Steps Toward Healing A Colonial System While Improving Equitable Experiences For Indigenous Learners K-12 In A Bc Rural School District, Gail Higginbottom

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

The Canadian K–12 education system is built on the policy and practices of genocide at Indian residential schools and on ongoing Indigenous-specific racism. With a history of assimilation, it is imperative to address settler colonialism in education today. Through the agency of a Secwépemc district principal, Secwépemc ways of knowing and being, decolonial leadership, and critical and transformative theories emerge as tools for a fraught education system. As a problem of practice, the tension between Indigenous student success and systemic understandings of Indigenous ways of knowing highlights the imperative to address colonial system conditions while improving equitable experiences of Indigenous …

A Shift Towards Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices In Workplace Education, Nancy M. Thompson

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) focuses on a nonprofit organization resolving a problem of practice (PoP) that was identified following the withdrawal of its funder’s support. The problem is an absence of culturally responsive teaching practices (CRTP) in the pedagogy knowledge of subject matter experts (SMEs) who are hired to instruct capacity-building programs within community partner organizations. These organizations are working to instil a culture of equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. This OIP unpacks this PoP and creates a pathway forward to implement a change initiative based on a triad model solution: policy, beliefs, and practice. This multifaceted approach results …

Cultivating A Change Towards A Culture Of Compassion And Critical Consciousness In An Elementary School, Leslie A. Goodwin

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Abstract

Promoting an adoption of an educational approach that combines compassion, critical pedagogy, and problem-posing learning encourages the re-connection and re-engagement of students to learning. Shifting the power relationship in the classroom and humanizing the school culture while supporting the acquisition of 21^st century skills in students promotes critical citizens who focus on creating a more socially just world. As Freire (2000) articulated, postcolonial pedagogy should be connected ethically, conceptually, and politically to a greater pedagogy of liberation. This organizational improvement plan aims to create a strong culture of learning that promotes compassion and critical consciousness in a small, …

Engaging Health Professionals Toward The Redevelopment Of A Continuing Competence Program, Salima Thawer

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Continuing competence is the combination of knowledge, skills, abilities, and judgment of a professional, applied safely and ethically to their practice of the profession. Under the Health Professions Act in Alberta, health regulatory colleges must oversee the continuing competence of their registrants, ensuring they act in the public’s best interest. At Health Professionals Regulatory College (HPRC), over 3500 registrants are accountable to its continuing competence program (CCP). The current CCP, in place for over 15 years, has not integrated collection and analysis of diversity data that may influence individual competence, nor has it evolved with trends toward right-touch regulation that …

Building An Adaptive Culture Where Collaborative Teaching Teams Leverage Data To Improve Student Achievement And Wellbeing, Anand Mahadevan

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) seeks to open up the black box of classroom teaching to data informed collaborative inquiry by teachers for teachers using formative feedback as the model for instructional improvement. Teacher collective efficacy is developed through ongoing professional learning in collaborative teaching teams that use multiple measures of data to limit bias and improve equity of outcomes for students. Such a process is iterative, and the OIP envisions the combined use of adaptive leadership and distributed leadership approaches to support Kotter’s 8-step model for change implementation. The desired outcome is an adaptive and agile school culture where …

Teacher Professionalism, Embodiment, And Surveillance: An Autoethnographic Study, Melanie Cloutier-Bordeleau

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This autoethnographic study entails using my own situated knowledge and experience as a white bisexual secondary school teacher from a low socioeconomic background as a basis for data generation and analysis. Attention is given to examining the current enforcement of specific norms governing behavioural and physical conduct, and the role these norms play in constructing and reinforcing hierarchical structures of identity related to race, gender, socioeconomic status and sexuality. The main question the study explores is: How does the performativity and performance of educator “professionalism” contribute to constructing/reinforcing hierarchies of identity with respect to gender, sexuality, social class and race? …

Equity, Diversity, And Inclusion In Alberta Accredited International Schools: Bridging Modern And Traditional Societal Perspectives In Educational Practice, Krista J. Schultz

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

International schools accredited by Western-based educational paradigms encounter specific challenges within the theoretical framework of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), as perceived through the lens of social justice in education. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) considers, from the context of modern and traditional societies, the change readiness of the Alberta Accredited International Schools program (AAIS) surrounding the practice of EDI. Generalized expectations of universal application present with factors that may provide educational leaders with the framework to deliberate critical theory motivating practice. Modernist and traditionalist societal views of EDI, and the translation of pedagogical frameworks through educational reform, are considered. …

Exploring The Experiences Of High School Syrian Refugee Students With Interrupted Formal Education And Their Teachers In Eld Classrooms, Hiba Barek

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Exploring the experiences of Syrian refugee Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE) and their teachers in English and Literacy Development (ELD) classrooms is an emergent topic of interest in the field of education in Canada. There is a need to understand the ways in which ELD teachers respond to the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity of Syrian refugee SIFEs and create learning opportunities for those students while supporting them emotionally, socially, and academically. Thus, the aim of this research was to explore the nature of the experiences of high school Syrian refugee SIFEs and their teachers in ELD classrooms in …

Designing A New Resourcing Model For Rural Schools In Labrador, April Blake

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

The motivation of this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is rooted in attaining more equity and social justice for marginalized groups in rural, geographically isolated sections of Labrador. The focus of the change process within the social justice frame is the lack of resources in these rural schools. The broad base of the resourcing issue encompasses lack of rural staff, books, manipulatives, technology, games, funding, community supports, consumables and all other standard school accompaniments. Departmental funding for our schools is very limited, this is an extensive and significant issue in most rural schools in the area, and this OIP plans change …

Designing A New Resourcing Model For Rural Schools In Labrador, April Blake

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

The motivation of this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is rooted in attaining more equity and social justice for marginalized groups in rural, geographically isolated sections of Labrador. The focus of the change process within the social justice frame is the lack of resources in these rural schools. The broad base of the resourcing issue encompasses lack of rural staff, books, manipulatives, technology, games, funding, community supports, consumables and all other standard school accompaniments. Departmental funding for our schools is very limited, this is an extensive and significant issue in most rural schools in the area, and this OIP plans change …