This thesis explores the varied and often conflicting ways in which literacy is addressed in Canadian discourse in order to propose a progressive way forward for Canadian literacy policy. The historically conventional meaning of literacy, that of the ability to read and write, is increasingly falling out of favour among theorists, educators and policymakers alike. It remains, however, a dominant influence in how literacy is written about today, and more progressive theories, such as notions of critical literacy, multiliteracies, and literacy as communication across difference, rest in the peripheries. This thesis examines the ways in which current organizations in Canada are negotiating between literacy’s conventional meaning and the myriad of progressive literacy theories that have been developed in academia. The conceptual framework that informs the research is influenced by cultural theorists Stuart Hall, Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux, Edward Said and Michel Foucault, and work that they have done relating to communication, education, difference and power. This thesis gathers data from the websites of three national literacy organizations, Frontier College, World Literacy Canada, and ABC Life Literacy, as well as from Bill C-401, “An Act to establish a national literacy policy.” Taken together, they allow for generalized conclusions about what literacy theories have been incorporated into contemporary Canadian discourse, and what further work and challenges lie ahead for a progressive national literacy policy. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-26 00:05:43.78

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The aim of the study is to investigate and explore the role of community newspapers against the background of profit-driven media environment. The study adopted a qualitative research method. Data was collected using in-depth interviews with editors of the four community newspapers under study namely Public Eye, The Mirror, Echo and Edendale Eyethu, as well as readers of these publications. The study used focus group discussions as an additional qualitative instrument for data gathering. The SPSS software programme was used to present the data from the readers. Findings of the study The study found that media conglomerates and other businesses on the media possess both the human and financial resources to place them in a powerful position to determine the media content. However, while we know that this happens, some interventions could be considered to make sure that a more viable and sustainable balance between commerce and community is found and maintained. The study also showed that due to “market-driven journalism” embraced by the community newspapers, the right of the readers or consumers is increasingly compromised, and also that the profit-driven aspects of these publications confirm that media or journalism ethics of the community press is also at stake in that appear to benefit private and public sectors. This means the ample space allocated to advertisers as evidenced in almost every page of these newspapers, contribute to denying the readers access to relevant news or information. The study found that local content and political news are of great relevance to the readers, Community newspapers are vital in creating awareness amongst community members of different events taking place in the community hence enabling them to take an active part in different aspects of developments taking place. Community members would like to see more in-depth coverage in local news content, more coverage in events taking place locally such as community initiative projects, and more coverage on schools sports tournaments. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

This thesis argues that the notion of player experience in relation to computer games is intrinsically linked to the body. Taking the idea of aesthetic experience, or sensuous experience, in computer game play as its starting point, my thesis considers computer games from within an interdisciplinary cross section of phenomenology, cultural studies and visual culture. Computer games have in a reasonably short amount of time reached a stage where they are an integral part of contemporary society: historically, economically and culturally. The current field of computer games comprises a vast array of genres, styles, stories, experiments and media. Because computer games are interactive objects, I argue that an analysis should begin with a discussion of player experience, and that this experience is inherently embodied. The embodied and temporal nature of game play means it is problematic to simply transfer established frameworks of meaning making in other audiovisual media onto computer games. The thesis attempts to understand the notion of player experience through a phenomenological reading of the interactive experience, and as such I argue that the individual, temporal and iterative aspect of this experience means computer games should not necessarily be squeezed into already established categories of earlier forms of entertainment media. Through three main chapters I explore the role of the body and embodied experience from three different points of view, roughly divided into the three aspects that make up the feedback loop of game play; hardware, software and interface. Each chapter considers the unique role and importance of the body at each point in the game play process.

Using a mixed methods approach, this dissertation included two studies exploring procrastination and academic motivation beliefs of adolescents from Canada and Thailand. Study 1 examined the relationships between procrastination, motivation beliefsself-efficacy, self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, self-esteem, and test anxietyand academic performance and explored significant predictors of adolescent procrastination across two cultures. In this study, 312 Canadian and 401 Thai adolescents from secondary schools in an urban area in western Canada and an urban area in North-Eastern Thailand completed a 47-item survey containing procrastination and four motivation measures. In Study 2, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 Thai adolescents representing low and high achieving students, to provide additional information about the role of motivation on adolescent procrastination and investigate academic procrastination of Thai adolescents in more depth. The quantitative findings demonstrated that all motivation variables significantly predicted procrastination, with self-efficacy for self-regulated learning strongly influencing adolescents across cultures. Findings from the qualitative study revealed six themes pertaining to academic procrastination: a) definitions of procrastination, b) antecedents of procrastination, c) consequences of procrastination, d) overcoming procrastination, e) the role of motivation, and f) the role of cultures on motivation, achievement, and procrastination. Quantitative and qualitative findings were integrated and discussed in order to provide insights into adolescent procrastination. Theoretical and educational implications as well as suggestions for future research were also provided. / Psychological Studies in Education

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Products are designed to satisfy user needs. Thus, industrial designers are expected to have a thorough understanding of user needs and to incorporate those understandings into the design of products; however, it is not a straightforward task for designers to translate their conditional understanding into a product. The gap between product and user can be even wider when latent user needs, such as cultural ones, are calculated into the problem. Therefore the meanings and functions imbued in products by the designer may not be recognized and acknowledged by users, due to the differences in cultural preferences of designers and users from separate cultures. In spite of the fact that user satisfaction has been extensively supported in the design literature, it seems that such an approach allows only a passive role for designers, who actually act as cultural intermediaries; that is, the designers' role is merely presumed to catalyze the process and match user requirements to the end product. Thus, the impact of designers' cultural preferences is considered as incidental, or at least overlooked. A content analysis method was triangulated to collect and analyze diverse visual and textual data relating to the concept generation stage of the product development process. To collect data, professional industrial designers in the two culturally diverse countries of Australia and Iran were recruited to participate in half-hour design exercise sessions to sketch to a design brief, followed by responding to an interview questionnaire. The analysis of data revealed that: (1) designers' cultural preferences do influence their approaches toward tackling the design problem; (2) there are nexuses between the design aspects of the concepts generated and the cultural dimensions of the values of the societies in which the designers were born and has lived, and; (3)potential users can unconsciously comprehend the meaning invested in the product by the designer. This thesis breaks new ground for further advancing the study of the Designer-Precedent Approach (DPA) in other cultural and social contexts, while it challenges the conventional approaches of user-centered design (UCD) broadlyperceived as the ultimate method of incorporating users' wants into products.

Errata and corrigenda inserted at end of thesis. / Bibliography: leaves 290-337. / xxii, 337 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / The objective of this thesis is to examine vasomotor reactivity in both large and small arterial vessels utilising both basic and clinical models. In 4 sections, the thesis: 1. summarises fundamental morphological and physiological principles of the coronary circulation, methods of assessing coronary vasomotor reactivity and characteristics of clinical disorders with vasomotor dysfunction ; 2. investigates regional heterogeneity of vasomotor reactivity in sheep epicardial coronary arteries ; 3. involves studies of the coronary flow phenomenon ; 4. involves a comparison of published Japanese and Caucasian coronary vasomotor reactivity studies and 5. involved an observational study of patients presenting with acute ST elevation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Medicine, 2000

The main objective of this thesis was to understand the function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes, aspects little studied in Polynesia as a whole. Methodology involved functional and manufacturing replication experiments and comparisons of these results with statistics derived from the analysis of almost 12,000 archaeological adzes. Methodology was guided by technological organization theory which states that technological strategies reflect human behaviours and that artefacts like adzes are physical manifestations of the strategies employed by people to overcome problems posed by environmental and resource conditions. Variability in adze morphology was discovered to be the outcome of ongoing technological adjustments to a range of conditions that were constrained by a set of functionally defined parameters. The nature of the raw material, both for the adzes themselves and to make them, had a major influence on adze technology and morphology within these functional parameters. Four basic functional adze types were identified fi-om distinct and consistent combinations of design attributes not previously recognized explicitly in previous adze typologies. It was found that design attributes previously considered significant like crosssection shape and butt reduction were more heavily influenced by raw material quality than functional specifications. It was also important to recognize that form and function changed over time with use, and because adzes were so valuable due to manufacturing costs, they were intensively curated. The majority of archaeological specimens studied for this thesis had seen major morphological and functional change. This dynamic was included ,in a typology based on 'adze state7 as findings suggested (1) that extending adze use-life and optimizing reworking potential was incorporated in initial design strategies, (2) that intensive curation may have played a major role in changes in adze morphology over time, and (3). that it had a major influence on distribution and discard patterns in the archaeological record. Having identified these influences on adze discard and distribution, two complex production and distribution networks were observed for the North Island based around Tahanga basalt and Nelson~Marlborough argillite. Each was complimentary to the other and involved other major and minor products and materials. Influential factors in the roles different settlements played in distribution included where people and raw materials were in relation to one another and the mode of transportation. The coastal location of early period settlements and important stone sources was an important aspect of these networks.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / This thesis may be regarded as both a history of the present and a signifier for the future. Developed during a time of dramatic global upheavals and transformations, it is concerned with the political economy of world order and the ontologies of being upon which world order is predicated. As the framework for the world order of nation states, international law was the means whereby indigenous peoples within colonised territories reconstructed from sovereign nations to dependent populations. Undperpinning this body of law and the political formations of world order were sets of social and political ontologies which continue to be contested. These ontologies are frequently at variance with those of indigenous peoples and shape the arena within which the struggle for self-determination and the validation of indigenous knowledge, values and subjectivities is played out. Contextualised within the international political and juridical framework, the thesis utilises critical theoretical traditions to examine the participation of indigenous peoples in the construction of world order and new global formations. Positioned from a Maori perspective, the thesis also tracks the historical role of education in the development of world order and considers the role and form of Maori educational resistance. In engaging with these issues across macro and micro levels, the thesis identifies the international arena, the national state and forms of regionalism as sites for the reshaping of the global politico/economic order and the emergence of Empire. Allied to this are the reconstruction of hierarchies of knowledge and subjectivities within new Manichean divides. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the positioning of indigenous ontologies and epistemologies within the emergent global order, and the nature of resistance or response. Calls for a new ontology of world order are increasingly being articulated in response to the multiple and increasing crises of globalisation. This thesis argues that, far from irrelevant, traditional indigenous social, political and cosmological ontologies are profoundly important to the development of transformative alternative frameworks for global order.