for discrete energy market and game theory problems using copositive programming. It was shown that a nonconvex mixed-binary quadratic program can be reformulated as a convex program, which has strong duality under mild conditions via copositive programming. Through this (duality) perspective, we propose a new pricing mechanism for nonconvex energy markets that has desirable properties, and a novel method for obtaining Nash equilibria for discrete games using the theoretical results we prove. To facilitate implementation, we design a cutting plane algorithm for solving copositive programs exactly. Lastly, we consider the alternating current optimal transmission switching (ACOTS) problem, whose models contain nonconvex structures such as binary variables and multilinear terms. We propose a variety of ways to strengthen the quadratic convex ACOTS relaxation model from the literature, such as linearizing multilinear terms with the extreme-point representation, and adding several types of valid inequalities. In particular, we derive a novel kind of cycle-based polynomial constraints, which can be added iteratively in a branch-and-cut framework.

Advisor: Bodur, Merve
Design Factors for Educational Video Games

Educational video games can provide an effective learning experience if designers ensure that the games engage the player and achieve learning goals. A fun game with few learning goals will fail to teach the player, while a boring game replete with learning goals will fail to retain the player’s attention. By providing a deeper understanding of the design factors that affect these two outcomes, educational game developers can produce games that better educate the player. This study uses design research to examine design features used in creating educational games for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). 25 design features were found to be significant in the design of educational games. The goal of this research study is to discover the effect that each of these features has on engagement and learning, as well as the correlation that these features have on each other. What makes this study unique and instrumental in discovering the general effects of these design features is the large amount of data collected to validate the results. To study the effects of 25 design features, 25 experiments were run, each of which tested a subset of the design features. Each experiment involved the creation of an educational STEM game, followed by a second version of that game, enhanced with the set of design features. The experiments then measured differences in engagement and learning outcomes between the two versions of the game and then isolated the effects of individual features by performing a correlation analysis on the overall result. The design features with the biggest impact on engagement were the expression of learning goals and immersion in these STEM games. To a lesser extent, user interface, visual cues and level behaviour also enhanced engagement in the player. These generally align with the characteristics of optimal flow, where immersion, action and agency contribute to the optimal player experience. From a learning point of view, subject integration was the most significant design feature, with other features such as increasing challenge, visual instructions and aesthetic elements contributing lesser effects on the player’s learning performance.

Keywords: Design research
Education technology
Educational games
Video games
Advisor: Hewitt, Jim
Epigenetic Therapy as a Primer for Immunotherapy

DNA hypomethylating agents (HMAs) are at the forefront of epigenetic modulators for cancer treatments. As single agents, their efficacy is mainly appreciated in hematological studies prompting the development of second-generation DNA methylation inhibitors and drug delivery avenues. One of the mechanisms by which HMAs induce anti-tumor effects is by increasing tumor immunogenicity, highlighting its clinical use combined with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Despite extensive in vivo preclinical models across various solid tumor types demonstrated enhanced anti-tumor responses combining HMAs and ICB than either mono treatment. However, the challenge remains in achieving similar effectiveness in solid tumors as single agents or in combination in the clinics. This thesis explores the effects of HMAs through a two-pronged approach. First, we tested the clinical efficacy of combining CC-486 (an oral HMA) and durvalumab ICB (PD-L1 antibody) in selected solid tumors. Treatments did not demonstrate robust pharmacodynamic or clinical activity. However, findings from the study should inform continued drug development efforts using these agents. Second, we characterized the effects of HMAs in primary human CD8+ T-cells. We demonstrate that low dose decitabine treatments during ex vivo human T-cell expansion results in enhanced CD8+ T-cell activation and cytolytic effector function. Thus, providing additional support for using HMAs as a therapeutic strategy to boost anti-tumor immune response.

Advisor: De Carvalho, Daniel