VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Youth(s), Truth(s), and Pierre Bourdieu: Taking Another (Closer) Look at At-risk Youth Intervention Programs

This thesis contributes to the ongoing conversation on at-risk youth intervention programs as a site of struggle for, resistance to, and negotiation of the cultural politics of youth. Thinking with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, particularly his concepts of doxa and field, I pose new questions that trouble youth as truth to suggest an alternate way of imagining youth as a struggle. A case study of one at-risk youth intervention program serves to make visible the ways in which historical and political narratives of youth(s) and truth(s) inform, pressure, constrain, shape at-risk youth intervention programs by implicitly defining and redefining the problem, prescribing the solution, recommending best practice, and works to draw connections between youth(s), truth(s), and social space.

Keywords: youth
at-risk
Bourdieu
doxa
Advisor: Farmer, Diane
The Emergence of a Left Visual Field Bias in Infants’ Processing of Dynamic Faces

The present study examined whether infants aged 3 to 9 months displayed an adult-like left visual field bias when processing dynamic faces. In Experiment 1 infants aged 6 to 9 months viewed videos of dynamic face stimuli. Eye tracking data revealed that these infants showed a left visual field bias by attending significantly more to the right side of the faces. In Experiment 2 a younger group of infants, aged 3 to 6 months, failed to demonstrate a group left visual field bias. Instead, some infants displayed a consistent left visual field bias whereas others displayed a consistent right visual field bias. To our knowledge, these findings provide the first eye-tracking evidence to suggest the existence of a left visual field bias in infancy.

Keywords: eye tracking
infants
Advisor: Lee, Kang
'No One Like Me Seemed to Have Ever Existed': A Trans of Colour Critique of Trans Scholarship and Policy Development in Post-Secondary Schools

This thesis considers the burgeoning development of trans studies and trans policies in post-secondary schools in Canada and the United States. It is concerned with the impact of trans scholarship and trans policies on trans students of colour. The thesis consists of a textual analysis of scholarship, policy documents and newspaper articles. The tendency to prioritize the experiences of white trans people in contemporary scholarship is replicated in trans studies curricula and reinforced through policy documents. These whitening practices affect trans students of colour and limit their ability to find meaning in trans studies. Similarly, these practices limit racialized trans students’ access to university programs and services.

Keywords: Transgender Studies
Post-Secondary Institutions
Racialized Students
Policy
Transgender Students
Trans Scholarship
Advisor: Walcott, Rinaldo
A Study of Race-relations between Blacks and Whites Over Issues of Schooling in Upper Canada, 1840-1860

Between the years 1840 and 1860, white prejudice played an important role in shaping blacks’ experiences in Upper Canada. This thesis explores and analyzes the history of black anti-slavery, whites’ attitudes toward blacks and the development of mandatory and free public schooling in Upper Canada during the nineteenth century, in order to demonstrate that race-relations between blacks and whites were worst both after 1850 in general, and over issues of schooling in particular.

Keywords: nineteenth century ontario
african-canadian history
schooling and education
racism
Advisor: Troper, Harold M.
Levine, David
Language and Identity: Bilingual Code-switching in Spanish-English Interviews

The relationship in a bilingual conversation between language choice and identity has been the subject of research in different disciplines such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and second language acquisition among others. The purpose of this research was to understand why and how language alternation occurs in bilingual interviews and its potential connection with identity. The data analyzed was from interviews from Proyecto Latino@, a previous research on Latin@ high school students’ experiences in schools and their academic engagement and/or disengagement. Participants’ narratives of their experiences indicated that code-switching is a result and a process of cultural adaptation. Code-switching in this research presented ways in which participants re-created their own concept of identity. Bilinguals of the Proyecto Latin@ portrayed a multiple identities construction –Spanish- English – when code-switching.

Keywords: Code-switching
English-Spanish
Advisor: Gaztambide-Fernandez, Ruben
Investigating Teacher Learning During a Video Club in a Secondary School Mathematics Department

This study explored how a video club could be used to help develop teacher’s professional vision by investigating how teachers’ professional vision changed over time. In addition, the role of the facilitator was studied to determine how it contributed to the development of professional vision. The facilitation techniques appear to be the reason why the expected growth in professional vision did not occur. While video clubs are a valuable way of embedding professional development with artifacts from the classroom, care must be taken with the facilitation techniques employed.

Keywords: Video Club
Video
math
mathematics
student thinking
thinking
teacher learning
professional development
Advisor: Esmonde, Indigo
Peer Victimization in Adolescents with Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Frequency and Risk Factors

The present study examined the frequency and risk factors associated with experiencing victimization by peers and bullying others in adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Sixty-four males and females (ages 13-18) and their parents and teachers completed standardized questionnaires. Adolescents with ADHD were more likely to report increased levels having experienced victimization by peers and participation in bullying others. Parent reports of victimization by peers and bullying others did not differ between adolescents with and without ADHD. Among adolescents with ADHD, those who had experienced victimization by peers perceived lower levels of social support and had increased levels of parent-reported peer relation difficulties. Bullying others was not associated with perceptions of social support or parent-reported peer relation problems. Individual factors such as internalizing problems and oppositionality were not significantly associated with experiencing victimization by peers or bullying others. Implications for future research and clinical assessment are discussed.

Keywords: Peer Victimization
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Advisor: Wiener, Judith
Programs of Choice: Successes and Challenges

This research examined a policy developed by a school board and explored the successes and challenges of implementing a Sport Academy in a secondary school in Ontario. The Sport Academy‟s Principal and teaching staff were interviewed about funding, admission criteria, staffing, equity and student engagement. When this program was established, there were concerns that it would appear to be elitist and recruit highly academic students and athletic overachievers. However, the model and programming available to students might actually provide more opportunities, course options and flexible programming to students. The issues raised by the school‟s Principal and the Sport Academy teachers capture some of the political and practical problems that arise during the development of an innovative program.

Keywords: choice
programs
sport academy
programs of choice
sports programming
alternative programming
successes and challenges
Advisor: McDougall, Douglas Emerson
Revisinting the "Black Man's Burden": Eritrea and the Curse of the Nation-state

This thesis argues that the state apparatus has failed to provide Africans with a culturally compatible form of governance. The state is a product of colonial origin, and thus, has failed to resonate with Indigenous African spirituality, moral consciousness or political tradition. By grounding my argument in the Eritrean context, I make the case that the Eritrean state – not unlike other African states – is failing in three fundamental ways. First, it is oppressive towards Indigenous institutions of governance, particularly the village baito practiced in the rural highlands of Eritrea. Second, the state promotes a national identity that has been arbitrarily formed and colonially imposed in place of Indigenous ones, such as those formed around regional or linguistic groupings. Lastly, because the Eritrean state is a rather new phenomenon that suffers from a crisis of legitimacy, it inevitably falls back on processes of violence, coercion and control to assert its authority.

Keywords: Eritrea
nationalism
statehood
indigenous knowledges
anticolonial thought
Tigrinya
African identity
government
state violence
decolonization
Advisor: Wane, Njoki
The Philosophy of Religious Education from an Eastern Monastic Perspective

This thesis explores principles inherent in Eastern Orthodox monasticism as they contribute to informing a philosophy of religious education. Beginning with an examination into the origins of Christian monasticism, we proceed to investigate the divergence between monastic practice in the Latin West and Greek East. This discussion is followed by an inquiry into the prayer of the heart, and the pedagogical principles discernable in Athonite hesychastic practitioners. Theirs is a lived pedagogy directed toward theosis, a participation in the divine energies of God. If theosis is the telos of their education, it is an end occasioned through asceticism (i.e. praxis). The pedagogy of Eastern monastics is infused with an inward-oriented gaze, concerning itself not with external objects, but rather inward relation. This interior cultivation is put into dialogue with John Henry Newman’s educational theory, as this serves as a useful lens through which to read the Eastern monastic tradition.

Keywords: monasticism
education
Advisor: Levine, David
An Examination of Clients' Attachment Styles, Affect Regulation, and Outcome in the Treatment of Depression

This study investigated the relationships among attachment styles, affect regulation, and outcome in a clinical sample receiving treatment for depression. Sixty-six clients completed questionnaire measures of adult attachment, dysfunctional attitudes, interpersonal problems, self-esteem, and depression. Clients’ levels of affect regulation were assessed with an observer-rated measure of affect regulation. The study’s purpose was to extend previous research by examining the relationship between adult attachment and affect regulation within a clinical context. Results indicated significant and positive associations between clients’ attachment security and their levels of affect regulation at early and late stages of psychotherapy. Late modulation of expression and arousal were found to mediate the relationship between pre-treatment attachment insecurity and outcome. Pre-treatment attachment avoidance, characterized by high discomfort with closeness, had a direct relationship with depressive symptoms not mediated by the cognitive-affective processes of affect regulation. Implications of present findings for the treatment of depression are discussed.

Keywords: adult attachment
affect regulation
psychotherapy outcome
depression
Advisor: Watson, Jeanne
A Conversation about Conversations: Dialogue Based Methodology And HIV/AIDS In Sub-Saharan Africa

The world’s understanding of HIV/AIDS is grounded in biomedicine and shaped by cognitive psychology. Both biomedicine and cognitive psychology bonded with historically top-down development mechanisms to create ‘prevention’ strategies that obscured from vision the root causes of the pandemic. Within this hierarchy, bio-medicine and the cognitive psychological conception of human beings silenced indigenous voices and experiences of communities fighting HIV/AIDS. This is most certainly true in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa. This research explores the emergence of the Community Capacity Enhancement – Community Conversations prevention approach that places community dialogue, and the voices of communities, at the forefront of the battle to end HIV/AIDS and deconstruct and challenge the forms of structural violence that hold prevalence rates in their place. Within these spaces, oral traditions, indigenous knowledge, and resistance illustrate new and complex pictures of the viruses’ socio-economic impact and provide new foundations for community generated movements to curb the virus.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS
Sub-Saharan Africa
HIV/ AIDS Prevention
Dialogue
Community Capacity Enhancement
Structural Violence
Advisor: Schugurensky, Daniel
Racialized Embodiment: Subject Formation and Ethics of the Self of Asian Canadian Teacher Candidates

Through Foucault’s genealogy and ethics of the self, I examine the experiences of Asian teacher candidates in the K-12 Canadian school system and how those experiences influence what teaching means for them. I look at the connections between race, the body and education and ask, how do the embodied experiences of racialized students inform the formation of the racialized teacher candidate? In my study I reveal that discourses of racism and discrimination are embodied and constitute racialized subjectivity. Through using individual interviews and a focus group, I listen to the narratives of my participants as they recount experiences in education. These stories and my analysis have important implications for educators, scholars, researchers and policy-makers interested in race, the body and education as well as concerns of diversifying the teaching personnel and transforming curriculum.

Keywords: Racialization
embodiment
Foucault
genealogy
ethics of the self
Asian Canadian
experience
education
Advisor: Coloma, Roland Sintos
Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Tier 2 Vocabulary Intervention on the Writing and Spelling of Elementary Students with Dyslexia: A Formative Case Study

This formative case study sought to explore the effectiveness of a remedial intervention based on Tier 2 word meanings for students whose primary deficit is phonological. Within the framework of a formative design research study, collaboration between a special education teacher and the researcher allowed for adaption and delivery of content while providing an opportunity to develop teacher capacity as well as student ability. The study found that focusing on the teaching of word meaning enhanced the remedial program due to the inclusion of a greater range of teaching strategies. Too few words were taught in order to bring about a significant improvement in vocabulary knowledge or spelling skill; however, most of the students believed they had improved in spelling and their attitude to writing was more positive at the end of the study. Several students showed improvement in written expression.

Keywords: spelling
dyslexia
writing
formative case study
Advisor: Peterson, Shelley Stagg
Culturally Relevant Teaching in Rural Communities: An Ethnographic Case Study of three International Volunteer Teachers in Ecuador

This thesis explores how three international volunteers taught in rural Indigenous communities in Ecuador. It positions this exploration in the complexities and dilemmas of International aid education (IAE) projects and cross-cultural volunteer teaching. The study uses literature on anti-colonial theories, Indigenous knowledges and culturally relevant teaching (CRT) as a conceptual framework to understanding IVTs perceptions of and approaches towards cross-cultural teaching and its relationship with Indigenous students’ lived experiences. Onsite observations and interviews with international volunteer teachers’ (IVTs) and discussions with local teachers and volunteer program director are used in a cross-comparative analysis, which examines how their teaching was sensitive to and reflective of these Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing and learning. The findings show that the three IVTs varied greatly in their understanding and enactment of CRT. The thesis concludes by exploring the implications of IAE and sets out recommendations for creating more culturally relevant education for Indigenous students.

Keywords: culturally relevant teaching
indigenous education
comparative international and development education
international aid education
education for all
cross-cultural teaching
Advisor: Niyozov, Sarfaroz
Balancing the Double Bottom Line of Social Enterprise: An Evaluation of the Business Cost Recovery Metric

This study examines the utility of the Business Cost Recovery (BCR) metric, a social accounting tool that is used by social purpose enterprises in Toronto Enterprise Funds portfolio to separate their business and social costs. This research builds upon the BCR metric developing definitions for social and business costs and a guide to accompany the metric. The researcher tested the reliability of the metric useing test-retest methods with 20 participants. Three social enterprise experts evaluated the validity of the reliability test. The reliability test proved statistically significant, indicating that the BCR metric accompanied by the BCR guide can be used consistently. The BCR metric is a practical tool for the field of social accounting because of the relative ease with which it can be used to distinguish between social and business costs. The definitions created for this research can help mitigate ambiguity that exists across the field of social accounting.

Keywords: social enterprise
social accounting
business cost recovery
social purpose enterprise
Advisor: Quarter, Jack
Knowledge is Made for Cutting: Genealogies of Race and Gender in Female Circumcision Discourse

This thesis analyzes examples of current female circumcision discourse within U.S. feminist contexts and western-based anti-circumcision projects operating in Kenya. This analysis reveals that, despite recent critiques from postcolonial scholars and activists, the knowledge produced around female circumcision perpetuates discursive and material violence against Kenyan Maasai communities. I explore how this violence has persisted in neo/colonial eras as part of the white western feminist ‘care of self’ technique of displacing female abjection through the pleasure of whiteness. I trace how these formations of race and gender have become attached to understandings of genitalia through colonial-era race science, Freudian psychoanalysis and some feminist texts from 1949-1970. I suggest that these western feminist constructions of sexual liberation rely on depicting racialized women as primitive and degenerate. Finally, I argue that these racial and gendered constructions now inform concepts of ‘developed’ versus ‘underdeveloped’ bodies and nations in contemporary international development work.

Keywords: female circumcision
international development
biopolitics
Maasai
gender
race
Advisor: Nestel, Sheryl
School in Community, Challenges and Transformation: A Beginning Teacher Reflects on Experiences and Collective Histories in a Rural, Southern Ontario School

This research account centers on the life history-inspired narratives of engaged teachers, parents, and community members associated with King Albert Public School (KAPS). Since early 2000 to 2008 staff at KAPS collaborated with students, community parents, businesses, and organizations to meet the needs of students and to make positive connections within surrounding neighbourhoods. In the process KAPS witnessed substantial transformation. Paramount in connecting with the community was the construction of a new school gymnasium. KAPS became a hub for students, parents, and community. In the process of construction and subsequent use of the gym, the school itself developed a new sense of meaning in the community. As I navigate the process of becoming a teacher I use a reflexive inquiry approach to parallel my process of development to the transformation that occurred at KAPS. Also, this project contributes to the rural and small-town Ontario research literature on poverty and schooling.

Keywords: poverty and schooling
rural and small-town education
reflexive inquiry
Advisor: Knowles, J. Gary
Walking (or Jogging) the Talk: Healthcare Professionals' Experiences of Taking Care of their Own Health

Many healthcare providers are at risk of compassion fatigue and burnout from prolonged occupational stress, which can adversely affect workers, patients, and the healthcare system. This qualitative research project inquired into eight female healthcare providers’ experiences of sustaining their own wellbeing. Participants (27 to 60 years old) engaged in semi-structured interviews and participant observation of a self-care activity. Themes were found relating to the variety of self-care strategies used, challenges and supports in the work context, and the important role of authenticity in health promotion practice. Self-care strategies included: social support, pacing, taking breaks, exercise, nutrition, emotional self-care, adapting self-care routines over time, goal setting and prioritization. Supports to wellbeing included: flexible scheduling, taking personal responsibility for wellness, workplace wellness programs, and positive relationships with supervisors, colleagues, friends and family. This arts-informed research project is presented in graphic novel form to enhance its accessibility.

Keywords: healthcare professional
self-care
arts-informed research
wellness
healthcare worker
health promotion
compassion fatigue
burnout
Advisor: Cole, Ardra
Motor Control in Adolescent ADHD

This thesis presents two manuscripts on motor control in ADHD. The first is a literature review that identifies fine motor control and postural stability as areas of robust abnormality in ADHD. Further, the review suggests that motor performance in adolescence has been understudied, and reveals a paucity of data on sex differences. The second study is an empirical assessment of postural control and fine motor skills in an adolescent ADHD sample, which investigated potential sex differences. This latter study revealed that males with ADHD were especially impaired on fine motor tasks, whereas females with the disorder were particularly impaired on tasks of postural stability. Deficits were most prominent under conditions where visual information was removed, across genders. It is unclear whether motor performance deficits are central features of ADHD or instead artifacts of overlap with Developmental Coordination Disorder and other psychiatric comorbidities.

Keywords: motor skills
Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder
fine motor
postural control
adolescence
sex differences
cerebellum
comorbidity
Developmental Coordination Disorder
Advisor: Tannock, Rosemary
Oral Language Development in ESL and EL1 Students With and Without Reading Disabilities

This study examined the oral language abilities of 100 English as-a-second-language (ESL) and 50 English as-a-first-language (EL1) students in grade 5 with and without reading disabilities. Students with reading disabilities were further divided into two groups: poor decoders and poor comprehenders. A MANOVA was conducted to determine the effect of language group and reading group on the students’ cognitive and linguistic skills. The ESL students demonstrated delays in receptive vocabulary as measured by the PPVT, but were comparable to EL1 students on all other measures. Significant differences were found between reading groups for both language groups. Normal readers performed significantly better than poor decoders and poor comprehenders on all of the oral language measures. The poor decoders performed significantly better than poor comprehenders on an oral language task assessing listening comprehension. This research demonstrates that students with reading difficulties also have difficulties in oral language proficiency, regardless of second language status.

Keywords: oral language
reading disabilities
English-as-a-second-language
Advisor: Geva, Esther