The purpose of this study was to assess the needs of employees in regard to their Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) according to the program administrators' perspective. Information was collected from 62 program administrators within 54 organizations across Western Canada using a self-administered questionnaire. The 132-item questionnaire included demographic information and ten sections devoted to elicit administrators' perspectives on employees' needs (prevalence of problems, severity of problems, barriers to EAP utilization, program awareness, prevention programs, training and information for supervisors and union representatives, personal problems and the workplace, the role of the EAP in the workplace, the role of the EAP provider in the workplace, and a general overview). Results show that administrators perceive a greater prevalence and severity of problems than EAP utilization. There is also a perceived large EAP support among its participants (i.e., senior management, supervisors, union representatives, employees) as a relevant means to address employees' and their family members' problems. The outcome of the study indicates as well that personal and family members' problems affect employees and the workplace in a very significant way. Administrators believe that the EAP is a very important resource to deal with such problems. Additionally, results point out the important need for providing employees with information and prevention programs that may equip them with particular resources to address their problems before they affect them at work. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

A discrepancy appears to exist between the value placed on reflective journal writing by the writers of journals and the value seen by educators of that same journal writing. In this study, I explored the journal writing of six tutors working in a learning centre at a two-year community college in western Canada. I examined: (1) tutors' perspectives on the journal writing task; (2) the content and reflectivity of tutors' journals; and, (3) the accuracy of the journals in representing tutor thinking initiated by the journal writing task. The initial data collection for the study included observation of weekly in-service training sessions and examination of tutor journal entries. Tutors were interviewed about their perceptions of journal writing and their thinking around issues they wrote about in their journals. The tutor trainer was interviewed about his expectations of tutor journal writing, his reactions to tutors' journals and his perceptions of the journal writing task. After the initial data collection, the participants were given summaries of data collected in the initial phase. Tutors read the summaries and as a group discussed issues raised by the data. I interviewed the trainer about insights he had gained from the summaries. Content choices and levels of reflectivity in the tutors' journals varied widely. Factors affecting the content and levels of reflection in the tutors' journals were affected by tutors’ understanding of the journal writing task, their motivation for journal writing, their feelings of vunerability, their personal histories, their tutoring experience, their preference for writing as a mode of learning, and their purposes for writing journals. Most tutors perceived their journals as useful to them, but the tutor trainer regarded the journals as less useful. This difference in perception of the benefits of journal writing can be attributed, at least in part, to the differing levels of access of the trainer and the tutors to the benefits of journal writing. The trainer based his understanding of the benefits of journal writing on the journals themselves whereas the tutors were aware of benefits that were not apparent from studying the journals. Interviews with the tutors showed that tutors reflected more as a result of the journal writing task than was evident from their journals. The trainer’s view of the reflection initiated by the journal writing task was obscured in tutors’ journals due to the fact, that tutors reported prior reflection, provided incomplete representation of their reflective thinking, made rhetorical choices which masked their levels of reflection, and continued to reflect after completion of journal entries. Implications of the study for educators include the importance of a process approach to journal writing, the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate picture of the reflection the task initiates, and factors for consideration in the construction of the prompt for journal writing. Implications for researchers focus on the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate measure of the benefits of the journal writing task. Collaboration with journal writers is seen as essential for any such measure to be achieved.

A discrepancy appears to exist between the value placed on reflective journal writing by the writers of journals and the value seen by educators of that same journal writing. In this study, I explored the journal writing of six tutors working in a learning centre at a two-year community college in western Canada. I examined: (1) tutors' perspectives on the journal writing task; (2) the content and reflectivity of tutors' journals; and, (3) the accuracy of the journals in representing tutor thinking initiated by the journal writing task. The initial data collection for the study included observation of weekly in-service training sessions and examination of tutor journal entries. Tutors were interviewed about their perceptions of journal writing and their thinking around issues they wrote about in their journals. The tutor trainer was interviewed about his expectations of tutor journal writing, his reactions to tutors' journals and his perceptions of the journal writing task. After the initial data collection, the participants were given summaries of data collected in the initial phase. Tutors read the summaries and as a group discussed issues raised by the data. I interviewed the trainer about insights he had gained from the summaries. Content choices and levels of reflectivity in the tutors' journals varied widely. Factors affecting the content and levels of reflection in the tutors' journals were affected by tutors’ understanding of the journal writing task, their motivation for journal writing, their feelings of vunerability, their personal histories, their tutoring experience, their preference for writing as a mode of learning, and their purposes for writing journals. Most tutors perceived their journals as useful to them, but the tutor trainer regarded the journals as less useful. This difference in perception of the benefits of journal writing can be attributed, at least in part, to the differing levels of access of the trainer and the tutors to the benefits of journal writing. The trainer based his understanding of the benefits of journal writing on the journals themselves whereas the tutors were aware of benefits that were not apparent from studying the journals. Interviews with the tutors showed that tutors reflected more as a result of the journal writing task than was evident from their journals. The trainer’s view of the reflection initiated by the journal writing task was obscured in tutors’ journals due to the fact, that tutors reported prior reflection, provided incomplete representation of their reflective thinking, made rhetorical choices which masked their levels of reflection, and continued to reflect after completion of journal entries. Implications of the study for educators include the importance of a process approach to journal writing, the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate picture of the reflection the task initiates, and factors for consideration in the construction of the prompt for journal writing. Implications for researchers focus on the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate measure of the benefits of the journal writing task. Collaboration with journal writers is seen as essential for any such measure to be achieved. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

One of the purposes of political parties is to reduce a heterogeneous polity into a few political elements. This thesis determines if there is a relationship between political parties and social cleavages in Canada. I have used provincial election results and census data from 1956 to 1991. Electoral results are converted into two measures of party system size, the effective number of parties (the number of significant parties in a legislature) and the competitive number of parties (the number of relevant parties in an election). Social heterogeneity is measured by converting census data into a series of indexes that measure the ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity. 1 also examine the affect of rural/urban and centre periphery cleavages in provincial politics. I have found that there is a significant relationship between social heterogeneity and party system size in Canada. Of the cleavage structure examined, ethnicity is positively correlated with party system size and the size of a province's rural population is negatively correlated with party system size. Curiously, religion and language have mixed affects; religion is positively correlated with the number of parties that get elected but negatively correlated with the number of parties that win seats. Similarly, the size of a provinces French speaking population has a positive relationship with the number of parties that win seats but a negative relationship with the vote distribution among parties. There are two important conclusions in this thesis. First, there is substantial evidence that social heterogeneity influences party systems size in Canadian provinces. This result challenges institutional explanations which suggest that party systems in polities that use plurality electoral systems which elect single members will not be affected by social diversity. My second conclusion is the identification of a largely untouched area of research on provincial party systems. European theorists have used social structural approaches for fifty years to explain how societies and political parties co-evolve. This thesis proves that this approach has an important role to play on this side of the Atlantic. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

For the past decade, the leisure and recreation literature has sought to develop and support a discourse of queer youth at-risk in order to call attention to the need to help these youth function normally in society (Grossman, 1992; Grossman, 1995; Kivel, 1997). As a solution, creating safe spaces for queer youth has been advocated, without necessarily considering how the identity of practitioners might affect these spaces, or what types of norms these spaces might simultaneously reinforce. This research study drew on queer, feminist, and spatial analysis theories, to investigate how heteronormativity functioned in queer youth spaces within two different municipal recreation contexts. I focused specifically on the physical and discursive boundaries of the spaces, as well as the influence of the youth workers' identities and practices. The research methods included observations, document analysis, and semistructured interviews. The findings demonstrated that the youth workers' identities were highly influential in both spaces, as they affected the negotiation of spatial boundaries and systemic discourses in very different ways. The spilling over of queer bodies out of the spaces worked to expose the boundary between queer and normal space as discursive, rather than natural or real. Furthermore, the central focus of both spaces on a queer identity re-created certain norms around race (read as whiteness) and gender (read as binary categories); however, this occurred in different ways in each space. Finally, systemic discourses of risk, support, and safety worked to both disrupt and reinforce notions of heteronormativity. By calling attention to an existing silence about queer youth, they were simultaneously constructed as helpless and in need of saving. Those who theorize about and work with queer youth might want to consider how certain discourses support notions of an idealized subject that can be further marginalizing. In addition, although queer youth spaces can be enabling for some youth, they are constraining for others. Research and practice that advocates for queer youth spaces as the solution, might want to deliberate the ways in which this approach can fail to trouble normalcy, and potentially reinforce the value of certain ways of being queer. / Education, Faculty of / Kinesiology, School of / Graduate

Canada’s boreal forest provides important breeding habitat for 12 to 14 million migratory birds annually. Nonetheless the ecology of boreal wetlands remains poorly understood. Over the last 40 years, rapid industrial development with little attention to conservation has been ongoing in the region. Apparent population declines of species, such as that of lesser scaup have raised concerns about the quality of western boreal wetlands. This is one of very few studies demonstrating patterns in brood-rearing habitat use by ducks and grebes in the Canadian western boreal forest. In this study, wetland characteristics associated with brood-rearing wetlands of American wigeon (Anas Americana), green-winged teal (Anas crecca), mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), lesser scaup (Aythya affinis), ring-necked duck (Aythya collaris), horned grebe (Pondiceps auritus), and red-necked grebe (Podiceps grisegena) were investigated on 75 wetlands near Yellowknife, NT, Canada. I used Principle Components and regression analyses to delineate patterns of habitat use by breeding water birds. Results indicate that physical characteristics of wetlands, area in particular, had stronger correlations with brood-rearing habitat then did invertebrate abundance. Invertebrate groups positively associated with brood-rearing wetlands included: Amphipoda, Pelecypoda, and or Ephemeroptera. Breeding diving ducks had negative iv associations with Dipteran abundance. Diving ducks and red-necked grebes were more strongly correlated with habitat variables then were dabbling ducks and horned grebes. Brood-rearing wetlands of the smallest birds in the study, green-winged teal and horned grebe, had the fewest and weakest associations with habitat variables. / xiii, 97 leaves ; 29 cm

Physical education is a profession where heterosexuality has historically been regarded as normal, if not compulsory. The location of female physical education (PE) teachers at the nexus of discourses about masculinist sport, women's physical education and pedagogies of the body has exerted unique historical pressures on their sexualities. In North America and Western Europe, female PE teachers have frequently been suspected of being lesbian. This suspicion has enveloped lesbian teachers in a shroud of oppressive silence, tolerated only as an 'open secret' (Cahn, 1994). This study examined the life histories of six women from three generations who had taught physical education in western Canada. Previous life history research has focused exclusively on lesbian PE teachers (Clarke, 1996; Sparkes, 1992, 1994a, 1994b; Squires & Sparkes, 1996; Sparkes & Templin, 1992) which risks reinforcing a hierarchical relationship between 'lesbian' and 'heterosexual'. Accordingly, three women who identified as 'lesbian' and three as 'married' or 'heterosexual' were involved in this study which incorporated poststructural, psychoanalytic and queer theories about sexual subjectivity into a feminist approach to life history. The notions of 'understanding' and 'overstanding' were used to analyze data which meant interpreting not only had been said during the interviews but also what was left unsaid. The women's life histories revealed how lesbian sexualities have been marginalized and silenced, especially within the physical education profession. A l l the women grew up in families where heterosexuality was normalized, and all except one experienced pressure to date boys during their high school education in Canada. As teachers, identifying as a 'feminist' had a greater affect on their personal politics and approaches to teaching than their sexual identities. The life histories also provided limited support to the notion that PE teacher's participation in various women's sports accentuated the suspicion of lesbianism. For two of the 'lesbian' women, team sports continued to provide valuable lesbian communities from the 1950s to the present day. In contrast, one 'lesbian' women established her lesbian social network through individual sports and urban feminist groups. The 'heterosexual' women had all participated in gender-neutral sports. Overall the sporting backgrounds of these teachers did little to dispel the long-standing association between women's sports and lesbianism which, in turn, has affected female PE teachers. Drawing on queer theory and the notion of 'overstanding' data, deconstructive interpretations suggested how heterosexuality had been normalized in several institutional discourses within women's physical education. These interpretations undermined the boundaries of 'the closet', sought out an absent lesbian gaze and suggested that homophobia has been, in part, rooted in the social unconscious of the physical education profession.

Physical education is a profession where heterosexuality has historically been regarded as normal, if not compulsory. The location of female physical education (PE) teachers at the nexus of discourses about masculinist sport, women's physical education and pedagogies of the body has exerted unique historical pressures on their sexualities. In North America and Western Europe, female PE teachers have frequently been suspected of being lesbian. This suspicion has enveloped lesbian teachers in a shroud of oppressive silence, tolerated only as an 'open secret' (Cahn, 1994). This study examined the life histories of six women from three generations who had taught physical education in western Canada. Previous life history research has focused exclusively on lesbian PE teachers (Clarke, 1996; Sparkes, 1992, 1994a, 1994b; Squires & Sparkes, 1996; Sparkes & Templin, 1992) which risks reinforcing a hierarchical relationship between 'lesbian' and 'heterosexual'. Accordingly, three women who identified as 'lesbian' and three as 'married' or 'heterosexual' were involved in this study which incorporated poststructural, psychoanalytic and queer theories about sexual subjectivity into a feminist approach to life history. The notions of 'understanding' and 'overstanding' were used to analyze data which meant interpreting not only had been said during the interviews but also what was left unsaid. The women's life histories revealed how lesbian sexualities have been marginalized and silenced, especially within the physical education profession. A l l the women grew up in families where heterosexuality was normalized, and all except one experienced pressure to date boys during their high school education in Canada. As teachers, identifying as a 'feminist' had a greater affect on their personal politics and approaches to teaching than their sexual identities. The life histories also provided limited support to the notion that PE teacher's participation in various women's sports accentuated the suspicion of lesbianism. For two of the 'lesbian' women, team sports continued to provide valuable lesbian communities from the 1950s to the present day. In contrast, one 'lesbian' women established her lesbian social network through individual sports and urban feminist groups. The 'heterosexual' women had all participated in gender-neutral sports. Overall the sporting backgrounds of these teachers did little to dispel the long-standing association between women's sports and lesbianism which, in turn, has affected female PE teachers. Drawing on queer theory and the notion of 'overstanding' data, deconstructive interpretations suggested how heterosexuality had been normalized in several institutional discourses within women's physical education. These interpretations undermined the boundaries of 'the closet', sought out an absent lesbian gaze and suggested that homophobia has been, in part, rooted in the social unconscious of the physical education profession. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

No description available.

This study explored, described and attempted to understand the process of change by examining the conversion to school-based management in two Western Canadian public school districts. The study sought to determine where, when, how and why the main actors and factors initiated and provided impetus to the change to school-based management. The emergence of these questions was based on a review of the literature on educational change, school improvement efforts and the change to decentralized decision-making. The literature indicates not only a need to explain the causes of change but also a need to determine ways to influence those causes, to change our planning processes and to produce better planners and implementers. A case study method was utilized with interviews of 43 persons to obtain their perceptions. The sample represented seven levels of district organizational structure: classroom teachers, school principals, central office staff, superintendent(s) , assistant/ associate superintendent(s), trustees, and local teachers' association representatives in each district. Other data sources included district documents and the researcher's field notes. The data were first analyzed descriptively by using Fullan's three phases of the change process: initiation, implementation, and continuation (including perceived outcomes) . A comparative analysis of the data was then undertaken between the two school districts. Finally, an interpretive analysis was undertaken in relation to the current literature on change in education. The main findings are the existence of the following: 1. two subphases of adoption (pre-adoption and formal adoption). Although the literature suggests possible subphases of adoption, this study acknowledges two such subphases. 2. two subphases of implementation (pre-implementation and formal implementation). As with adoption, the literature refers to the possible existence of subphases; however, this study identifies two such subphases. 3. three subphases of continuation (outcome determination processes or mechanisms, identification of outcomes and outcome review). The literature makes reference only to the broad phase of continuation with no reference to subphases. It is interesting to note that the study identifies three main sub-activities or subphases characterizing continuation. 4. four process change variables, each encompassing a number of interactive factors which guide the change process through the three broad phases of change. These process change variables are sources of the initiative, attributes of the initiative, support gathering and context. Again, the literature refers to the cause of change; however, it is interesting to note that certain variables work to influence the causes of change. 5. a management cycle which provided, within the context of continuation, a process for achieving desired school and/or district outcomes. Implicit in the cycle are critical elements for school improvement such as strategic planning, monitoring and review of progress (outcomes), budget planning and resource management. The literature identifies the importance of monitoring results (outcomes) and the importance of change; however, the existence of a cycle of such events during continuation appears novel. 6. a revised model of change in education which offers a modification to that of Fullan and others. This model serves to outline the influences contributing to the change process in general and leads to a revised model of change in education. A number of recommendations based on the findings and conclusions are made. Those addressed to practitioners suggest they should utilize a pilot test to determine the quality of the initiative and it should be held concurrently with preparation of district and school personnel, develop a "blueprint" and/or "template" (vision) for production of an initiative; and establish a management cycle for procuring data on the initiative' s performance in order to compare the outcomes to the original goals for change. The remaining recommendations are addressed to those who would do further research which confirms the change process variables and the clusters of factors associated with each.