Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Cultural Connectedness Scale And Its Relation To Positive Mental Health Among First Nations Youth, Angela Snowshoe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The mental health and wellbeing of youth is one of the most urgent concerns affecting many First Nations communities across Canada. Despite a growing recognition that cultural connectedness (i.e., the extent to which an individual is integrated within his or her First Nations culture) is an important factor for promoting the mental health of First Nations youth, there remains a clear need for a conceptual model that organizes, explains, and leads to an understanding of the resiliency mechanisms underlying this construct. Study 1 involved the development of the Cultural Connectedness Scale (CCS) with a sample of 319 First Nations, Métis, …

A Case Study Mapping Literacy Learning Opportunities And Identity Construction Among African Immigrant Youth In A Canadian Secondary School, Wambui J. Gichuru

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Studies with immigrant and refugee youth highlight challenges, school failure and early push-out rates (Anisef, 2008; James, 2012; Roessingh, 2010). There is limited research about how immigrant students especially from continental Africa negotiate their identity at school for positive outcomes. The goal of this qualitative case study was to explore literacy learning opportunities afforded by the school for African youth who were learning to become literate in English as an additional language in a Canadian secondary school and the implications for the students’ communicative and identity options.

The study utilized ethnographic tools, i.e., interview, classroom observation, mapping literacy activities and …