This thesis explores the issues of immigration and identity that inform the experiences of adult English language learners and which can be addressed within a classroom context. Using practitioner research and an explicitly critical approach to literacy and learning, I conducted a six week workshop at a community English language school in New York City, working with eleven adult learners to discuss their lives in their native countries, decisions to move to the United States, and experiences living in a new country and learning English in an attempt to understand how those factors shape their learning and could be incorporated into the curriculum. This workshop used poetry as a means for students’ self-expression and demonstrated the importance of inviting adult immigrant students into collaborative, co-constructive learning environments where their lived experiences are at the core of their language learning process in order to allow for an inclusive negotiation of identity.

This thesis explores the issues of immigration and identity that inform the experiences of adult English language learners and which can be addressed within a classroom context. Using practitioner research and an explicitly critical approach to literacy and learning, I conducted a six week workshop at a community English language school in New York City, working with eleven adult learners to discuss their lives in their native countries, decisions to move to the United States, and experiences living in a new country and learning English in an attempt to understand how those factors shape their learning and could be incorporated into the curriculum. This workshop used poetry as a means for students’ self-expression and demonstrated the importance of inviting adult immigrant students into collaborative, co-constructive learning environments where their lived experiences are at the core of their language learning process in order to allow for an inclusive negotiation of identity.

This study was aimed at addressing the adolescent learners’ writing needs by assessing teachers’ needs on writing instruction across the disciplines in Grades 9 and 10 in one school in Southwestern Ontario. The research employed a mixed-methods approach using qualitative data from focus group and one-on-one interviews, and quantitative data collected through document analysis. The data revealed that there is a range of beliefs about writing instruction and that participating teachers offer many valuable writing opportunities to their students; however, there is a reluctance to provide more instructional time on writing according to the content area. The findings also pointed to the influence school administrators have in leading the instructional program. These findings concur with existing literature on writing instruction and the role principals play in literacy instruction.

This study evaluated two extracurricular leadership development programs offered by one urban high school. The programs were evaluated through an examination of the ways in which students understood their experiences in the programs in terms of their own leadership abilities, their leadership role with others and their perception of good leadership. The six study participants were observed facilitating groups of their peers through interactive activities at the programs' multiple-day events. In the three months following the programs, the participants were interviewed twice. The participants reported that their experience in a leadership development program helped them to feel confident in their leadership abilities. Also, the participants valued their relationships with their peers in their roles as leaders. Finally, the participants believed that good leaders exhibit caring behaviour towards others. This study provides information to assist the improvement of youth leadership development programs.

This study evaluated two extracurricular leadership development programs offered by one urban high school. The programs were evaluated through an examination of the ways in which students understood their experiences in the programs in terms of their own leadership abilities, their leadership role with others and their perception of good leadership. The six study participants were observed facilitating groups of their peers through interactive activities at the programs' multiple-day events. In the three months following the programs, the participants were interviewed twice. The participants reported that their experience in a leadership development program helped them to feel confident in their leadership abilities. Also, the participants valued their relationships with their peers in their roles as leaders. Finally, the participants believed that good leaders exhibit caring behaviour towards others. This study provides information to assist the improvement of youth leadership development programs.

This study was aimed at addressing the adolescent learners’ writing needs by assessing teachers’ needs on writing instruction across the disciplines in Grades 9 and 10 in one school in Southwestern Ontario. The research employed a mixed-methods approach using qualitative data from focus group and one-on-one interviews, and quantitative data collected through document analysis. The data revealed that there is a range of beliefs about writing instruction and that participating teachers offer many valuable writing opportunities to their students; however, there is a reluctance to provide more instructional time on writing according to the content area. The findings also pointed to the influence school administrators have in leading the instructional program. These findings concur with existing literature on writing instruction and the role principals play in literacy instruction.

The field of peace education presently remains undertheorized suffusing praxis and pedagogy as foundation within the edifices of dissembling postModernity marked within the Institute of Rationality. (Re)imag(e)(in)ing critical pedagogy in a peace education-to-come, enjoins readers/writers along a putative journey through the violence of metaphysics in the fundamental question of difference bridging chiastic ethico-philososphical terrain, reconceptualizing pedagogical endeavour in ethicus obligatus to the other towards a renewing peace literacy within academe. Peace education can reconstitute the force of community on planes of difference unfolding socialis aequitus and peace, reframing the nature of our being, self and other as the appositional realm of separation/connection. The opening of peace, as concept, ethos, through critical pedagogy in/by the fashioning of discursive forms acknowledging the semio-theoretical chain constructing human social relationality proffers a solid theoretical foundation for the field of peace education, re-tracing difference across socio-ethno-politico-historical structures. Central tenets of the evolving field of peace education are reconfigured in deontological proposition through deconstruction as precursorial project in reason affording performative discourse transversing the transcendental signified, peace, in another idiom eclipsing spatio-temporal illusion, affording diachronous affirmation and revelation in a crucial luminous snapshot within the post-conflict setting of Northern Ireland concerning fundamental matters of peace and education. Peace education as constituent element of contemporary peace knowledges and principal arena for education for peace within the unconditional university is fundamentally challenged in a commitment to peace literacy to adduce and address all interwoven questions of difference, justice, peace, and education within academe. A new beginning compels another reading in presence honouring the other and Other in ethico-philosophico-pedagogy radically questioning our individual and collective rationality in relation to understandings of human social relationality and the transperformative tenets of peace education in difference through différance, cathecting presence anew while (re)configuring academe primarily concerned with difference, peace, and social justice as discursis unfolding impossibility. Consequently, the order of phallogocentricism and its sponsoring patriarchal institution that would sublimate a discourse on/of difference in substitution, as the same irrupts in the fissure another perspectivity opening through presence, presence in meaning, presence in spatiality, presence in temporality in the impossibility of the limit.

Since 2003, the Canadian government has repeatedly called for research into innovative ways to teach Core French (CF) – a non-immersion program, where French as a Second Language (FSL) is taught on a daily basis, or a few times per week. This exploratory study investigates the driving forces behind the widespread popularity of a CF method called the Accelerative Integrated Method (AIM), which combines target language use with gestures, high-frequency vocabulary, and drama to accelerate the development of fluency from the onset of classroom instruction. In order to learn more about the “meaningfulness” of this growing trend (Fullan, 2007), this mixed-method inquiry attempts to shift the focus from product to process, comparing educator perspectives and AIM implementation within two Ontario contexts: (a) where AIM was mandated for elementary (Grades 4-6) FSL instruction, and (b) where AIM was an optional method for FSL teachers to use (or not). Survey and interview data were collected from and triangulated across a variety of educators from both contexts, including FSL consultants (n = 18), principals (n = 8), CF teachers (n = 9), and one Ontario Ministry of Education representative. Four semi-structured interviews and multiple observations were also conducted with those CF teachers who were using AIM (n = 8). An additional CF teacher who had attempted to use AIM, and had subsequently rejected it, was also interviewed. Findings showed that AIM implementation and educator perspectives did not vary significantly based on whether AIM was mandated or optional for CF instruction. A clear preference emerged towards using AIM and the accompanying resources during the beginning stages of CF instruction. Discussion about the growing popularity of AIM was positive; however, it also exposed a range of emotions about when and how AIM should be used. In terms of implementation, while some AIM routines, activities, and strategies were used by all, each AIM teacher exercised their agency while using the method, supplementing and adapting for different reasons. Implications include the need to reexamine the objectives of micro-level AIM policies, recognize the adaptability of AIM, and consider including detailed observations in future research linking AIM to student achievement.

Over the past several decades, secular schools in North America have been expected to impart moral education to students. An array of approaches, strategies, methods, and philosophical and theoretical orientations for doing so are promoted in education literature. Two, in particular, have also been politically endorsed in Ontario, Canada—character education and community service. Yet, there remains discrepancy among teachers’ practices, knowledge, awareness, and intentions. Anecdotal reports indicate that relatively few teachers provide a consistent and comprehensive moral education, and those who do, act primarily on their own initiative and at their own discretion. Previous empirical evidence suggests that teachers who are moral agents conceive of, enact, and reflect on a personally developed form of moral education, which is embedded in the moral and ethical dimensions of school and classroom life, curriculum, and pedagogy. This single-case study aims to broaden and deepen the scholarship of moral agency as moral education, by exploring the question How does a teacher, who prioritizes the moral education of students, envision, enact and reflect on that moral education. Positioning myself as a conduit, within what is often considered to be a closed-door culture of teaching, I metaphorically opened one teacher’s classroom door and exposed her practices. The result is a uniquely comprehensive and genuine portrait of moral agency, which details the use of a variety of strategies and methods for imparting morality. These include intentionally modelling moral behaviours, conduct and dispositions; fostering relationships with and among students; creating a classroom community; delivering virtues lessons and messages; encouraging discussions of a moral nature; nurturing self-discipline in students; providing opportunities for community service; and assessing students’ social and moral development. The harmonious co-existence of these strategies and methods within one classroom and one teacher’s practice; the complementary and supportive way in which the teacher makes use of them; and their independence of any particular philosophical or theoretical orientation for moral education, represent the main insights of this study. These insights suggest that moral education in a secular classroom might be more comprehensively understood and promoted as moral agency.

This phenomenological study researches Pakistani immigrant parents’ perspectives and attitudes on how their children use new media technologies. Parental attitudes are directly linked to student achievement (Hampton, Mumford & Bond, 1998) and parents are the gatekeepers of technology use in the home, where, during unstructured time, children can experiment and develop skills in using new technologies (Ito et al, 2010). Therefore, this study looks at how parents, through their actions and attitudes, encourage or discourage their children from developing competencies in using new media technologies By examining the pedagogical histories of parents and their concerns and rules about technology use, this study adds to the literature on parental attitudes towards the use of technology as a pedagogical tool. Further, this study examines the issue from an immigrant perspective, focusing on 10 Pakistani immigrant parents who live in the Greater Toronto Area and whose children attend pubic school.