While the challenge of improving young North Americans’ civic engagement seems to lie in the hands of schools, studying alternative ways of teaching citizenship education could benefit the current educational system. In this context, free schools (i.e., schools run democratically by students and teachers), guided by a philosophy that aims at engaging students civically through the democratic activities that they support, offer a relatively unexplored ground for research. The present inquiry is a case study using tools of ethnography and drawing upon some principles of complexity thinking. It aims at understanding students’ citizenship education experiences during democratic activities in a Canadian free school. It describes many experiences that can arise from these activities. They occurred within a school that operated democratically based on a consensus-model. More precisely, they took place during two kinds of democratic activities: class meetings, which regulated the social life of the school, and judicial committees, whose function was to solve conflicts at the school. During these activities, students mostly experienced a combination of feelings of appreciation, concernment and empowerment. While experiencing these feelings, they predominantly engaged in decision-making and conflict resolution processes. During these processes, students modified their conflict resolutions skills, various conceptions, and their participation in democratic activities and in the school. Based on these findings, the study concludes that students can develop certain skills and attitude associated to citizenship education during these activities and become active from a citizenship perspective. Hence, these democratic activities represent alternative strategies that can assist educators in teaching about citizenship.

Delirium is a disturbance of consciousness and cognition that affects many terminally ill patients before death. It can manifest as confusion, hallucinations, and restlessness, all of which are known to be distressing to patients, families, and professional caregivers. Underlying the contemporary palliative care movement is a belief in the idea that a good death is possible; that dying can be made better for patients and families through the proper palliation of distressing symptoms and through proper attention to psychological, social, and spiritual issues that affect wellbeing at the end of life. Given that delirium is potentially disruptive to all that the good death assumes, i.e., mental awareness, patient-family communication, peace and comfort, the question was asked: What is the relationship between end-of-life delirium and the good death in hospice care? Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted at a freestanding residential hospice over a period of 15 months in a suburban community in eastern Canada. The research methods included participant observation (320 hours over 80 field visits), interviews with 28 hospice caregivers, and document analysis. The findings of this study provide an in-depth examination of the nature of caregiving relationships with patients and with families in end-of-life care. They illustrate how a commitment toward providing for the good death prevails within the cultural community of hospice, and how the conceptualization, assessment, and management of end-of-life delirium are organized within such a commitment. In this setting, experiences of conscious and cognitive change in dying are woven by hospice caregivers into a coherent system of meaning that is accommodated into prevailing scripts of what it means to die well. At the same time, delirium itself provides a facilitative context whereby processes of supporting families through the patient’s death are enabled. This study highlights the relevance of considering the contextual and cultural features of individual end-of-life care settings that wish to examine, and perhaps improve, the ways in which care of delirious patients and their families is provided.

This dissertation seeks to analyse the upsurge of insurgent violence in the North Caucasus following the end of the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya in 2009. By looking at the development of radical Islam and the impact of the Chechen spillover in the region, this research suggests that these factors should be analysed and contextualized in each republic. By comparing the cases of Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, this dissertation seeks to demonstrate the importance of vendetta, criminal activity, religious repression and corruption as local factors that contribute to the increase of violence. By focusing on the case of Dagestan, the author proposes a political ethnographic approach to study the mechanisms and details of religious repression and corruption in everyday life. This analysis permits us to map out the different pathways towards the participation in insurgent groups in Dagestan. By doing so, it demonstrates that one can identify three different generations of insurgent fighters in Dagestan. This dissertation demonstrates that the role of Salafist ideology is often marginal in the early stages of the process of violent radicalisation, and slowly gains importance as the involvement in violence increases. The emphasis should be placed on vengeance and religious repression as crucial triggering factors as they provoke a cognitive opening for young people in Dagestan to engage in violence.

This thesis explicates how an international literacy testing (ILT) initiative, overseen by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is put to use to coordinate teaching and learning in adult literacy education programs in Canada, and in Ontario in particular. The testing initiative was conceived to manage and monitor global literacy resources, and promote their development for economic productivity and competitive advantage. Guided by institutional ethnography, the analysis reveals how certain operational and support devices of the testing initiative have been transposed into the context of adult education and training, carrying with them the ideological concerns of the economistic testing project and some of its methodological procedures. Various devices and technologies of the ILT are reformulated as individual assessments for adult learners, and are also incorporated— as is and with extensions— into a national occupational skills framework, a provincial curriculum reform, and a series of policy persuasion projects. Educators, program coordinators and curriculum developers, concerned with the development of literacy that is responsive to learners and their aspirations, recognize the limitations of the curricular frameworks and assessments. They devote inordinate amounts of time and effort reformulating, translating, force-fitting, and supplementing them. At the same time, a narrowly conceived locating information pedagogy—distinct from both academic literacy needed to access formal education systems and a responsive and situated literacy needed to actively participate in social practices—is developed and widely promoted. Policy entrepreneurs have incorporated the devices into their policy persuasion projects, including a project that profiles adults according to their literacy proficiency, their value in the labour market and whether or not they are ‘economically efficient’ to educate. Persuasion tactics are aimed at policy-makers and adult educators in order to convince them to shift educational support away from those who already experience limited access to educational opportunities (adults with secondary education or less) to those closest to reaching what is deemed to be an acceptable literacy level (adults with post-secondary education). Attempts to limit and privilege the purpose of adult education and training, in combination with the development of curricula and assessments that do the same, obstruct and contradict efforts to support equitable literacy learning opportunities for Canadian adults.

In this ethnographic case study I examine the meanings and manifestations of teacher knowledge by inquiring into the perceptions of learning for a group of primary school teachers in Toledo, Belize, Central America. As an outsider, I construct an insider’s view of teachers’ knowledge by representing what these teachers know about teaching and how they have come to know what they know. The lived experiences of the teachers are illuminated as I discuss opportunities and challenges for educators in this region of the world. The insider-outsider relationship is examined as I reflect on my role as a volunteer with a non-profit organization, as well as a researcher and a Canadian secondary school teacher. The following questions structure the study: (1) How does the development of teachers’ knowledge occur in rural communities of the majority world country of Belize? (2) What kind of impact has the Teachers for a Better Belize (TFABB) “Literacy Coaches Program” had on the development of teachers’ knowledge in Toledo, Belize? Results of the study are represented in three distinct ways. The creative ethnography highlights the lived reality of local teachers as I interpreted the typical journey they take in learning to teach. The realist tale, including several detailed participant quotes, illustrates a more explicit map of teacher learning as it connects with current research and literature. The confessional tale represents my highly personal reflections with regard to the research as well as my own learning. Toledo teachers identify many factors affecting their formal learning including economic constraints, geographic isolation and limited resources. Local teachers do, however, recognize and engage in the less formal learning opportunities available to them. They collaborate with peers, seek out mentors, engage in teacher workshops, and reflect on their own practice. An oppressive cloud, however, looms over the educational landscape in Toledo, as teachers describe tacit yet lingering effects of colonialism present in their educational culture. In this study I conclude that to realize improved opportunities for both teachers and students in Toledo, there must be genuine understanding and respect between all educational sectors. By raising the profile of the underrepresented primary teacher in Toledo, this study aims to promote meaningful dialogue between all those involved to nurture the professional knowledge development of teachers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the work band directors do in the course of their jobs. Specifically, I sought to understand more about the disjuncture between the balanced music education band directors want to deliver to their students and the need to prepare and present performances that bring positive notoriety to a band program. Using Institutional Ethnography (IE), I interviewed, observed, and explored the texts that directors create and/or refer to as they lead their band programs. Institutional Ethnography is a method of inquiry that allows a researcher to probe those immersed in situations that he or she finds problematic. The term problematic refers to something about which a researcher is interested in learning more. It was found that the three band directors included in this study are granted much freedom when it comes to creating or referring to a music curriculum. The directors appreciate this freedom and have each chosen various forms of curricula, which range from an official curriculum document that is used specifically for music theory instruction across Canada to a poster designed by university music instructors. With regard to performances and the pressure to prepare them, each director had a different way in which they organized their instruction to teach both performance skills and music literacy. One director relies heavily on a theory curriculum to supplement his work on performances while another works through various method books that include non-performance-based music instruction. Through this study I was able to show the gap that occurs between a well-rounded music education and a primary focus on performance in a band program. The band directors I interviewed revealed a deep desire and belief that they were delivering a comprehensive music education to their band students. In the course of my research, the pressure to create outstanding performances could be seen in the band directors’ talk and instructional organization. It is hoped that the results of this study will aid university instructors and curriculum writers in developing successful ways to deliver music instruction in a band program while remaining cognizant of performance.

Since 1999, Aboriginal Education policy in British Columbia requires School Districts to collaborate with their local Aboriginal communities to establish appropriate definitions of success, set measureable goals and actions plans to enhance Aboriginal student’s educational achievement. Together these groups produce five-year Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreements. This study employs Indigenous Methodology and Institutional Ethnography to learn whether and how process of working together to create these agreements contributes to relationship-building between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. Key findings demonstrate that an engaged a dialogue between Indigenous peoples and education policy-makers changes the way that Aboriginal education is approached in BC school districts. Participants reported that the process changed them, touched their soul, and left them feeling humbled and renewed. The Enhancement Agreements hold promise as a process that works from within the institutional processes to address the unequal social relations of education for Aboriginal students. / Graduate

Using an institutional ethnographic approach, this research explores the everyday experiences of women living with Multiple Sclerosis and the work they do to understand and manage their illness. Starting with the women's own accounts of their everyday experiences with MS, this research analyzes and explicates the social relations that are involved in their everyday taken-for-granted lifework. An exploration of the ruling institutions coordinating with the everyday work of these women provides insight to some of the struggles and problems people with MS encounter. This project explicates and problematizes the disjuncture between the actual lived experience of having MS and the biomedical institution's authority over the illness. / Graduate

This thesis investigates how an institutional coordination of civic policies and organizational processes within Pride Toronto were brought to bear on the activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in their attempts to participate in the 2010, 2011, and 2012 Toronto Pride Parades. Utilizing an institutional ethnography (IE), I explore this issue in two key ways. First, by mapping a work-text-work sequence of QuAIA’s experience in applying to march in the 2010 Parade, I demonstrate how the application process was subject to social relations that extended beyond Toronto Pride. Second, through the elaboration of processing interchanges, I demonstrate how the experiences of QuAIA were hooked into a series of translocal relations via Pride Toronto’s funding relationship to the City of Toronto. These translocal relations working through the City of Toronto were themselves varied, from pro-Zionist pressure on individual City councilors, to an alignment with anti-tax and arguably homophobic interests on council. / Graduate

Employing institutional ethnography, this research is an examination of the everyday activities of mothers who provide licensed family child care in their homes in the southern region of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. From this standpoint, I map the work of being licensed to show how their activities, homes and families become articulated to the textual organization of an institutional matrix of regulation. While the institutional matrix is conceptually organized around ensuring the provision of quality child care, family child care providers’ descriptions of their work to maintain licensure illustrate how they find themselves acquiescing to and/ or challenging the ways in which their work is co-ordinated for the administrative purposes of legal compliance with minimum health and safety standards. / Graduate / 0626 / 0518 / 0630 / naomi.northstar@gmail.com