This M.A. thesis is an autoethnographic study of my personal experiences teaching Grade Two after ten years of teaching middle school. It takes place over a five year span from 2007 to 2012. It is presented as a series of fictional, performative, and narrative pieces, where the reader is invited along on my journey to discover who I am (becoming) as Teacher, and the (re)invention of myself as Teacher. The study takes a creative, arts- based approach, presented as a curriculum lab book that is formatted differently than a traditional thesis. On the right side of each page is a novelette comprised of narratives, stories, dialogue, and poems; on the left side of the page are literature links and implications, definitions, reflections, and recursive segments. Areas that are highlighted in this thesis include living in the hybridity of culture, dwelling in the spaces of planned and lived curriculum, and the pedagogy of reinvention. The focus of this research story is reflection and practice, ways to approach change in our pedagogy, and to demonstrate autoethnography as a methodology for the exploration of Teacher identity. / Graduate

Traditional knowledges and ways of living in harmony with the Earth and among species have been disregarded, discarded, and destroyed as industrialisation, capitalism, and globalisation have pervaded, all maintained in part by the Cartesian split which dissociates body from mind, heaven from Earth, nature from culture. These hegemonic layers of control have served to bind the fate of the Earth’s eco-systems, including human life, to the global capital economy which thrives on growth and development at any and all costs. This feminist, arts-informed inquiry brought an embodied lens to the stories of eco-activism and inquired as to the role of embodied ways of knowing and their role in eco-activism and the toll of activism upon women eco-activist bodies. This research inquiry interviewed thirteen women eco-activists, conducted four art-making focus groups, and used embodied reflexivity as part of the analysis process in order to find new understandings and knowledge to add to the limited literature on embodiment, embodied ways of knowing, and women’s eco-activism. Furthermore, this research sought to identify and articulate the ways in which activism practice can be more sustainable for activists and intended to add to the growing awareness body/mind connection and unity consciousness for activists, educators, and others working towards social change. The key findings of this research indicate that embodied knowledges counter fragmented ways of living, foster sustainable practices, and offer guidance and direction to live more harmoniously with, and on, the Earth and to practice activism. It also expands our understanding of women’s embodied ways of knowing and illuminates our understandings of how bodies can guide and show alternate ways of living, and practising activism, that are sustainable. This inquiry further added to the growing awareness of body/mind connection and unity consciousness with a focus on activists, educators, and others interested in finding ways to live with, rather than on, the Earth. / Graduate / 0329 / 0453 / lisa@lisamortimore.com

Many Roma children from the EU coming to Canada as refugees have been denied a consistent education and many suffer gaps in their learning or have not had the opportunity to receive any education at all. These circumstances are mainly due to discriminating and oppressive behaviours that have historically prevailed and exist in contemporary society. In considering the difficulty that Roma children have with education, when they arrive as refugees into Canadian schools, it is imperative that Roma children be given an opportunity to access and complete an education in an environment that is supportive, free of discrimination and sensitive to their needs as learners. My research examines the role of visual art as part of an arts-based education program as a means through which Roma children are more likely to experience success with school by participating in an educational model that is engaging and supportive of their cultural ways of knowing. This paper is a case study, grounded in critical theory, into “best practices” in education that engage marginalized Roma children with learning. The study is framed around three research questions: What is distinctly problematic for Roma children in traditional school settings? How can the arts, and art education in particular engage marginalized Roma children with learning? How can Romani arts and culture be integrated into a curriculum that works to dispel discrimination and oppression of marginalized Roma children? The study is informed by interviews with a teacher working within a Canadian educational program for refugee children, families and board members of the Toronto Roma Community Centre, as well as my own personal observations and experiences. While I have determined that arts-based education is engaging for Roma children, the bigger question that has emerged is, “How can we use arts-based education to enhance the curricular lives and school success of the Roma, a culture of exclusion?” The answer lies in acknowledging that factors such as trust, personal connection with the teacher, parental involvement, First language acquisition, refugee status, cultural preservation, and integration, play a critical role in the educational success of Roma children. / Graduate / 0515 / 0273 / 0727 / kfhall@uvic.ca

This work is a collectivist engagement between researcher and participants in a knowledge quest for self-hood through engaged bodily awareness and sense. The world of the teen girl is explored from a philosophical, social, and political perspective that emphasizes expression of self through embodied knowing and being. The process is performative where yoga is used as an arts-based method to explore the self through bodily awareness. The body is reclaimed as a way to know oneself. Yoga is the expression of the living, being, and knowing body. The asana practice, the still of meditation, and the flow of the breath are emancipatory discourse where each of us moves, changes, and grows; and ultimately becomes. This becoming is a consciousness raising experience that finds and grows voice. The transformative process engages a physical expression where participants’ and researcher’s individual sense of self is connected with their universal sense of self hereby replacing current patterns of harmful thinking with new consciousness that is reflective of self awareness and realization. Found poetry is used to explore the experience of the participants. The poetic representation brings the reader into the world of the teen girl. Voices that have been secret and silenced are celebrated. The body is the instrument through which power and ownership of the moment and the self are expressed through emotion and experience. The participants and researcher move collectively and intuitively from passive objects to self-knowing subjects; subjects who are thoroughly engaged in the world and aware of their highest potential as liberated selves. The findings of this collectivist and activist research approach indicate that embodied engagements elicit the space where flesh speaks and external and internal become unified as one. Yoga is an artful, embodied expression that is about experiencing the world without being enslaved by the world. This is not a passive engagement but an activist engagement that challenges hegemonic ideas of girls in the world and in the world of a girl. This further embraces the idea of the unity of whole-self and mind-body interconnectedness where we are not passive observers of the body with awareness of self located in the head watching over the body as object. Subject and object as separate dissolve and mindfulness is the present. The end result is one where we become; we become fully engaged in a creative and fluid self-hood enabling self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-love. / Graduate / 0727 / 0525 / 0273 / kyte_d@yahoo.ca

Immigrant youth face uncertainty in many aspects of their lives. Most have little control over their family’s decision to immigrate and once they arrive, many encounter challenges. The Navigating Multiple Worlds project worked with a group of youth researchers to explore the relationship between stress, resilience and expressions of subjectivity among immigrant youth. Moving beyond the negative conceptualizations of stress and acculturative stress that dominate the literature, this research gathered youth perspectives on stress and what could be done to enhance supports for immigrant youth in Victoria. Through our participatory approach, the youth research team was involved in the design and implementation of interviews, focus groups and finally a photovoice exercise. Our methodology sought to highlight narrative complexities and the fluidity of experiences, with the research team reflecting on their own experiences while gathering perspectives on stress from other immigrant youth. The benefits and challenges of working in participatory paradigms with youth and the value of arts based methods for capturing youth voices and creating ‘thinking spaces’ for community engagement are highlighted. Historically, research has problematized immigrant youth identities. A focus on immigrant youth perspectives reveals that while many youth face challenges after immigration, they also emphasize the value of flexibility in self-definition. The combination of our methods, participatory approach, our focus on youth voices and taking an ethnographic approach to documenting experiences of stress, contributed to the distinctiveness of our findings. Considering stress as an idiom of narrative expression rather than an index of negative experience, acknowledges its place as part of the worldview of the participants, who use the term in multiple ways. The physicality of stress, the spatial and temporal dimensions of stress and ‘everyday stressors’ emerged from our analysis as thematic categories that describe the ways that youth experience ‘stress’. The findings of the Navigating Multiple Worlds project speak to the value of conceptualizing stress as a narrative idiom. Over the course of our research it became apparent that youth were talking about stress in ways that allowed them to discuss and normalize negative experiences, re-framing experiences of ‘stress’ in positive terms. For many, this facilitated fluid movement from a focus on challenges to a focus on coping and resilience. Our research suggests that while conflicting expectations in the lives of immigrant youth are sources of ‘stress’ for many, they can also be understood as key ‘sites of flexibility’. The processes of negotiation that occur in these ‘sites of flexibility’, as youth use the language of stress to name challenging experiences and overcome them, contribute to the resilience of youth. Although our findings are specific to a small group of immigrant youth in Victoria, BC, considering stress as an idiom of resilience as well as distress creates opportunities to recognize and enhance the strengths of immigrant youth and the supports available to them. Recommendations from our research in terms of service provision, supports, and participatory research with youth are provided, as well as suggestions for future research in anthropology related to immigrant youth and stress. / Graduate / 0339 / 0326 / 0347 / sarah.fletcher@gmail.com

Using collage as a methodological and conceptual framework for re-conceptualizing knowledge in HIV/AIDS education, this thesis attends to young women’s understandings of HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Through engaging in the process of making collages, what stories do young women tell about HIV/AIDS? What discourses are produced when collage and narrative are used as methodological tools to address participants’ understandings of HIV/AIDS? By responding to their own collage texts, as well as the collage texts of others, how are issues of representation addressed? Using narrative and post-structural discourse analysis, this study explores how participants’ complex and contradictory understandings of HIV/AIDS diverge from the content and form of current school-based HIV/AIDS curriculum. Whereas the curriculum presupposes a rational and linear subject, participants’ reflexive understandings of HIV/AIDS shift throughout the study, varying as a result of roles performed, the context of the collage or image being discussed, and the dynamic interchange between participants.

This dissertation examines how teachers understand and use their own bodies in their everyday practice of teaching. Using a poststructural theoretical framework and an ethnographic and arts-based research methodology, I demonstrate how discourses of the body shape experiences of teaching and teachers’ lives. This work is significant not only because it has direct implications for teachers but also because teachers’ bodies are rich and complex sites for theorizing and thinking critically about contemporary practices and discursive understandings that shape our lives. I call the research methodology that I used in this study “embedded performed ethnography”. This methodology involved in-depth ethnographic interviews, creative writing, and dramatic performance with twelve teachers in Ontario. By drawing on three distinct but interrelated fields: critical physical education, feminist and queer curriculum theory and Fat Studies, my research demonstrates the richness and complexity of teachers’ professional lives and the impact that dominant discourses of the body have on educational spaces. I use three key concepts to analyze the experiences and writing of the research participants. First, I use the concept of ‘biopedagogy’ to examine the ways in which teachers’ bodies are subject to regulation and policing in schools. Next, I use the concept of ‘performance’ to examine how participants use their bodies to construct and reproduce dominant notions of health in the classroom. Lastly, I use ‘affect’ as a concept to address the complex and complicated moments that occur on and through a teacher’s body in the classroom. I work with the everyday experiences of teachers in the classroom to explore how particular teaching moments illustrate and connect to the broader discourses and practices of the body that shape our lives.

Using collage as a methodological and conceptual framework for re-conceptualizing knowledge in HIV/AIDS education, this thesis attends to young women’s understandings of HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Through engaging in the process of making collages, what stories do young women tell about HIV/AIDS? What discourses are produced when collage and narrative are used as methodological tools to address participants’ understandings of HIV/AIDS? By responding to their own collage texts, as well as the collage texts of others, how are issues of representation addressed? Using narrative and post-structural discourse analysis, this study explores how participants’ complex and contradictory understandings of HIV/AIDS diverge from the content and form of current school-based HIV/AIDS curriculum. Whereas the curriculum presupposes a rational and linear subject, participants’ reflexive understandings of HIV/AIDS shift throughout the study, varying as a result of roles performed, the context of the collage or image being discussed, and the dynamic interchange between participants.

In this thesis I explore writers and their writing practices as embodied, contingent, and affected by aesthetic environments and contemplative practices. I discuss contemplative practices as techniques for recognizing the co-dependent origination of the self/world, and as tools for disrupting the trifurcation of body, mind and word. I explore the written word’s role in the continuous production of new meaning, and as part of the continuous production of new “selves” for writers, and readers. I use narrative auto-ethnography to situate myself as a researcher, sensory ethnography and interviews to profile four practicing writers, and arts-informed Research-creation to document my own writing and contemplative practices. I also consider whether a post-pedagogy view of educational research might produce/allow space for more creative approaches to educational theorizing.

The purpose of this study is to determine social factors that influence help seeking behaviors by mothers who are concurrently involved in two social service systems: Child Protective Services (CPS) and family violence advocacy programs. Through the application of the behavioral model (of service use) for vulnerable populations, this study seeks to determine predisposing, enabling and need characteristics that impact help seeking behaviors at a family violence agency after participation in an ADVANCE (Acknowledging Domestic Violence and Navigating Child Protection Effectively) course, a group intervention class developed specifically for women involved with CPS. The research design is a mixed-method approach with an ADVANCE course evaluation embedded within the overall analysis of help seeking behaviors. The analytic strategies include pre-test/post-test means comparisons through paired t-tests, qualitative thematic analysis through arts-based methodology, and ordinary least squares and logistic regression analysis. This study considers six outcome variables related to protective help seeking behaviors: seeking services, seeking protective actions related to children, seeking a safety plan, seeking a protective order, seeking safe housing, and seeking financial independence. Several social factors identified influenced help seeking behaviors amongst child welfare involved women experiencing violence, namely, number of children, age of children, level of interest in services, previous participation in services, level of social support, perceived victim status, perceived need for a safety plan, and perceived need for change in family. This study should serve to enhance intervention practices utilized by both family violence advocates and child welfare professionals.