This capstone seeks to assess and support Homeboy Industries (HBI), a leader in wrap-around services for formerly gang-involved and incarcerated men and women, in their co-creation of a youth services committee and a comprehensive system of care for young people. In doing so, my strategic project consists of conducting stakeholder interviews, focus groups, and synthesizing those findings to present to the organization. The second part of the strategic project involves building and working with a team of individuals from various departments, including case management, mental health, education, job services within two separate agencies, Homeboy Industries and Learning Works Charter School Network, to create a youth services committee that can carry the work forward. In service of evaluating the progress of the strategic project, I will utilize the 4I Framework of Organizational Learning, developed by management professor, Mary Crossan, and her associates from the Ivey School of Business. The 4I Framework contains “four related (sub)processes-intuiting, interpreting, integrating, and institutionalizing-that occur over three levels: individual, group, and organization” (Crossan et al., 1999, p. 524). Ultimately, the goal is to help an already successful leader in wrap-around support services for adults, Homeboy Industries, create an “organized system of care for young people” (Torres, 2015). This goal can be achieved by maximizing its strengths, coupling them with best practices in youth development, and in creating a team that can place the needs of young people in its core mission. Creating an organized system of care, Homeboy Industries-style, can have national implications as the new secretary of education, John King, has made it a point to visit with the leaders of Homeboy Industries (August 2015, Appendix A) in search of models for empowering the youth in a non-traditional way. If clecha, or knowledge that is passed down in prison is the old way of empowering young people, as it often goes in one ear and out the other, then this capstone seeks to capture the experience of Homeboy Industries and Learning Works, the profound work of founder Father Greg Boyle and many amazing practitioners on site at HBI, and combine it with the wisdom of young people, to offer a new approach to empower youth in gangs, the ever-evolving, Homeboy Industries Way. See, the idea of clecha or street wisdom has been passed down for generations as the way that older homies “lace” (give) younger homies advice. In the research on best practices to reach gang involved youth, this clecha notion dates back to the curbside counselor of the 1930s from the seminal work of psychologist Clifford Shaw, but often times, that form of advice has not worked. This has created what Reed Larson, a pioneer in positive youth development, calls the Intentionality Paradox. According to Larson, the paradox lies in that adults want to be intentional with their advice-giving to young people because “it is easier to think about molding clay than about helping the clay mold itself.” (Larson, 2006, p. 682) Larson along with many other experts in the field of youth development are telling us, what young people have been saying for a long time, “stop telling me what to do.” They don’t care to know how much we know (about life or the struggle), they need to know (and feel) how much we actually care. Many adults care so much that they struggle to balance letting youth learn on their own, and sharing their own experiences or clecha. While we are trying to figure it out in the field of youth development and education, too many young people are dying. Every 26 seconds a young person drops out of school in the U.S. (American Graduate, 2016). Over 1 million youth per year are system-involved in “courts with juvenile jurisdiction handling delinquency cases.” (Hockenberry, 2015, p. 6) Thousands of those youth are ending up caged in juvenile halls and prison, and many are dying in our cities nationwide. We must search for new ways to engage and walk with youth in gangs. This is part of that search.

Multiethnic states globally face the dilemma of how to negotiate ethnic diversity while promoting a unified national identity. In Botswana, a remarkable example of peace and stability in Sub-Saharan Africa, two highly visible discourses around national identity – one constructing national identity around the majority ethnic group’s culture and language, and the other of a tolerant, multicultural nation – currently compete across public spheres. Formal schools are key institutions through which to observe the nature and effects of these competing discourses. State leaders use mass education as a vehicle to transmit an authorized version of national identity, through centralized education policies and curriculum. Yet schools are also sites in which ordinary teachers and students actively participate in constructing the nation. This dissertation reports on comparative case studies of four junior secondary schools that vary in the ethnic composition of their student bodies and surrounding communities. The work analyzes one overarching question: How does national identity, as currently constructed and experienced in Botswana’s public junior secondary schools, account for the reality of ethnic diversity in the nation-state and its schools? The three papers that together comprise this dissertation approach the inquiry through different lenses. The first paper analyzes social studies curriculum, as written in the syllabus and textbooks and as taught by teachers, to consider how national identity is officially constructed. The second examines how Botswana’s schools respond to the multiculturalism of their student bodies, within the context of assimilationist and nationally centralized education policies and curriculum. The final paper considers how junior secondary schools shape the social identity development of adolescents as they negotiate how and why to enact ethnic versus national identities. Overall, I find continuing dominance of majority Tswana language and culture in the content of public schools’ policies and curriculum in Botswana, which are then implemented with fidelity by teachers and administrators, regardless of the cultural composition and perceived needs of their student bodies. In each paper, I offer recommendations for how practitioners and policy makers might move forward in transforming multicultural discourse into multicultural school practices promoting the equality of all of Botswana’s students.

Abstract not available.

Les technologies informatiques font partie du mode organisationnel de notre société. Les individus sont supposés en avoir la maîtrise et des l'école leur utilisation est encouragée. Cette utilisation est présentée dans certaines études sociologiques et dans les politiques d'informatisation comme susceptible de développer des compétences en rapport avec ledit mode organisationnel. On dispose même en sociologie d'un idéaltype de l'individu parfaitement adapté à cette société informatisée, le travailleur auto programmable selon Castells (2000;2006). À partir de l'utilisation secondaire et partielle des données de l'enquête (In)equalily, Identity and Internet Use by Minorities in a Globalizing World. Young People 's Internet Use in Barbados and Francophone Ontario réalisée par une équipe de chercheurs universitaires et dirigée par Ann Denis, notre recherche s'intéresse à certains aspects de ce travailleur auto programmable. Si ses compétences ont émergé grâce à l'utilisation de l'informatique, alors les élèves franco ontariens ayant participé à l'enquête devraient commencer à manifester certaines d'entre elles car ils ont utilisé dès l'âge scolaire les équipements informatiques mis à leur disposition à l'école. Les données permettaient d'étudier trois facettes de l'individu idéaltype en émergence chez les élèves ayant participé à l'enquête, soit les compétences suivantes : la littéracie informatique, capacité à utiliser une variété d'outils et logiciels informatiques et intérêt pour une variété de thèmes accessible via le Web ; une ouverture à la diversité, capacité à sortir du cadre habituel et à avoir des contacts avec des cultures autres ; et la sociabilité via Internet, capacité à utiliser les outils informatiques pour créer son réseau. Cependant, des " fractures numériques ", inégalités dans l'accès ou l'utilisation, étaient encore sensibles au moment de l'enquête. Aussi, nous recherchons les rôles respectifs des facteurs sociodémographiques et des facteurs d'utilisation des outils informatiques qui sont associés à ces compétences. Pour cela, nous effectuons une analyse de variance des scores obtenus par les élèves pour ces compétences selon les deux types de facteurs : sociodémographiques, reliés à l'utilisation de l'informatique. Le contexte franco ontarien linguistiquement minoritaire, et le multiculturalisme canadien, bien représenté dans notre échantillon, permettent de regarder sous des angles différents ce qui pour le travailleur auto programmable est considéré comme un atout, alors que subsistent les débats sur les effets de l'utilisation d'Internet, outil qui présente un contenu majoritairement anglophone. Notre étude montre que l'utilisation de l'informatique ne peut expliquer à elle seule l'émergence des compétences attendues, mesurée par des scores dans les trois aspects considérés, et qu'elle n'y est associée que pour une part minime. Le genre, le nombre de langues parlées, l'expérience d'utilisation d'Internet et son utilisation hors cours jouent pour la littéracie informatique. Les scores d'ouverture à la diversité sont reliés à ces trois derniers facteurs, et au niveau socioéconomique. La sociabilité via Internet n'est associée qu'à l'expérience d'utilisation d'Internet, et pour une part très minime. En conclusion, les caractéristiques étudiées du travailleur auto programmable ne se développent pas chez les élèves de la même façon quand on considère les résultats globaux dans l'échantillon : le score moyen est de 57,75% en littéracie informatique mais seulement 43,6% pour l'ouverture à la diversité et la sociabilité via Internet. Et, comme l'analyse de variance montre 20, 7% de variation des scores expliquée par la combinaison des facteurs significatifs pour la littéracie informatique, 19, 7% pour l'ouverture à la diversité et 4, 8% pour la sociabilité via Internet, on voit que le développement des compétences se fait majoritairement sur d'autres bases que les facteurs étudiés.

The study reports on the learning outcomes of a thematic, task-based curricular innovation in which paired Korean and English-speaking peers, each learning the other's language and culture, collaborate on chat homework assignments and related classroom activities in an International Languages class. This study draws primarily on sociocultural theory to investigate language learning through computer-mediated communicative tasks as a socially mediated process. This ethnographically based longitudinal case study follows principles of action research to identify contributions each research tradition can make to our understanding of language learning through interaction among learners within a learning community. In order to explore second language acquisition during interaction, this study also employs an interactionist approach to examine more specific linguistic and interactional features of learners' online chat discourse in tandem. Examination of the students' online chat interactions and related tandem classroom discussions and activities between experts and novices, with the tandem partners fulfilling each role in turn, reveals how collaborative peer-peer dialogue supports knowledge-building within this cross-linguistic learning environment. Data, qualitative in nature, reveal how these students are able to learn and teach contextually meaningful and appropriate linguistic and cultural behaviour through socially mediated actions, using online peer-peer collaborative dialogue, computers and tasks as meaning-making resources within their own cross-linguistic learning community. The findings show that the online chat interactions contributed to the establishment of a community of learners and supported effective second language learning. Specifically they show the ways in which learners appropriated a variety of language practices from one another, developed awareness of self in relation to others, and participated in expert and novice discursive learning practices in the construction of meaning. During collaborative peer-peer conversations, they adapted their language and negotiated meaning to facilitate communication and enhance their second language learning. Both qualitative and quantitative data on their second language learning outcomes, including growth of vocabulary and explicit learning of L2 cultural concepts from thematic tasks show important learning outcomes for both groups. The findings of the study extend our understanding of what it means to learn a language and engage with another culture.

In this study I investigated how seven English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) international students at two graduate programs at the University of Ottawa wrote course papers in light of the university's policies on plagiarism. Informed by the New Literacy Studies, Bourdieu's social theory, Bakhtin's theory of language, and Ivanic's analytical framework of writer identity, the inquiry drew upon multiple sources of data involving field observations, artifact analysis, and interviews with the students, their course professors, and other faculty members over two consecutive academic sessions. The results indicate that patchwriting, defined as one writer working closely with other writers' texts while leaving behind traces of those texts (Howard, 1999), is a major strategy through which students make other peoples' words and ideas their own. The study further differentiates between localized patchwriting and global patchwriting, and offers an account of the reasons that give rise to each. It also discusses how educational practice simultaneously calls upon students to write as professionals and students, and considers the role that university plagiarism policies play in students' decision as to which identity to take up and textually enact. The study discusses faculty's mediation of plagiarism policies, and identifies a dissonance between their pedagogic response and the university's legalistic treatment of student textual borrowing practices that violate common practice. The research also considers the impact of institutional plagiarism policies on students and professors, and makes suggestions for the re-consideration of university plagiarism policies and documents.

The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to develop an enriched understanding of the visions that guide a select group of organizational and social change practitioners, and (2) to develop an enriched understanding of the strategies they employ to enact those visions. The following cases were explored in this study: Case #1: Bailey W. Jackson and Rita Hardiman--Multicultural Organizational Development. Case #2: Frederick A. Miller, Judith H. Katz and Catherine S. Buntaine--Creating High Performing Inclusive Organizations$\sp{\rm SM}$. Case #3: Elsie Y. Cross--Managing Diversity. The six participants in this study are pioneers in their field. Their work consists of the synthesis of a specific organizational change methodology--a total systems change approach--with a social change agenda. Their intent is to challenge institutionalized oppression and to create healthy socially diverse and non-oppressive organizations. Their efforts are helping to advance the production of theory and the development of a practice for utilizing a total systems change approach to address social diversity and social justice issues in organizations. The data collected for this study was drawn from qualitative methodologies. The source of data collection included elite, open-ended, in-depth interviews, observation of the participants and review of pertinent documents. An interview guide was utilized to outline topic areas that were covered in each interview. The basis for data analysis was a thematic approach. The outcomes of this study reflect the four themes that emerged during data analysis: (1) A profile of this select group of practitioners, (2) Their perceptions of the emerging practice of working with social diversity and social justice issues in organizations, (3) The shared qualities of the visions that guide their work, and (4) Descriptions of the total systems change strategies that they employ to create organizational and social change.

Participation in community development work has been emphasized since the late 1960's; Participatory Evaluation (PE), however, was not introduced until the mid-1970's. At about that same time, Participatory Research (PR) was seeking to help shift the ownership and control of community development work and social research back into the hands of the local community. One important contribution of PR, has been the recognition of the importance of indigenous knowledge. As indigenous knowledge and indigenous practices were being recovered by communities during PR, it soon became evident that the Western model of development--and its emphasis on the transfer of Western technological knowledge--was often insufficient, inappropriate, or culturally unacceptable. Although evaluation practitioners increased the participation of the local community in the evaluation of its own development work, PE was often limited to "participation-in-evaluation" (PiE). The ownership and control of the evaluation process often stayed within the hands of the evaluation "experts" often using Western evaluation methods. The first part of the study examines the emergence and evolution of PE in community development work during the past three decades. The study then explores the indigenous evaluation practices of the Gbaya people of western Central African Republic, where the researcher has lived and worked with health and community development since 1982. Ethnographic interviewing of key informants explored the following questions: What are the indigenous evaluation practices of the Gbaya? How is information gathered and used? Who can be involved in decision-making, in what contexts? The study further investigates Gbaya forms of evaluation through the participant observation of the participatory evaluation of a Lutheran church-sponsored development program in western Central African Republic. A framework for better understanding PE, including the factors of "power", "facilitation methods", and "previous training and experience", are also presented. Using criteria from the framework, the following sub-categories of PE are offered: Participation-in-Evaluation (PiE), Less Participatory Evaluation (LPE), and Highly Participatory Evaluation (HiPE). Finally, a "Gbaya Way of Decision-making" is presented as one model of indigenous evaluation. This is followed by recommendations to practitioners of PE, as well as recommendations for the further research of Indigenous Evaluation.

This thesis is an ethnographic case study of a graduate language teacher education classroom which privileges constructivist perspectives and pedagogies. It is an account of how learning and interaction work in such classrooms, based on a close study of a particular group of students who were collaboratively engaged in a semester-long project in which they conducted an analysis of a high school ESL classroom. The conceptual framework describes a complex environment, in which students must negotiate new language, concepts, and ways of learning. They are asked not only to espouse new theories, but to take them on in practice. My contention is that the single most challenging aspect in this new workspace is that of coming to define roles, hierarchies, and even learning in new ways. A good part of the analysis is tracking exactly how participants go about doing this. One major finding is that much of the negotiating that occurred centered on issues of "authority" and "expertise," as students attempted to locate these within this new environment. Group members came to take on specific public identities within the group, and it was from these that they made contributions and knowledge claims. The identities from which they spoke, the forms of language they used, and the sorts of evidence they provided for their claims determined whether or not their contributions were incorporated into the group discourse. Participants who were more closely aligned with academic practices and values held more authority; those who could not and/or did not engage in ways that had recognizable allegiance to academic discourses were marginalized. And, despite the fact that the participant structure would seem to mute the professor's voice, the ultimate authority was in fact granted to texts that the group identified as representative of her. This study is a close look at the workings of power and status within a pedagogy that promotes equity and inclusion. It points to a need for deeper understandings in areas where languages, cultures, and identities converge and are represented (and embedded) in social interaction.

The purpose of this study is to examine how entering and exiting college students with learning disabilities (LD) understand and make meaning of themselves as learning disabled. The study is exploratory in that it attempts to identify, describe and analyze the processes involved in LD identity development. There have been few research studies that address the issue of identity and self-understanding for college students with learning disabilities. Overall, this study has theoretical and practical significance because it bridges the gaps that exist between current theoretical frameworks of social identity development and the field of learning disabilities. This will be achieved by providing descriptions of the ways in which college students with learning disabilities (LD) understand and make meaning of their learning disabilities. It is my intention that this study will assist educators and practitioners foster and create opportunities for LD college students which challenge their internalized perceptions of themselves as LD. This study utilized an exploratory qualitative research method consisting of three data collection methods: individual interviews, a focus group, and a written description of participants' learning disabilities. The interpretive framework for this study was constant comparative method (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992) and inductive analysis (Patton, 1990). Two findings of special significance emerged from this research data. First, the process of being labeled LD with its subsequent attached stigma negatively affects one's self-esteem and self-acceptance. In essence, LD students, who almost always internalize prescribed socially constructed stereotypes, initially believe the dominant ideology, experience feelings of shame, embarrassment, isolation and most often remain invisible in an attempt to pass as non-LD. Secondly, the data suggests that the process of identity formation for LD college students appears to be developmental, as suggested by three stages, denial, transition, and acceptance.