Dramatic growth in Canada’s urban Aboriginal population has led to high rates of Aboriginal mobility. Despite much quantitative data, very little is known about the mobility experiences of Aboriginal peoples or its impacts. Furthermore, while mobility may present barriers for shaping social connections important to individual health, research in this area is minimal, especially among Aboriginal youth. Using community-­‐based participatory research (CBPR) the purpose of this thesis is to examine how mobility shapes the social networks and health of Aboriginal youth in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. While highlighting the use and valuableness of CBPR methods, the research demonstrates that mobility impacts both the development and maintenance of social relationships among Aboriginal youth as well as influences the types and qualities of these relationships. Additionally, mobility indirectly shapes health through its effect on social support, which was shown to impact health positively and negatively through direct and indirect pathways.

Dramatic growth in Canada’s urban Aboriginal population has led to high rates of Aboriginal mobility. Despite much quantitative data, very little is known about the mobility experiences of Aboriginal peoples or its impacts. Furthermore, while mobility may present barriers for shaping social connections important to individual health, research in this area is minimal, especially among Aboriginal youth. Using community-­‐based participatory research (CBPR) the purpose of this thesis is to examine how mobility shapes the social networks and health of Aboriginal youth in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. While highlighting the use and valuableness of CBPR methods, the research demonstrates that mobility impacts both the development and maintenance of social relationships among Aboriginal youth as well as influences the types and qualities of these relationships. Additionally, mobility indirectly shapes health through its effect on social support, which was shown to impact health positively and negatively through direct and indirect pathways.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Soontae An / Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relaxed regulations on broadcast DTC advertising in 1997, DTC advertising has become a prominent part of public health communication. The purpose of this study is to assess the stigma reducing components of DTC ads based on the attribution theory and recategorization theory. Taken together, the combination of these two health communication theories can provide a useful framework to assess whether DTC advertising has made a sufficient effort to reduce the barrier in an attempt to motivate people to take appropriate actions for their treatment. A content-analysis of the past ten years from 1998 to 2008 of DTC ads of stigmatized diseases was done to critically evaluate the practice of DTC ads. Results focus on the prevalence of onset controllability (e.g., whether contracting an illness is blamable or not), offset responsibility (e.g., whether people have efforts to cope with or not) and recategorization (e.g., in-group) as textual cues and visual cues in the ads. Only half of ads (57%) offered a stigma reducing strategy. The most prevalent for both textual cues and visual cues were recategorization. However, an unbalance of stigma reducing components implies a meaning that Corrigan and Penn (1999)’s strategy of interventions to reduce stigma could not effectively function. Therefore, it required appropriate adjustments by onset controllability, offset responsibility and recategorization.

This thesis argues that consumer financial literacy is not a solution but a tool that mystifies and supports the very problems it could help solve: exploitation, economic crises, the spread of neoliberalism, alienation and the further disempowerment of the citizen. The characterization and implementation of financial literacy programs influence the resources and subjectivities that we use to act, see, reflect, create the world and create ourselves, resources and subjectivities that should support our free actions and enable us to do more than conform to the dictates of capital and be more than neoliberal entrepreneurial consumers. In the place of consumer financial literacy, we need a critical financial literacy that supports active citizens. The citizen is not the alienated investor or consumer who can only choose what the market provides; instead, he or she can assist in altering or abolishing the market to create a new economic system that offers better choices. A critical financial literacy would encourage citizens to reflect on and transform the social relations of production in order to create a world, free from capital’s dictates, in which individuals are as free from necessity as possible and better able to develop their human capacities to the fullest.

This thesis argues that consumer financial literacy is not a solution but a tool that mystifies and supports the very problems it could help solve: exploitation, economic crises, the spread of neoliberalism, alienation and the further disempowerment of the citizen. The characterization and implementation of financial literacy programs influence the resources and subjectivities that we use to act, see, reflect, create the world and create ourselves, resources and subjectivities that should support our free actions and enable us to do more than conform to the dictates of capital and be more than neoliberal entrepreneurial consumers. In the place of consumer financial literacy, we need a critical financial literacy that supports active citizens. The citizen is not the alienated investor or consumer who can only choose what the market provides; instead, he or she can assist in altering or abolishing the market to create a new economic system that offers better choices. A critical financial literacy would encourage citizens to reflect on and transform the social relations of production in order to create a world, free from capital’s dictates, in which individuals are as free from necessity as possible and better able to develop their human capacities to the fullest.

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the process by which emotional abuse occurs and is often sustained in sport, and to examine athletes’, parents’, and coaches’ reflections on emotional abuse in the coach-athlete relationship. The methodological approach used for the study was a constructivist and symbolic interactionist approach to grounded theory. Methods were established that were consistent with the iterative nature of grounded theory. In total, 18 retired elite athletes, 16 parents of retired elite athletes, and nine elite coaches participated in the study. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant, and data were coded using open, axial, and selective coding techniques. Athlete data were interpreted to suggest a sequence of stages by which emotionally abusive coach-athlete relations developed and were sustained over time. Furthermore, the perceived impact of emotionally abusive coaching practices on motivation, self-confidence, commitment, and achievement outcomes in sport were discussed. Parent data were interpreted to suggest that parents are socialized into the culture of elite sport and can become silent bystanders to their children’s experiences of emotional abuse. Coaches’ reflections about the reasons for choosing to use emotionally abusive behaviours in the coach-athlete relationship were interpreted to suggest two distinct origins for the use of this behaviour. Additionally, perceived reasons for abandoning emotionally abusive coaching techniques were reported by the coaches. Finally, based on the collective reflections of the athletes, parents, and coaches, an ecological transactional model of vulnerability to emotional abuse in the coach-athlete relationship is proposed. Several implications of the study findings are discussed and questions are posed for future research.

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the process by which emotional abuse occurs and is often sustained in sport, and to examine athletes’, parents’, and coaches’ reflections on emotional abuse in the coach-athlete relationship. The methodological approach used for the study was a constructivist and symbolic interactionist approach to grounded theory. Methods were established that were consistent with the iterative nature of grounded theory. In total, 18 retired elite athletes, 16 parents of retired elite athletes, and nine elite coaches participated in the study. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant, and data were coded using open, axial, and selective coding techniques. Athlete data were interpreted to suggest a sequence of stages by which emotionally abusive coach-athlete relations developed and were sustained over time. Furthermore, the perceived impact of emotionally abusive coaching practices on motivation, self-confidence, commitment, and achievement outcomes in sport were discussed. Parent data were interpreted to suggest that parents are socialized into the culture of elite sport and can become silent bystanders to their children’s experiences of emotional abuse. Coaches’ reflections about the reasons for choosing to use emotionally abusive behaviours in the coach-athlete relationship were interpreted to suggest two distinct origins for the use of this behaviour. Additionally, perceived reasons for abandoning emotionally abusive coaching techniques were reported by the coaches. Finally, based on the collective reflections of the athletes, parents, and coaches, an ecological transactional model of vulnerability to emotional abuse in the coach-athlete relationship is proposed. Several implications of the study findings are discussed and questions are posed for future research.

Each year the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU), operating under the auspices of UNESCO, hosts a peace education training-of-trainer’s program for teacher-educators from across the Asia-Pacific. In this thesis, I examine through a qualitative case study approach the programmatic design and evaluation of the APCEIU training program, seeking to monitor its medium-term impact on educators. The research is framed within a larger study of peace education programs around the world. Frameworks of peace education conceptualized by Betty Reardon and Swee-hin Toh, and critical approaches to peace and development as animated by Paulo Freire and Johan Galtung, provide the theoretical foundations for the study. Research findings are based on consultation records, documentary analysis, observations, and questionnaire responses from evaluations of the 2009 program. In the medium-term impact assessment report, 14 educators offered data pertaining to their post-program implementation of peace education concepts and practices in their work.

The importance of housing has been discussed in several disciplines as a basic need, a fundamental human right, and a source of economic and social security; but the social housing system in Ontario has been downloaded from higher levels of government to municipalities with little to no increase in funding or program governance. In this thesis, I argue that the policies and programs that govern the social housing system in Ontario focus on a service provision perspective that maintains the status quo, particularly the stigma attached to social housing projects and homeless people. Using interviews with activists and a review of the literature, I suggest that activists have a role in changing the way this service-oriented perspective works by bringing forward the realities of homelessness in the public realm to alter social thought, agendas, and actions.

Each year the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU), operating under the auspices of UNESCO, hosts a peace education training-of-trainer’s program for teacher-educators from across the Asia-Pacific. In this thesis, I examine through a qualitative case study approach the programmatic design and evaluation of the APCEIU training program, seeking to monitor its medium-term impact on educators. The research is framed within a larger study of peace education programs around the world. Frameworks of peace education conceptualized by Betty Reardon and Swee-hin Toh, and critical approaches to peace and development as animated by Paulo Freire and Johan Galtung, provide the theoretical foundations for the study. Research findings are based on consultation records, documentary analysis, observations, and questionnaire responses from evaluations of the 2009 program. In the medium-term impact assessment report, 14 educators offered data pertaining to their post-program implementation of peace education concepts and practices in their work.