An understanding of the level of both genetic and morphological diversity within a taxon and how that diversity is structured within and across habitats is important when determining the conservation value of that taxon and for successful habitat management programs to be developed. Atlin Lake is a large lake in northern British Columbia and is one of the largest lakes that contain relatively unperturbed populations of lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush). As the top aquatic predator, lake trout in Atlin Lake are a key component of the lake’s fish community and are important for local fisheries. I assayed lake trout from Atlin Lake and other western lake trout populations at eight microsatellite DNA loci and for body morphology to determine: (i) the level of genetic variation present, (ii) the level of substructure that occurs in Atlin Lake, and (iii) whether there was a relationship between the genetic and morphological variation present. STRUCTURE analysis identified five subpopulations within Atlin Lake. Morphological analysis was used to differentiate between the samples collected throughout Atlin Lake. Cluster analysis of size corrected data separated the fish into two groups making Atlin Lake the smallest lake identified to date to possess more than one morphotype. Genetic and morphological groupings were found not to be correlated with each other. Finally, I was interested in whether each of the genetic subpopulations contributed equally to the local fisheries catches. A mixed stock analysis of samples collected from the commercial fishery and recreational anglers indicated that all of the genetic subpopulations contribute to the fishery along with lake trout subpopulations in the interconnecting Tagish Lake; suggesting that no one subpopulation is being depleted by the fisheries. Continued genetic monitoring, however, is necessary to see if the trends in fishery contribution are temporally stable. Future studies should focus on understanding the source of the morphological variation and maintenance of genetic substructure.

No description available.

The study was designed using a multiple case study approach in which four middle school teachers engaged in a form of coaching based on Habermas' and Mezirows learning theories. Each participant examined their vision of teaching, and then compared their vision to video data of their classroom instruction. Teachers then created individual projects to address the gap between their visions and their instruction. Data comes from interviews, field notes and video data, as well as interview data from administrators and team member of the participants. Results from this study suggest that a teachers vision is reflexive with the context of their instruction and develops with experience. The study also provides evidence that when placed in a situation where teachers make their own professional development choices, those choices focus on pedagogical content knowledge as well as practical and technical interests. However, in less formal spaces, the professional development interests of teachers begin to reflect the more emancipatory interests.

Although making digital media involves movements of bodies, materials, and, often, mobile technologies, most literacy research on adolescents experiences with digital media relies on screened and sedentary perspectives rooted in representation and multimodalityperspectives that elide or distort the role of embodiment. This dissertation critiques the overemphasis on screens, texts, and representation in literacy studies across three empirical papers. Each paper addresses unique questions around literacy as an affective experience of human bodies through ethnographic and micro-ethnographic investigations in (1) a public school, (2) a southeastern community, and (3) a childrens hospital school. Paper 1 illustrates how adolescents physical mobilities and affective histories connect to their agency and development as producers of digital texts in urban schools. Paper 2 describes how the feeling of meaning-making with digital devices involves historically, culturally, and affectively developed sensibilities that emerge as bodies make sense of people, places and things as semiotic material. Paper 3 builds a theory of literacy moments, or the feeling of being in something while engaged in social, textual production. In its attempts at coming to know affective dimensions of social life, this dissertation also develops tension around what it means to know and warrant claims about moving, feeling bodies other than our own.

This dissertation examines the ways in which six second grade African American males engaged in critical conversations. This qualitative study addresses three primary research questions: 1) What is the nature of small group literature discussions focused on issues of power and privilege?; 2) How are students working to collectively build critical knowledge in a small group literature discussion focused on issues of power and privilege?; and 3) In what ways do issues of racial identity emerge among a small group of African American males participating in a discussion about race, power, and privilege? In order to address these three research questions, data was collected using the following methods: interviews, audio and video recordings, and field notes. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data, and results suggested that students who participated in the small group discussion sessions: 1) primarily discussed major themes the text inspired; 2) used an argumentation framework as a way of discussing critical topics and building knowledge; and 3) leveraged their own cultural histories and racial identities as tools for interpreting a major historical event.

This dissertation reports on a retrospective analysis of a design study conducted in partnership between researchers and the leaders of a large U.S. urban district to investigate and support the development of professional development (PD) facilitators. The intent of the study was to examine what PD facilitators need to know and be able to do in order to design and implement high-quality professional development (HQPD), and to test and improve a design for supporting the development of this expertise. HQPD refers to PD that has the potential to support teachers in significantly reorganizing their current practice in order to develop inquiry-oriented teaching practices that support all students engagement in rigorous disciplinary activity. This design study is a case of supporting the development of district capacity to provide HQPD for teachers by supporting the development of content specific PD facilitation practices. In reporting on this design study, I describe the work of developing, testing, and revising conjectures about both the PD facilitators learning process and effective means of supporting that learning. In reporting this work, I contribute to developing theories about how to support PD facilitators learning more generally. My analysis provides a rationale for proposed revisions to the design for PD facilitators learning that can be examined in future research.

This dissertation describes the design of an informal, a media-rich learning space for youth in a public library. It details how youth transformedor madethat space into a place for themselves. As such, this dissertation illustrates youth place-making for learning, or the ways in which youth negotiated and subsequently transformed this place of learning for their own enrichment. Youth place-making emerged withinand beyondan author-led program called Metro: Building Blocks (MBB). The program challenged teen participants to build authentic neighborhoods in the city of Metro within the familiar video game Minecraft. Data for this dissertationincluding audio, video, photographs, and fields noteswas collected throughout the duration of MBB, which ran from January through June of 2014.Thirteen teenaged participants took part in MBB activities, five of whom are featured in-depth. MBB was a deliberate attempt to both adopt and challenge the principles of connected learning guiding youth programming in informal learning settings, such as libraries and museums. Thus this dissertation is particularly concerned with the ways in which learning moves and circulates withinand beyonddiscrete settings. It asks questions about 1) interest, approaching interest-development less as a linear progression, and more as a fluid, emergent production. It also asks questions 2) about the topography of these settings, including the (socio-affective) rhythms coursing through them. Finally, it asks questions about 3) the forms of civic engagement that these settings can foster, following the spatiotemporal contours of participants engaged citizenship. This dissertation draws on theories of place, mobility, and affect to understand youth place-making. In doing so, this study challenges the imagined geographies of learning, or entrenched beliefs of whereand whenlearning takes place. Following the movement and circulation of experiences, ideas, and bodies necessitated a suite of mobile methods. Thus, this dissertation contributes mobile methods such as ethnographic community and temporal circling, while honing in analytically on refrains and felt focal moments Mobile analyses reveal 1) How youth interests move and circulate through passengering, mutability, and residue; 2) How learning topographies become amplified, and then propagate, including rhythmic oscillations; and 3) How civic engagement moves and circulates across space, time, and scale, or what this study refers to as civic geographies. These findings point toward implications for pedagogy and mentoring in informal, media-rich settings, as well as the design of those settings themselves, with an emphasis on place-making for learning.

The word diversity can be described as being different or having differences. Furthermore, it also relates to variety or assortment. Diversity forms an integral part of society worldwide. It consists of many different aspects which are all evident in different ways in society. These aspects of diversity include culture, religion, race, language, socio-economic class, gender, ability, etc. Diversity also exists in education as an important part of society. Parental involvement is viewed by many people as an important part of the education process. It has many positives which include improved academic performance of the child, understanding of the schools circumstances, having a more positive attitude towards the school, improved community involvement and a positive school climate. Parental involvement enhances the complete learning experience of the child and focuses on the total development of the child. It includes the making of a commitment and the forming of a partnership between parent and school which is also fundamentally prescribed by legislation. When this partnership is engaged in properly there is a definite positive outcome for both the child and the school. Fundamentally, the purpose of parental involvement lies in the opportunities that it offers all the stakeholders involved to contribute towards the upbringing and development of the children. Managing the involvement of parents should be well planned and directed. School managers need to take into account the issue of diversity in relation to parental involvement. Schools have to make use of creative strategies and approaches as they deal with differences among people which need to be respected in such a way that everyone can be integrated into the school system. Diversity amongst people has an influence on parental involvement and need to be managed to good effect. Ultimately, positive parents will educate positive children who are what we strived for. What is interesting from the results of the study is that the respondents that participated in the research are of the opinion that racial differences as an aspect of diversity doesn‟t have a significant influence on parental involvement. Diversity aspects that are viewed as having a / Thesis (MEd (Education Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Although a large body of research has examined the processes of writing, much less is known about how adolescents compose with multiple modes in digital environments. This qualitative study explores how students collaboratively composed across three different digital multimodal projectsa website, hypertext analysis, and podcastthat responded to and analyzed a work of literature. Multimodality and multiliteracies theoretical frameworks were integrated to better understand students use of modes (e.g., text, sound, images, video, animation) within the broader sociocultural context. Comparative case study methods were employed to glean a fine-grained and nuanced understanding of how three pairs of students composed during a scaffolded 7-week multimodal workshop in an urban 12th grade English classroom. Data sources included screen capture and video observations for each workshop session, student retrospective design interviews and written reflections for each project, as well as field notes, process work, and final multimodal products. Findings revealed that composing with multiple modes in response to literature was a complex, dynamic, and varied process mediated by the interaction of multiple factors, including students modal preferences and skills, composing tools, and multimodal assignments. There were three types of collaborative styles, with division of labor based on composers technical experience, content knowledge, and personal interests. Students exhibited modal preferences when working with open and flexible compositional toolsoften entering into each project in a similar way, spending a majority of workshop time working with that particular mode, and relying on it to carry the communicative weight of their projects. Multimodal composing timescapes revealed that students increasingly traversed across modes as they worked on their compositions. Students also expressed composing goals focused on affective response, entertaining their audience, and expressing themselves as composers. They also worked intentionally to create modally cohesive designs in response to literature. These findings contribute to the fields developing conception of multimodal composition processes within the context of a high school scaffolded digital writers workshop. The development of the multimodal composing timescape contributes to multimodal methods of data analysis and representation.

This research examines a teachers design of a classroom system of multimedia composition, in the form of collaborative video essays, and students responses to the teachers design. The teacher designed a project in which students in his 11th grade AP English Language and Composition classes composed both print essays and video essays based on novels they read for the class. One teacher and 49 students from a public high school near a major metropolitan city in the Midwestern United States participated in this study between October 2010 and February 2011. Qualitative analysis of the data allowed for description of the teachers design of this system and students responses to the teachers design. Salient elements of the teachers design of the system fell into three categories: design of time, design of the composition process, and design of publication and distribution practices. Student responses to each of these areas of design varied, with students at times adhering to the teachers design and at other times pushing back against his design and even redesigning aspects of the system themselves. The teachers expectations of the system, including his goals for the assignment and the ways that he valued the video essays, impacted his design of the system. Students own goals, as well as their understandings of the teachers goals, impacted the ways that they engaged in the system and their composition processes. Implications for classroom practice and future research were identified as part of the discussion of the data.