This research explores the impact of Toronto’s urban reform movement of the 1970s on the Toronto Public Library (TPL) system. The TPL is the largest public library system in Canada, with 98 branches located in neighbourhoods across the city. These highly visible, accessible, and dynamic local branches promote social inclusion and community engagement through the provision of a range of programs and services. Public participation in the library planning process through citizens’ advisory groups resulted in the “equalization” of library services across the city, a renewal of the local branch system, and the restructuring of programs and services to meet community needs as defined by communities themselves. This research also discusses the possibility of creating new opportunities for patron participation at the TPL in the context of the recent resurgence in civic engagement on library issues.

Since the 1960s, over 65,000 young Canadians have participated in volunteer abroad programs (Tiessen, 2008). Lately, the media and academia have questioned and criticized the benefits of volunteerism as development. This study highlights how issues of power and privilege extend beyond the individual, and reaches into institutional structures. The research design uses Institutional Ethnography (IE) as a method of inquiry, and maps out the social relations between the experiences of seven former youth volunteers and field staff, and their organizations. The aim is to explore how to improve individual and organizational pedagogy in the field of international volunteering, so that equity becomes a commitment by everyone in the development of sustainable and just communities.

This research explores the impact of Toronto’s urban reform movement of the 1970s on the Toronto Public Library (TPL) system. The TPL is the largest public library system in Canada, with 98 branches located in neighbourhoods across the city. These highly visible, accessible, and dynamic local branches promote social inclusion and community engagement through the provision of a range of programs and services. Public participation in the library planning process through citizens’ advisory groups resulted in the “equalization” of library services across the city, a renewal of the local branch system, and the restructuring of programs and services to meet community needs as defined by communities themselves. This research also discusses the possibility of creating new opportunities for patron participation at the TPL in the context of the recent resurgence in civic engagement on library issues.

Over the last twenty years, the academic work on citizenship education and democracy promotion has grown exponentially. This research investigates the United States federal government’s cultivation of a ‘politics of citizenship’ through the Corporation for National and Community Service and the AmeriCorps program. Drawing on Marxist-feminist theory and institutional ethnography, this research examines the ways in which democratic learning is organized within the AmeriCorps program through the category of ‘civic engagement’ and under the auspices of federal regulations that coordinate the practice of AmeriCorps programs trans-locally. The findings from this research demonstrate that the federal regulations of the AmeriCorps program mandate a practice and create an environment in which ‘politics,’ understood broadly as having both partisan and non-partisan dimensions, are actively avoided in formalized learning activities within the program. The effect of these regulations is to create an ideological environment in which learning is separated from experience and social problems are disconnected from the political and material relations in which they are constituted. Further, the AmeriCorps program cultivates an institutional discourse in which good citizenship is equated with participation at the local scale, which pivots on a notion of community service that is actively disengaged from the State. Through its reliance on these forms of democratic consciousness, the AmeriCorps program engages in reproductive praxis, ultimately reproducing already existing inequalities within U.S. society. The primary elements of this reproductive praxis have been identified as ‘a local fetish’ and the ‘democratic management of inequality.’ The local fetish refers to the solidification of the local as the preferential terrain of democratic engagement and is characterized by an emphasis on face-to-face moral relationships, local community building, and small-scale politics. The democratic management of inequality refers to the development of discursive practices and the organization of volunteer labor in the service of poverty amelioration, which is in turn labeled ‘good citizenship.’ This research directs our attention to a more complicated notion of praxis and its relationship to the reproduction of social relations. Also, this research brings into focus the problem of the conceptualization of civil society and its relationship to democracy and capitalism.

While accountability measures are designed and promoted to increase trust among members of society in Canada, this study finds that accountability practices actually reduce trust and flexibility among people. This dissertation interrogates the concept of accountability as value-free and in the public interest in Canada. Using institutional ethnography as an approach to research, this study traces how accountability as a concept is defined through a set of performances described in texts that trickle down from the federal to the municipal level in Ontario. In particular, I examine how residents’ groups providing social services with a small grant from an Ontario municipality are required to go to great lengths to perform accountability according to dominant texts. This study overlays a mapping of the textual organization of accountability with the theories of civility and governmentality to demonstrate how white, middle-class, neoliberal values pervade decision-making about the allocation of public funds. The data demonstrate that while government accountability measures are designed with elected officials and government workers in mind, the practice of accountability gets enforced through the least socially powerful members of society, defined through racialized, gendered, and class distinctions. I conclude that while changes to reporting mechanisms could render the lives of more residents visible, ultimately the dominant focus on rules rather than relationships in Canada undermines real trust, and thus is the most vital site for change.

While accountability measures are designed and promoted to increase trust among members of society in Canada, this study finds that accountability practices actually reduce trust and flexibility among people. This dissertation interrogates the concept of accountability as value-free and in the public interest in Canada. Using institutional ethnography as an approach to research, this study traces how accountability as a concept is defined through a set of performances described in texts that trickle down from the federal to the municipal level in Ontario. In particular, I examine how residents’ groups providing social services with a small grant from an Ontario municipality are required to go to great lengths to perform accountability according to dominant texts. This study overlays a mapping of the textual organization of accountability with the theories of civility and governmentality to demonstrate how white, middle-class, neoliberal values pervade decision-making about the allocation of public funds. The data demonstrate that while government accountability measures are designed with elected officials and government workers in mind, the practice of accountability gets enforced through the least socially powerful members of society, defined through racialized, gendered, and class distinctions. I conclude that while changes to reporting mechanisms could render the lives of more residents visible, ultimately the dominant focus on rules rather than relationships in Canada undermines real trust, and thus is the most vital site for change.

Over the last twenty years, the academic work on citizenship education and democracy promotion has grown exponentially. This research investigates the United States federal government’s cultivation of a ‘politics of citizenship’ through the Corporation for National and Community Service and the AmeriCorps program. Drawing on Marxist-feminist theory and institutional ethnography, this research examines the ways in which democratic learning is organized within the AmeriCorps program through the category of ‘civic engagement’ and under the auspices of federal regulations that coordinate the practice of AmeriCorps programs trans-locally. The findings from this research demonstrate that the federal regulations of the AmeriCorps program mandate a practice and create an environment in which ‘politics,’ understood broadly as having both partisan and non-partisan dimensions, are actively avoided in formalized learning activities within the program. The effect of these regulations is to create an ideological environment in which learning is separated from experience and social problems are disconnected from the political and material relations in which they are constituted. Further, the AmeriCorps program cultivates an institutional discourse in which good citizenship is equated with participation at the local scale, which pivots on a notion of community service that is actively disengaged from the State. Through its reliance on these forms of democratic consciousness, the AmeriCorps program engages in reproductive praxis, ultimately reproducing already existing inequalities within U.S. society. The primary elements of this reproductive praxis have been identified as ‘a local fetish’ and the ‘democratic management of inequality.’ The local fetish refers to the solidification of the local as the preferential terrain of democratic engagement and is characterized by an emphasis on face-to-face moral relationships, local community building, and small-scale politics. The democratic management of inequality refers to the development of discursive practices and the organization of volunteer labor in the service of poverty amelioration, which is in turn labeled ‘good citizenship.’ This research directs our attention to a more complicated notion of praxis and its relationship to the reproduction of social relations. Also, this research brings into focus the problem of the conceptualization of civil society and its relationship to democracy and capitalism.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This study examined how adult African American women experienced learning at two post-secondary institutions in the Midwest; a diverse, urban community college, and a predominantly white research university. The study also considered how barriers, challenges, responsibilities, and support systems impacted their learning experiences. Gender, race and age were variables of interest, and three theoretical lenses; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule's Women's Ways of Knowing, McClusky's Theory of Margin/Adult Roles and Responsibilities, and Critical Race Theory were used to explore the participants' experience of learning. This topic was of interest due to the paucity of research conducted in the area of post-secondary institutions, with adult African American women in the Midwest. This study found that learners used active learning, linked their learning to their life experiences, encountered racism, experienced barriers; situational, institutional, dispositional, and information; utilized familial, instructor, peer and spiritual support systems, would benefit from career advising, and that career goal uncertainty was a common obstruction. The women participating in this research were determined, motivated and goal oriented, and served as role models for their children, sought education to improve their lives, and emphasized the importance of education to reach career and life goals.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Foundations and Adult Education / Sarah Jane Fishback / There have been two classic models of the way self-directed learners organize their learning experiences – a planning model, discussed by researchers such as Tough (1971) and Knowles (1975), which considers self-directed learners to be actively and deliberately planning their learning projects, and an environmental model, proposed by Spear and Mocker (1984), which considers these learners to be strongly influenced by what they called the organizing circumstance. Later researchers have found support for both models. Both models posit that learning resources play an important role for self-directed learners, but there hasn’t been much research specifically looking at how learners make resource decisions. For this project, the researcher recruited 13 women from online sewing communities who had reported obtaining a particular hard-to-find sewing resource and interviewed them about their resource decisions and resource libraries. The project asked the questions of how self-directed learners are planning, the criteria they use to choose learning resources, how an environment of plentiful resources and the internet affect these choices, and how learners evaluate their resources. The researcher found that this particular group of learners are conscious only of doing short-term, project-by-project, planning, but reveal another, unconscious level of building mental maps of their entire field of interest, including judgments of their personal interests and evaluations of their personal skill sets. These learners enjoy this learning, and consider their resources to be treats as well as references; they seek relevant content, novelty, and intellectual challenge. They are strongly influenced by their communities, both local and online, but maintain independence in their learning choices.

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah J. Fishback / In today’s interconnected world, teams must form quickly, learn and adapt to overcome challenges regardless of the environment. For example, complexity in responding to natural disasters or man-made political, economic and security crises often requires the ability to learn collaboratively to minimize human suffering and protect property. When teams find success, the operation succeeds beyond what a single organization can provide, but when teams fail they can make a bad situation worse. Leveraging an approach called a Leader Team Exercise (LTX), teams can generate the shared qualities of understanding, confidence and competence in a structured manner to accelerate learning and performance. This research study investigated the potential of an LTX through initial research in a within-subjects experimental design of the 161st Artillery Battalion, Kansas Army National Guard as they negotiated obstacles located on the Fort Riley, Kansas Field Leaders Reaction Course (FLRC). The quantitative data collected was evaluated employing non-parametric statistical tests to answer five research questions about the relationship of the LTX to dependent variables of team performance, shared understanding and shared confidence to further explore field observations of learning action teams. The study provides new knowledge to further advance understanding of the LTX and its relationship to team performance and learning. In addition, the study also offers a source of data as a foundation for future research to continue investigation into the full depth and breadth of the LTX in other settings and conditions. The study found a relationship among the dependent variables and the FLRC, as well as a relationship between the LTX and team demographics related to shared understanding and performance. The findings also advance the adult education body of knowledge about learning dynamics, which occur outside the classroom. The implications to improve teams that rapidly form, disband, and form again will impact adult learning in a wide spectrum of applications in the government, academia and industry. Finally, the study offers recommendations for future areas of research and practical application based on current knowledge for the Kansas National Guard and others who might use or plan on using the LTX in the future.