This study investigates the morphosyntactic competence of advanced ESL learners and native speakers of English. Using the framework of the Government and Binding approach (Chomsky,1981, 1986), the study tests the predictions made by the evolved Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 2009), namely that the grammars of advanced L2 learners are unreliable(where reliability means converging to the L2 grammar), non-convergent to the L2 grammar, and characteristic of patches (where patches are extragrammatical principles independent of the normal syntactic processes). The participants of the study were tested on three tasks (timed grammaticality judgment task, a correction task, and a preference task). The findings of the study indicate that the difference between the morphosyntactic competence of the advanced ESL learners and that of native speakers is gradient rather than categorical.

The pressing environmental crisis compels educators to question the purposes and practices of formal education and to adopt environmentally-informed transformative approaches to education. Critical place-based learning refers to a wide variety of approaches to teaching and learning that take the local context as the starting point for curriculum that fosters a critical stance towards the status quo. There is a need for more research that brings together environmental and critical learning goals in the early years. In this qualitative case study, I explored critical place-based learning and teaching in kindergarten. I explored the parallels between critical place-based learning and a Reggio Emilia-inspired emergent curriculum approach. I considered how teacher researcher collaboration served to support teacher professional development. This study demonstrated the possibilities, benefits, and challenges, of critical place-based learning in the early years. I conclude with some recommendations for facilitating critical place-based learning in the early years.

Recently Ontario included critical literacy in the Language Arts curriculum. I plan to investigate what impact critical literacy will have on Canadian schools. I will present ideas in a critical narrative framework; drawing on pre-existing data-sets of experiences I gathered teaching in an urban Ontario school board for the last six years. I will also review research by other academics working in critical literacy, student engagement, and democratic education. I plan to investigate the effectiveness of using critical literacy-based activities with students deemed “at risk” in our school system. I will also explore the impact of critical literacy on the relationships between students, teachers and administrators. I believe this process will allow me to reflect, interpret and explore my experiences, as well as encourage others to draw their own opinions about the impact of teaching critical literacy in Ontario schools.

This design-based research study investigates the development of pedagogical content knowledge among nine teacher-participants (N = 9) in three design phases. PCK is a particular type of teacher knowledge that addresses not only the teacher’s understanding of the content to be instructed, but also ways of how to teach that content effectively. This knowledge has been well documented over several decades, and is seen as central to teacher expertise. However, its actual development has been difficult for researchers to investigate. This study offers a detailed perspective on how teachers developed PCK with their engagement in lesson planning and enactment of a project-based technology-enhanced lesson. The study includes two specific interventions designed to enhance teachers’ development of PCK: (1) scaffolded reflection that occurs throughout the practices; and (2) peer-exchange of lesson plans, enactment ideas, and completed reflections. The findings demonstrate that teachers improve their planning and enactment of project-based technology-enhanced lessons with scaffolded reflection and peer exchange. Positive correlations were seen between teachers’ engagement in the reflections and the quality of their lesson planning. Teachers who participated more deeply in the scaffolded reflections were able to understand how their lesson plans and enactment patterns fostered student understanding of relevant science concepts. Positive correlations were also seen between community influence and teacher lesson plans and enactment. Additionally, positive correlations were confirmed between teachers’ level of participation in the peer exchange activities and the quality of their lesson planning and enactments. Teachers who contributed more deeply within the online and face-to-face peer community meetings benefited from the different perspectives of their peers about student learning and the best ways to succeed with project-based instruction. This study allowed some insight into how PCK develops as a result of teachers’ engagement in the complex set of activities that constitute the practices of lesson planning and enactment. The primary implication of this study is that engaging teachers in scaffolded reflections and peer exchange can be a valuable in-service professional development activity. A methodological strength is derived from an approach to coding teachers’ lesson planning and enactment according to an activity systems perspective, drawing on a spectrum of data sources (e.g., wiki-based reflections, planning artefacts, videotaped classroom enactments). Teacher learning—particularly the development of PCK—is recognized as critical in promoting student understanding of science concepts. This dissertation lays out a possible foundation for professional development models that promote effective teacher learning.

This design-based study was the first empirical investigation of a new model of learning and instruction called Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI). In KCI, students are engaged as a learning community as they work on scaffolded inquiry activities that target specific science learning objectives. Although community-oriented approaches have been successful at the elementary level, there has been relatively little uptake of such methods at the secondary school level – particularly in science. The pedagogical framework of KCI addresses the challenges of community models by blending established inquiry based approaches with community-oriented pedagogy. This dissertation tested the validity of KCI by designing, implementing, and empirically evaluating a curriculum based on the KCI model. This was achieved through curriculum trials involving two separate cohorts of grade-ten biology students (n = 102; n = 112). The first implementation consisted of a two-week physiology lesson that engaged students in co-authoring wiki artifacts about human system diseases, which students then used as a resource for solving medical case studies. The second implementation, an eight-week lesson on Canada's biodiversity, was a deeper application of the model, and focused on students' collaborative processes during the construction of their wiki-based knowledge repository. In both cases, the curriculum was evaluated according to its design, enactment, and learning outputs, as evidenced by students' knowledge artifacts and performance on the final exam. Technology scaffolds ensured that students focused on the physiology and biodiversity science curriculum expectations. Analyses of the data revealed that KCI engaged students in collaborative learning processes that were characteristic of a knowledge community. Additionally, final exam scores demonstrated increased learning performance when compared to those from previous years where students did not participate in KCI. The findings from this research provide the first empirical support for KCI, and demonstrate its potential for engaging secondary science students in the kinds of collaborative inquiry processes of authentic knowledge communities. This dissertation provides insight into the conditions necessary for such engagement, and contributes design recommendations for blending knowledge community and inquiry in secondary school science curriculum.

Children in Taiwan start their English classes in grade three. As they progress through the grades, they generally do not demonstrate high English proficiency. In addition, they also gradually lose their interest in learning English (“Education Minister,” 2009). To respond to the problem of achievement and motivation related to learning English, the Picture Word Inductive Model and Cooperative Learning were integrated as an alternative approach to the current instructional method in order to more effectively improve the Taiwanese elementary learners’ English literacy and highly motivate their interest in acquiring a foreign language. The focus of this study was to discover the participating teachers’ and students’ perspectives toward this new teaching approach and to understand the difficulties they encounter during the process of initiating and implementing an educational change. This eleven-month qualitative study involved three elementary English teachers and their 71 students from grades 4, 5 and 6 as participants. The data were collected through field notes from onsite classroom observations, teachers’ weekly reflective journals, in-class video recordings, and transcripts of teachers’ monthly meetings and personal interviews with the participants. Although one teacher and her students had to withdraw from the study because of intense pressure from school authorities and parents, the results of this study indicate that the remaining teachers and students highly recommended implementing this alternative approach in English classes and believed that this new way of teaching not only helped students become more autonomous and responsible for their own learning, but also provided them with more opportunities to interact with their peers. Although having doubts about this new approach at the beginning of the study and encountering difficulties during the process of implementation, the two teachers reported that their students’ English vocabulary had increased and they were able to compose meaningful English paragraphs as a result of this non-traditional strategy. The students also revealed that their motivation toward learning English had improved. Furthermore, the results show that support from school authorities and parents is essential to the initiation and maintenance of a change in education settings.

This study examines the dynamics and implications of trans-spatial subordination in/across the lived experiences of six incarcerated participant youths in a secure custody facility for juveniles in Louisiana. Five male teenagers (four African American, one White) and one female teenager (African American) discuss the limitations, harassment, and confinement in various aspects of their lives and speak about the impact on their expectations for the future. The author employs several methodologies in order to develop a multimedia, multifaceted representation of their lives. The narratives elicited through interviews provide the bulk of the data as the participants describe this perpetual subordination. The photographs, resulting from the implementation of a visual ethnographic methodology, provide images that serve as catalysts for introspection and analysis of significance in the mundane and routine, particularly as they apply to the carceral facilities, structures, and policies themselves. Film viewing and discussion offer an array of depictions of youth and criminality to which the youths responded, granting a simultaneous peek at how these marginalized youths viewed themselves and how mainstream media productions depict them. After a particularly provoking viewing session of an animated film, the author expands the preliminary boundaries of the work beyond cells and the walls of the prison. The expanding focus examines subordinating elements in their lives with their families and in their neighbourhoods. The challenges, harassment, and obstacles experienced in their communities continued in their schools and during their encounters with law enforcement, the latter of which often led directly to imprisonment. Finally, the youths reflected on the confining subordination that existed in the facilities, the product of the combination of: their discomfort with the surveillant structure, their perceived arbitrariness of privilege, and the lack of any relevant education. They also identified opportunities for voicing their opinions and recognized the relative safety of this facility compared to others. As the participants conceptualized their futures and articulated their relatively narrow and often ambiguous hopes, the sobering influence of such perpetual subordination is evident. The author closes with a discussion of the study’s importance to future research with marginalized youth in a society of increasing surveillance and security as well as implications for teacher education.

Following critical/post-structural perspectives in conducting ethnographic research on the political dimension of language learning, this study examines language learners’ identity and investment in a post-secondary Korean language classroom in Canada. First, this study explores the ways in which Korean-ness is produced through the curriculum, how an instructor’s linguistic and teaching practices in the Korean language classroom function to include some students and exclude others, and how the students on the periphery cope with their marginalization. I argue that peripheral students’ coping strategies are strongly tied to their investment into certain aspects of Korean language and culture, as well as their desire to gain symbolic resources in the Korean language. Second, my study examines the ways in which Korean heritage language learners (re)negotiate their hyphenated Korean Canadian identities by looking at three different discourse sites - Korean home, Korean church, and Canadian schools - and how their hyphenated identities are connected with their investment in maintaining their heritage language. The data for this study includes classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, bi-weekly written journals and focus group interviews. By adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a means of analyzing the data, this study shows that language learners’ race, ethnicity and gender are salient parts of their identities, and thus impact their learning experiences to varying degrees and levels. My research findings also suggest that the ethnic identity capital that the heritage language learners embrace in relation to their perceptions of their native speech community as well as its status, is intertwined with the maintenance of their heritage language. Pedagogical implications from this study enable educators to equally empower students from diverse backgrounds, and help them to be sensitive to the relations between ideologies and power in the language classroom. Central to these pedagogical implications is that it is the role of the teacher to adequately capitalize on the multilingual and multicultural practices that each student brings to the language classroom, and to identify the social and cultural voices present in the class.

Face-to-face interaction with target language (TL) group members can provide the intensive second language (L2) exposure required to enhance motivation; it improves attitudes towards L2 development, and promotes achievement (Freed, 1995; Warden, Lapkin, Swain, & Hart, 1995). However, face-to-face interaction with TL group members is not always possible. This is especially true for former core French (CF) students who have enrolled in beginner French as a Second Language (FSL) courses at universities in predominantly Anglophone regions of Canada. To address this issue, I designed a mixed-method case study to examine opportunities for providing intensive FSL exposure and enhancing motivation for beginner FSL university learners. The participants were 55 beginning learners of FSL studying at an Anglophone university in Atlantic Canada. To examine intensive FSL exposure, I compared the overall writing achievement over time of 2 groups interacting in a telecollaborative context: (a) a group interacting with younger Francophone Acadians in another province; and (b) a group interacting with classroom peers of similar L2 proficiency. To gain indepth insight into the effects of the telecollaboration, I explored 4 learners’ L2 motivational self-system: (a) perceptions of their prior and current language-learning experiences; and (b) how language-learner identity was shaped by the experiences. The study is based on 5 data sources: writing samples, background questionnaires, stimulated-recall interviews, language-learning autobiographies, and ongoing observations. It is grounded in 5 bodies of knowledge: the Input-Interaction-Output hypothesis within a socio-cultural perspective (Block, 2003), current L2 writing theory, collaborative learning theory, telecollaborative research, and Dörnyei’s (2005) L2 Motivational Self-System Theory. Quantitative comparison of overall writing achievement in the 2 telecollaborative writing contexts (using Mann-Whitney U tests) revealed that the comparison group performed better than the treatment group. Qualitative findings, however, demonstrated that the treatment group had more positive perceptions of their language-learning experiences with respect to L2 writing achievement at university, as well as more positive language-learner identities than did the comparison group. Further exploration of language-learner identities from an L2 motivational self-system perspective identified 3 identity shaping characteristics: evolution, demotivation and amotivation, and self-regulation.

Embedding environmental education within secondary science curriculum presents both philosophical and practical difficulties for teachers. This ethnographic/narrative study, with its methodology grounded in eco-feminism and realism/constructivism, examines the work of six secondary science teachers as they engage in an action research project focused on merging environmental education in their science lessons. Over the course of several months the teachers examine and discuss their views and their professional development related to the project. In the place of definitive conclusions, eight propositions relating the work of secondary science teachers to environmental education, form the basis for a discussion of the implications of the study. The implications are particularly relevant to secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, where the embedding of environmental education in science studies has been mandated.