University of Macau / Faculty of Education

This dissertation documents an action-oriented, arts-based doctoral study that used popular theatre to investigate graduate students’ experiences at the University of Victoria (UVic) in Canada. The research question asks, what are the contradictions between the welcoming multicultural discourses of Canada and the experiences of international graduate students? This question is explored with a total of twenty-four graduate students, representing fourteen countries, including Canada, and ten departments across campus. These students participated in pilot work, interviews, focus groups, in-depth theatre workshops, and a public performance entitled, UNSETTLED. The process of creating interactive forum theatre with six graduate students and one student’s infant is outlined in depth, as is performance at UVic on November 8, 2006. The community impact of UNSETTLED and the researcher and actors’ learning-healing experiences are highlighted. The key contributions of this research are practical, theoretical, and methodological. Practically, this research contributes to the ongoing dialogue and concrete efforts around already identified challenges of internationalization. The outcome is an entirely student-driven effort that is unique both in content (due to the graduate student perspective represented) and in form (theatre). Theoretically, this research contributes to the areas of transformative learning and intersectionality. These theoretical insights reposition the ‘international student’ from being a person solely in need of services, to being one of many potential agents of change. An intersectional analysis points to a need to simultaneously address the diverse struggles of other graduate students, staff, administrators, and faculty in increasingly globalized universities and communities. Methodologically, this study expresses the catalytic and dialogical power of the intersection of research with art, education, community development, and activism, contributing to the fields of both arts-based research and action-oriented, participatory research and the places where these overlap.

This study investigates the healing experience that current practicing art therapists’ have had with art prior to their training, and how that experience influenced their decision to peruse a career in art therapy. Narrative inquiry was the primary methodology in the current study. Six current practicing art therapists, all females who currently reside in the area of Victoria BC, participated in the process of co-constructing their 1st person narratives with the primary researcher. The six stages of Braun & Clarke's (2006) Thematic Analysis was used as the guiding framework developing themes across the stories told. Themes and the implications that came out of these narratives with respect to future research and counseling practice are also discussed.

There are numerous methods teachers use to teach the alphabet to children. This thesis is a curriculum on how to teach the alphabet to English learners and English speakers. The author teaches kindergarten to students who are English speakers and to students who are Spanish speakers learning English as a second language. The school's instructional Reading Based Program (the Houghton Mifflin Lectura of California) offers many ideas and strategies but is missing some components necessary to meet distinct standards for kindergarten. The author developed this curriculum to meet the standards of teaching English speakers and English learners the alphabet to meet district standards.