Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 335-348). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 335-348). Also available on the Internet.

ABSTRACT Curriculum integration has become an important theme in discussions on school reform during the past ten to fifteen years (Bullough, 1999; Erickson, 2001). Martin-Kniep, Feige and Soodak (1995) maintain that integration can help students to understand and appreciate the complexity of the world that they are living in. In addition, Hargreaves and Moore (2000) claim that curriculum integration can inspire students to discover relevance in their education. Therefore, curriculum integration is perceived by many educators as the key to helping students prepare for the great changes that the developed nations are experiencing at this time (Meier, 1996; Tchudi & Lafer, 1996). The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of integrating a unit in Physics 11 with history of science, language arts and social studies on the academic achievement, attendance and attitudes of high school students. A second purpose was to assess whether it is feasible to provide curriculum integration without restructuring the current high school organization and offering in-depth professional development for teachers. A mixed methods research design was used to examine the effectiveness of this strategy by comparing a treatment group with a comparison group. Significant gains were realized in student attendance, unit and test marks. There was a clear impact on achievement and attitudes of students through integration. Analysis of individual student writings and projects not only demonstrated that integration had occurred, but also gave interesting insights into student learning and perceptions of science content, understanding and relevance. Interview data with participating teachers and reflections by the action teacher revealed numerous benefits of teachers working together on integrated curriculum. Moreover, these data made it clear that a simple model of integration was viable in the current school structure. This study demonstrated the benefits of using curriculum integration in order to help prepare students more thoroughly for further studies and work in the real world. It also presented a practical and realistic method of curriculum integration without requiring restructuring, funding and formal professional development.

In this thesis I explore a connection between my personal experiences of paranormal (non-ordinary) consciousness, modern consciousness research, indigenous perspectives on health, and the spiritual pursuit of compassion. My methodology is grounded in a notion of `direct experience' and what comes of it. Insights are derived primarily from direct experience through a process of self-observation and reflection whilst under the tutelage of a number of indigenous-minded Elders with whom I have long standing relationships. Research insights are conveyed through narrative writing, providing both a vehicle for carrying autobiographical stories of synchronicity, mystical encounter, and yogic/shamanic healing and a paradigmatic framework through which to represent and make meaning of experience. Through story-telling I work to demonstrate applications of be-coming (being directly aware of) felt-sense experience and deepening my acceptance of said experience. My intention throughout this writing is to demonstrate the efficacy and value of paranormal consciousness as a vehicle for deepening one's compassion, and enhancing our personal and collective well-being.

This thesis reports the results of a comparative analysis of the attitudes held by police recruits about police work, before and after training. By employing an instrumental case study methodology combining quantitative and qualitative techniques, the researcher was able to demonstrate the early stages of development of traditional police values, over the course of basic police training at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. An abundance of police based literature has shown that traditional police tactics are ineffective in reducing crime and that some aspects of the traditional police culture can contribute to police misconduct. As a result, in the later part of the twentieth century community policing has become the philosophy endorsed by police experts and managers across North America. The philosophy of community policing promotes values that are in many cases diametrically opposed to those of the traditional police philosophy. While the Justice Institute of British Columbia and police training institutions across the continent teach police recruits about the community policing philosophy, this research demonstrates that recruits show a closer alignment with the values implicit in community policing before basic training, than they do after training. The researcher sees this distancing of self from the values associated with community policing not as any indictment of the police academy, but as an expression of the dominant discourse of the police culture through the curriculum of the police academy. Through an exploration of the police value system inferred by behaviours and attitudes demonstrated by police recruits, the researcher argues that community policing is resisted not because it is ineffective but because it is unattractive to police officers. Traditional police attitudes and behaviours are promoted in the police culture because they are more suited to the already masculinized nature of the job and are simply more desirable to most police officers than the behaviours emphasized under the community policing model. The researcher believes that for this reason, policing has failed to transform to a model based on the principles of community policing, and that the police culture will continue to resist these changes until the values implicit to the culture are challenged. Changing the values of the police culture must logically start at the recruit training level, but to be effective the researcher believes this change must also involve a process of introspection on behalf of all police practitioners.

This study explored the articulation of multiple and empathic intelligences in educational drama. The investigation used a qualitative multiple-case study to examine the teaching methodologies of two teachers, as well as the structure of the drama units they taught. Following the observations the two teachers were then interviewed to explore their interpretation of their drama teaching. The findings indicate that multiple and empathic intelligences are articulated in educational drama in varied and complex ways. This finding was similar for both units, whether or not the teachers specifically planned with multiple and empathic intelligences in mind. The teachers confirmed that drama integrates the intelligences. Furthermore, they modelled the intelligences in their teaching. Also demonstrated was the ability of drama strategies to address individual needs of the students while exploring complex topics within a metaphorical context.

More than 70% of First Nations youth feel pushed out of the mainstream public school system because their ways of being. knowing, and doing are not reflected in the curricula. This issue is compounded by the disconnect known as deculturation that exists between Indigenous culture and Indigenous peoples. This thesis addresses two questions in an effort to find an alternative curriculum that works for First Nations youth. The questions include: 1.What are traditional knowledge and teaching methods that can serve as the basis for the expression of an Indigenous philosophy and environmental ethic within an urban environmental education program? 2. What themes can be identified that could aid in the creation of a framework for an environmental education program based on traditional ways of teaching and learning? This study used a hermeneutic phenomenology and Indigenous research methodology. Six First Nations educators were interviewed and four major themes were synthesized during the analysis of the textual data: the importance in Aboriginal education of discovering one's identity; placing the human being at the centre of education: relationship (including spirituality): and community involvement. The resulting curriculum is not designed to meet provincially prescribed learning outcomes, but outlines a way to deliver an Indigenous education that is rooted in Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies.

This research project is about listening to and learning from the stories of committed environmental leaders in order to gain insight into the formative experiences that may have contributed to creating and fostering environmental leadership. Thick rich descriptions of the life experiences of environmental leaders will help attain that insight and may provide environmental educators with knowledge resulting in designing curriculum that can recreate the richness of those meaningful life experiences. There has been substantial research carried out on the formative experiences of environmental educators, however, there have been fewer research projects conducted on how those experiences may have contributed to the development of environmental leadership. This was a case study that involved the use of environmental autobiographies, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. Recommendations are presented for further research as are recommendations for the implementation of the findings.

This inquiry explored the Star Process, a process for the practice of autobiography and living consciously; this process was created and developed by the author. This inquiry was an autobiographical exploration of the Star Process and autobiographical inquiry for the purposes of providing a solid foundation and framework for further study and development of the Star Process as a mode of autobiographical inquiry. The Star Process focuses on the identification of a Personal Philosophical Frame of Reference and the five key elements of Desire. Effort. Confidence, Knowledge, and Application and Responsibility for Knowledge Acquired (ARKA). This study was also an autobiographical exploration of the field of contemporary autobiographical inquiry with the goal of situating the author and the Star Process within the field of Curriculum studies and autobiographical inquiry.

The purpose of this study was to describe the moves used by middle-school ESL students to infer the meaning of unknown words in a science passage, and to describe the use of visual inscriptions in their inferencing process. Data from 10 female ESL students were collected using think-alouds while reading a test passage from a science textbook. In addition participants completed a Survey of Reading Strategies survey and participated in an open-ended interview about reading strategies. The think-aloud transcripts were analysed using an inductive process based on the constant comparison method, and resulted in the development of a taxonomy consisting of two meta-categories, six categories, and 20 sub-categories of inferencing moves. This taxonomy resulted in the identification of five sub-categories of inferencing moves that had not been described in previous lexical inferencing research. Each of these five new sub-categories occurred among the top ten most frequently used moves overall. Further analysis revealed that participants used Regulatory category moves more frequently than Heuristic moves. This suggested that participants in this study expended a Iarger portion of their resources managing the inferencing and the social aspects of the reading task than attending to word, sentence, discourse, or prior knowledge moves. The use of visual inscriptions was reported with low overall frequency, but this sub-category was used in complex ways in conjunction with other Regulatory and Heuristic moves. This suggested that the use of inscriptions was firmly embedded in the lexical inferencing processes of participants when reading science texts. Suggestions for future research include using texts with additional multimodal characteristics, expanding the age range of participants to include younger ages, and including descriptions of moves resulting from the social aspects of the reading tasks. Pedagogical implications include: (1) developing instruction which targets the use of less frequently reported Regulatory and Heuristic moves to expand the inferencing repertoire of learners, and (2) developing instruction which encourages students to draw links between inscriptions and the construction of lexical meaning to aid in the interpretation of complex text. Further it is suggested that textbook designers: (I) develop more calculated design strategies that will assist students in using inscriptions and text in tandem to construct meaning, and (2) use the published results of lexical inferencing to include features that facilitate the identification of words that are anticipated to be problematic for ESL learners.