Education Commons^™

Teachers’ Work: Communicating On Difficult Knowledge In Ontario Schools, Zsofia Agoston Villalba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines how K-12 teachers in Ontario navigate the complexities of teaching "difficult knowledge"—topics such as racial and ethnic injustices, Indigenous perspectives, immigration experiences, and gender issues—within the parameters of the school and the curriculum. Utilizing an institutional ethnography approach, the study examines the curriculum as an institutional text that coordinates and shapes teachers’ practices. Working with and against the curriculum, teachers find innovative ways to engage their students on difficult knowledge topics. Based on interviews with 12 K-12 teachers, this research explores teachers’ work and pedagogical approaches. They employ diverse teaching methods like storytelling, open dialogues, and collaborative …

Teaching Experiences Of Elementary School Teachers: An Analysis In The Post-Covid Era, Ankita Rawat

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research provides a deeper understanding of the varied in-person teaching experiences of elementary school teachers in the post-COVID Era. Under this main objective, it explored the teaching styles, views, and attitude of elementary school teachers towards teaching post-COVID-19. It also explores the technological transformation undergone by the teachers and the most preferred teaching modes (face-to-face, online, and blended) used by elementary school teachers in India after returning to the classroom, post-COVID-19. A mixed-method research approach was used to answer the research questions. The technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework and Bandura self-efficacy theory were used as conceptual frameworks in …

Systematic Literature Review: Literacy Practices In Chinese Immigrant Families, Qingning Chen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Family literacy is important for Chinese immigrant families who are concerned for their children's English and Chinese biliteracy development. This systematic literature review uses multiliteracies as the theoretical lens to analyze 17 studies from the ERIC database. The review aims to synthesize reported family literacy practices (including both English- and Chinese-related literacy practices) in English-dominated countries and analyze how literacy is perceived in the literature. Findings suggest that Chinese immigrant families use various materials, blended situated practices, and overt instruction as the main pedagogical approaches to support children's biliteracy development in family contexts. Most researchers and parents conceptualize literacy as …

The Integration Of Computational Thinking In Mathematics Education: The Current State Of Practices In School, Outreach, And Public Educational Settings, Hatice Beyza Sezer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study investigates the integration of computational thinking (CT) in mathematics education by examining current CT practices in school, community outreach, and public educational settings to seek insight into further affordances of CT. A qualitative content analysis through a mix of inductive and deductive approaches is used to analyze online CT resources and computational artifacts. I interpreted the data through Kafai et al.’s (2020) framings of CT and a combination of constructionism, social constructivism, and critical literacy theories of learning. This study revealed that cognitive framing of CT (acquisition) receives greater attention compared to situated framing (participation), whereas the affordances …

Soundfullness In Early Childhood Education: An Ecological Sound Art Inquiry With Educators And Children, Malvika Agarwal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Sounds exist everywhere, and early childhood classrooms are no exception. Sounds resonate with us, and sometimes they move us. However, engagement with sound has a limited trajectory. This thesis traces movements from a sound inquiry in an early childhood centre through three research questions: (a) How is sound consumed and produced in ECE? (b) What other ways of being might be enacted through sounds and ecological sound art in ECE? (c) How might sound become an agentic entity through pedagogical documentation and digital technology? The inquiry took a multimodal approach using text and sound, and embraced methods of ecological sound …

Global Citizenship Education And Scout Movement Curriculum In Egypt: Perspectives From Scouts And Scout Leaders, Tarek M. Faid

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study investigated Scouting’s contribution, as a non-formal educational movement, in educating global citizens. To address the research questions, I used a mixed-methods case study design, which necessitated the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data concurrently using varied data sources (surveys, interviews, and the senior scout curriculum document). The study explored the Egyptian scouts and scout leaders’ perspectives of global citizenship and their views on the potential of the Arab senior scout curriculum (2011) to contribute to the development of 15-17 years old scouts as global citizens. In addition, I assessed the extent to which the curriculum encompasses critical …

Weaving The Braid Of Culturally Responsive Leadership Within Policy And Governance To Improve Indigenous Student Success, Shelly L. Niemi

The Dissertation-in-Practice at Western University

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) explores a Problem of Practice (PoP) that highlights the need for why the Board of Education and the Senior Administration team within the Raven Bay School Division (RBSD, pseudonym) would benefit from using a culturally responsive leadership approach when making decisions and how this may be achieved through policy and governance to guide their practice. The goal of this OIP is to examine why this leadership approach would be relevant for the Board of Education and the Senior Leadership team when they are making any policy and governance decisions, as it relates to Indigenous …

Learning From Cultural Diversity For Intercultural Competency And Global Stewardship Development In A Boarding School, Alan Hesketh

The Dissertation-in-Practice at Western University

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) explores opportunities to prioritize, teach, and assess intercultural competency in students at a large independent boarding school. The school currently assumes that the presence of a diverse population will result in intercultural learning, a strategy shown to be ineffective. Considering culture as the combined beliefs and behaviours of individuals due to the groups they have been a part of, and intercultural competency as the ability to interact appropriately with individuals who are different from oneself, the range of countries of origin and backgrounds of students, including boarders, provides diversity that could be leveraged to create …

Red And Blue Make Purple: Alignment Of Socially Just And Neoliberal Approaches To Higher Education Internationalization, Murray Peglar

The Dissertation-in-Practice at Western University

Internationalization of higher education may have “lost its way” Knight (2014), such that “the end of internationalization” may be on the horizon (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2015). Competing visions and goalsetting may be at the heart of this dissolution, and may be mirrored in both global tensions between market- and justice-based perspectives, as well as in the fragmented offices and disparate goalsetting of a large Canadian university, UX (a pseudonym). Thus, UX has a Problem of Practice wherein international supports do not work together in a concerted way to effectively support international, and perhaps other, marginalized students. In this Organizational …

Creating Sustainable Support Systems For The Cultural Integration Of International Students At A Medium Size Ontario University, Muzi Li

The Dissertation-in-Practice at Western University

This OIP investigates the lack of cultural integration and support for international students at Medium-Size Ontario University (MSOU). The support for cultural integration of the international students at MSOU is inadequate and international students are facing social, emotional and academic challenges as they are not provided with the needed assistance to acclimatize to Western culture. Three potential solutions to address the PoP are demonstrated and evaluated. The chosen solution of implementing extended orientation and workshops is inspected in detail. Transformational Leadership and Confucianism are examined to ensure their relevancy and appropriateness to address this PoP and OIP and connected to …

Intercultural Experience And Learning Among Eap International Students, Joan M. Plonski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The trend toward greater enrolment of EFL speaking international students into institutions of higher education (IHE) in the West, is well documented. In response to this drive for greater levels of international participant, a newer trend has arisen: among these institutions more and more students who do not meet the language proficiency criteria are being accepted on the condition that they undergo and complete programs at specified language education institutions.

This shift in cross-border EFL student enrolment practice is responsible for the creation of adjunct language schools, where students who have been accepted to a given university may be educated …

A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis Of Current Anti-Bullying Policies In Ontario, Zhu Cheng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study asks how school bullying is conceptualized in current anti-bullying policies in Ontario. Policy documents PPM 144 (Bullying Prevention and Intervention, 2012), PPM 145 (Progressive Discipline and Promoting Positive Student Behaviour, 2012), and the Model Plan (the Working Draft: Safe and Accepting Schools Model Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan, 2013) are examined. Drawing upon concepts from Foucault, this study expresses how disciplinary techniques operate in anti-bullying policies and how they contribute to the formation of dominant discourses on bullying. It argues that school bullying is represented as an individual problem in these policies. Accordingly, …

How Do Teachers Challenge Neoliberalism Through Critical Pedagogy Within And Outside Of The Classroom?, Rezvan Shahsavari-Googhari

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis uses the qualitative case study approach to investigate current strategies and skills four Ontario public secondary school teachers apply both within and outside of the classroom to enhance students’ critical consciousness. The focus is on teachers’ pedagogical work in the era of neoliberal restructuring in order to provide a rich account of how neoliberalism challenges and affects their teaching. Existing literature shows a crisis of identity and political agency among youth in many Western societies, characterized by individuals’ inability to think critically about social, political and economic issues, which is rooted in neoliberal education reforms. Adopting a critical …

Making Meaning Of Gender And Sexual Identities In Early Childhood: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Canadian Early Childhood Curricula, Pamela M. Malins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study is a critical discourse analysis of kindergarten programmatic curricula across Canada. The prime goal of the study was to produce knowledge of programmatic curricula’s treatment of diverse gender and sexual identities. The research questions investigated what gender and sexual identities are included in the curricula, how these identities are configured, the meaning making opportunities children are thereby offered, and the implications for students’ gender and sexual identity options and their understandings of gender and sexual minority youth and same-sex parented families.

The data collection tool drew upon Fairclough’s (1995) textual analysis (including linguistic and intertextual components), Dillon’s (2009) …

Motivation, Identity And L2 Reading: Perceptions Of Chinese Esl Students In Canada, Binru Zhao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study was conducted to explore and examine whether there are different motivational tendencies among Chinese English as a Second Language (ESL) students with different reading proficiency levels, and the identity transformations they may have experienced during the process of their ESL learning. The quantitative results demonstrate statistically significant differences between two groups of participants (high proficiency vs. low proficiency), and participants’ reading motivation levels are positively correlated with their previous reading proficiency levels. Furthermore, the qualitative semi-structured interviews indicate that participants’ self-perceived motivation toward reading in English is mainly academic, and they are experiencing a certain level of identity …

Investigating Trans-Affirmative Education Policies And Practices In Ontario, Kenan Omercajic

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study uses a qualitative approach to investigate the development and influence of school-based trans-affirmative policies in the Ontario education system. It focuses specifically on three policy texts of three individual school boards: Durham District School Board’s Supporting Our Transgender Students; Toronto District School Board’s Guidelines for the Accommodation of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Students and Staff; and Thames Valley District School Board’s Guidelines for the Accommodation of Gender Diverse and Trans Students. While space is devoted to a text-based analysis in terms of how such policies constitute or construct transgender and gender non-conforming youth along with the …

Academic Literacies As Documenting Becoming Through Mixed Genre Texts, Ani Amirmooradian Malhami

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research for this study began with certain poststructural and postmodern readings and philosophical inflections that suggested, in various ways, that subjectivities are fluid, multiple, and complex. I arrived at the idea that one way of capturing the complexities of subjectivities is documenting becoming; this insight, in turn, led me to investigate the literature on academics who experience problems with representing, and on models of writing in higher education. However, the literature does not locate either the problem of representing or its resolution in the practices of academics struggling to write about the world in and through their subjectivities. …

Media Literacy And The English As A Second Language Curriculum: A Curricular Critique And Dreams For The Future, Clara R. Madrenas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis investigates whether or not the Ontario English as a Second Language/English Literacy Development (ESL/ELD) curriculum imparts the critical literacy skills necessary for students to deconstruct the multimedia messages with which the contemporary world is saturated, in order to function as informed, agentic citizens of Ontario society. Using foundations of cultural theory, radical critical pedagogy, and critical race theory, particularly the work of James Paul Gee, Henry A. Giroux, Paulo Freire and Michael Apple, this thesis explores the ways in which the current ESL/ELD curriculum can be found lacking due to its enforcement of the banking model of education, …

Three Models For Educating For Empathy And Humanization Through Values Dialogue In Secondary School Classes, Adam J. Hill

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis develops educable constructs of empathy and of humanization as well as a theory, a praxis, educational models, and measuring instruments of values dialogue that hypothetically can be used to foster and to measure changes in empathic and humanizing capacities among secondary school students. The theory and the praxis of values dialogue utilize a sample of Western epistemological philosophy, as well as some of the research and literature of the field of dialogic inquiry. This study then assembles educable constructs of empathy and of humanization by reviewing related research and scholarship. The empathy constructs consist of emotional literacy and …

Our Stories: Inuit Teachers Create Counter Narratives And Disrupt The Status Quo, Dawn E L Fyn

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Canada has a reputation for diversity and acceptance and of late has made significant strides in formalizing apologies for the maltreatment of Aboriginal populations (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 2010). The purpose of this study was to investigate Inuit educators’ perceptions of education in Nunavik. While multiple studies consider concerns regarding Inuit education and low graduation rates (Brady, 1996; Walton, 2012), few studies consider the role that Inuit educators can play in assuring the optimal success of Inuit students. This study, situated in Nunavik, the Inuit homeland located within Northern Quebec, fills that gap. Using qualitative methodology and a …

Building A Community Art Garden: A Participatory Eco-Arts Based Educational Research Project, Beryl R. Cohen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study is to explore how a community comes to understand their sense of place as they create a school art garden, and then consider their relationship to it, and to the natural world. Using qualitative arts-based methods of inquiry and A/r/tography, I weave and construct text and visual images, which portray human actions and experiences within the framework of Environmental Inquiry. As a participant, I also respond to the project through the creation of artwork.

Rich community narratives and data analysis resulted in the following themes: Teaching and Learning; Activism; Connection to Nature; Health and Healing; …

Transition Of Newcomer Youth In Ontario Educational Policies: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Cameron Scott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Transition in school is an inherent function of each student’s educational experience. However, newcomer youth face unique transitional challenges. This qualitative study was conducted to answer how Ontario educational policies shape the transition of newcomer youth. A critical discourse analysis was used to analyze practical guides and policy texts, framed through critical policy sociology and critical pedagogy. Findings illustrated that a fractured policy landscape exists, where there is a heavy emphasis on literacy, language development, and language acquisition for newcomer youth, but there remains a lack of policies to support a more holistic transition. Dominant policy discourses serve to construct …

Internationalizing Canadian Higher Education Through North-South Partnerships: A Critical Case Study Of Policy Enactment And Programming Practices In Tanzania, Allyson M. Larkin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The contemporary internationalization of higher education promotes the formation of North-South (N-S) partnerships to facilitate access to new research sites and opportunities for international programming. This study conceptualizes N-S partnerships as an extension of internationalization policy. In the current context of internationalization, there is a reliance on higher education to produce economic benefits to support national economic objectives. There are particular concerns, however, with a practice of N-S partnerships that are enacted in communities located in the Global South. Internationalization policy does not adhere to the principles of N-S partnership outlined in multilateral agreements and is increasingly focused on the …

Telling Tales Out Of School: Principals' Narratives Of The Relationship Between School Literacy And The Home Literacy Practices Of A Minoritized Culture, Wendy A. Crocker

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Much of the literature in the area of school leadership pertains to the role of the principal in school improvement – specifically in raising reading and writing scores in large-scale assessments. However, what is less represented is how administrators who are confronted daily with the socially constructed and multiple representations of literacies demonstrated by the English Language Learners in their schools view the focus on reading and writing referred to in the literature as school literacy. This Narrative Inquiry explores administrators’ perspectives of the relationship between school-literacy and home-literacy practices of a minoritized culture taking as its case the …

Gender And Sexual Orientation In The Elementary Classroom: Teachers Negotiating Critical Literacies And Queer Pedagogies, Pamela M. Malins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Drawing from queer theoretical perspectives, this thesis examines the extent to which teachers address sexual orientation and gender identities in Ontario Elementary classrooms, reflecting recent curricular revisions regarding antidiscrimination education and social justice; moreover, it investigates some of the influences that affect teachers’ pedagogical practices. This inquiry’s significance can be seen through social constructionism which emphasizes the teachers’ role in reinforcing or disrupting discourses of normalcy. Queer Theory offers a method for deconstructing and challenging identity categories such as the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy or gender normative frameworks.

Findings indicate an apparent tension for teachers in negotiating personal and parental beliefs and …

The History Classroom As Site For Imagining The Nation: An Investigation Of U.S. And Canadian Teachers' Pedagogical Practices, Lisa Y. Faden

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This multiple case study compares the enacted history curricula in one U.S. and one Canadian school district in order to understand how high school teachers engage in the construction of national identities and the conceptualization of the “good” citizen. Following Anderson’s (1991) concept of nations as “imagined communities,” compulsory history classes are key sites for imagining the nation. Within the context of contemporary processes of globalization, the study explores the process of imagining the nation within a global “social imaginary” (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Data sources include interviews with seven teachers in the U.S. state of Maryland and six teachers …

The Professional Master's Occupational Therapist: Developing An Emerging Professional Identity, Bonny F. Jung

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study is to explore the emerging professional identity of the professional master’s entry-level occupational therapist. The questions are: 1) What does it mean to be a professional as an occupational therapist? 2) How do professional identities emerge for the professional master’s entry-level occupational therapist? From a professional perspective as an occupational therapist and educator, helping clients and students find meaning in their occupations is an integral part of my ontology of practice. To conduct this study, I used a constructivist paradigm within qualitative research as my primary lens and constructivist grounded theory as my methodology to …