Education Commons^™

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 …

Becoming A Cosmopolitan Teacher: Empirical And Theoretical Inquires, James S. Budrow

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The contemporary conditions of the world are largely defined by global interconnectivity, heightened mobilities and super-diversity. Teachers and students are increasingly immersed in these conditions that prompt the heightened calls for internationalization of curricula and culturally relevant and inclusive school pedagogies. Teachers are also mobile, taking on positions beyond their local educational jurisdiction, where they must learn to navigate the intercultural and/or transnational conditions of unfamiliar locales and school communities. In turn, teacher education must respond by preparing teachers for both the super-diversity they may encounter in ‘local’ schools as well as for teaching ‘beyond their local.’ To better understand …

How Can We Predict Incidental L2 Vocabulary Learning? A Meta-Analytic Examination Of The Involvement Load Hypothesis, Akifumi Yanagisawa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigated Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH). The ILH claims that the retention of unknown words is conditional on one motivational factor (need) and two cognitive factors (search and evaluation) and predicts the relative effectiveness of activities on incidental vocabulary learning. While research tends to provide general support for the ILH, several studies revealed that the ILH prediction is not always accurate. Aiming to provide a summative evaluation of the ILH and enhance its predictive ability, the present thesis conducted a series of three meta-analytic studies to examine research that tested the …

Seniors, French, And Conversation Groups: An Investigation Into Seniors Who Pursue French As A Leisure Activity, Alan D. Russette

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation investigates the motivation to learn French as an additional language later in life and maintain and/or improve one’s proficiency in it through participation in an L2 conversation group in an Anglophone setting. The research study consisted of participation in and observation of weekly French language conversation groups over the course of a 12-month period, a multiple round qualitative interview approach involving twelve participants, and document analysis.

The research study investigates what experiences led these learners to pursue French as a minority language, and why they choose to maintain it though it is not necessary for their daily lives …

A Language Barrier To Human Capital Development: The Case Of Guatemalan Students, Fidel Pérez Macal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Not being proficient in a school’s predominant language of instruction can represent a language barrier for students’ human capital development. In Guatemala, 24 languages are spoken apart from Spanish, which is the language of instruction in the majority of schools, and about 40 percent of the total population has a non-Spanish language as a mother tongue. National standardized tests show that non-Spanish mother tongue (non-SMT) students are outperformed by SMT students in elementary and secondary schools.

My thesis analyzes whether non-SMT students face a language barrier and traces its source. Two main findings emerge. First, non-SMT students are not yet …

The Impact Of Multiliteracies And Multimodality On Esl Learners: Using Neuroimaging Technologies, Wenyu Huang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Educational neuroscience has become an important role in understanding education and the association with brain development. However, few previous studies have applied neuroimaging techniques to multiliteracies research, which is an important literacy pedagogy addressing multimodal learning and cultural and linguistic diversity. This study used functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate the association of multiliteracies learning on adult English Second Language (ESL) students’ performance through multimodal tasks.

Students’ multimodality background was collected through a technology questionnaire. Behavioural and fNIRS data were collected before and after multiliteracies learning. Results showed that there was no significance change in behavioural responses while the …

Exploring The Acquisition Of American Sign Language By Deaf Kindergarten Children: Early Language Access And The Use Of Appropriate Resources, Jenelle Rouse

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the accounts of educators and parents regarding the accessibility of American Sign Language (ASL) and its acquisition by deaf children in Ontario, Canada. It is generally known that deaf children’s ASL acquisition and proficiency is directly affected by their early exposure to the language; the earlier and greater the exposure, the greater the acquisition and proficiency, while later and inadequate exposure results in poorer acquisition and proficiency. In the face of societal and educational systems in Ontario, there have been some attempts to provide opportunities for deaf children and their families to develop and acquire ASL (Snoddon, …

Building Leadership Capacity For The Effective Implementation Of A Professional Development Tool In K-12 School In A Region In Arctic Canada, Sonia Osbourne

The Dissertation-in-Practice at Western University

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) aims to identify and remediate the organizational factors that are presently leading to the faulty delivery of a professional development framework (PDFM) tool in an educational organization in the Canadian Arctic. Implementation of change initiatives in organizations is a complex undertaking and can be further complicated by contextual factors such as culture. In this region, a large percentage of students are Inuit, and teachers and school leaders are both Inuit and non-Inuit. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), translated as Inuit traditional knowledge, is a foundation upon which education is delivered in the region. Therefore, this organizational change …

The Use Of Reading Strategies In Second Language Adult Learners, Taninder Atwal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The current study examined the use of reading strategies in connection to reading comprehension success. 38 graduate students, who did not consider English their first language participated in this study. The participants’ vocabulary knowledge, word reading fluency, decoding, and working memory were measured. Think-alouds captured strategy use and reading comprehension was assessed through questions about the text. Results indicate that vocabulary knowledge was correlated to reading comprehension success but word fluency, decoding and working memory were not. A factor analysis on strategy use revealed that three factors emerged to account for unique variance in reading comprehension performance. These factors were …

Music Education In A Liquid Social World: The Nuances Of Teaching With Students Of Immigrant And Refugee Backgrounds, Gabriela Ocádiz Velázquez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated-article dissertation explores the multiple ways in which music teachers, community facilitators, and students engage in music teaching and learning in social contexts prone to change due to human mobility. Drawing upon Bauman’s sociological understanding of modern societies as liquid and the larger implications of processes of human mobility in schools and communities, this research focuses on exploring music education as it happens within an increasingly diversifying Canadian society.

In the first article, a philosophical research study, I conceptualize the notion of coping with discomfort as a form of response possibly experienced by music teachers. Here, I draw from …