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Using a sociocultural theoretical framework, this study describes the learning experience of three re-entry adult women during their first year of academic study in a university. To situate the learning historically and culturally, cultural factors of both the students and the learning context are considered as well as interactions between the two over time. Information about the students' perspective of their experience was obtained through interviews conducted throughout the year and some textual responses are examined. The women's orientations toward learning are described using three theoretical constructs: transformative or reproductive approaches to learning, connected or separate modes of learning, and rhetorical or arhetorical approaches to text. / Each of the women entered university with a different orientation to learning and each struggled to learn to respond in academically appropriate ways. In her interactions with the learning context, each experienced some disjunction and some support for her preferred ways of learning. One student, entering as an active and sophisticated learner, initially resisted academic tasks that required an arhetorical, reproductive, or decontextualized response. Another student, entering eager to apply her learning to her everyday life, responded with enthusiastic effort, compliant about meeting academic demands and sometimes suppressing her preference for rhetorical and connected learning. The third student, entering with a background as a reproductive and receptive learner, did not become engaged as a learner and avoided writing that required her to transform rather than reproduce ideas. By the end of the year, each student had shifted her pre-entry orientation, moving toward integration of her preferred approach to learning and academic ways. Writing was the activity where integration most often occurred. Changes in orientation occurred through a negotiation process. / This study adds to our understanding of learning as a sociocultural process and provides a description of individuals in transition between one domain of situated cognition and another. It also shows different ways adult women respond to disjunction with their preferred ways of learning within a university setting and ways they integrate their own preferences with academic ways. Finally, it highlights students' need for guidance in achieving intersubjectivity in academic discourse as new participants in an academic community.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

This study was undertaken in order to determine the contribution of the Chogoria Hospital's health education programme to the development of women in the Meru communities of the Kenyan highlands. The research was designed within the framework of the Gender And Development theory, focussing on the social structures and relations underlying women's development needs. The objectives were based on a review of the literature. Field research was then conducted over a three month period in Chogoria, Kenya. The research was based in ethnographic methodology, consisting of participant observation and interviews. The study found that the programme contributes to and perpetuates the traditional social structures and relations of Meru society, including the dominance of men over women. The programme's approach to participatory development was found to empower the existing power structure of Meru communities, obscure the development needs of women and increase their burdens of labour and responsibility. The study offers several recommendations to enable the CHD to better meet the needs of Meru women. The recommendations address the following issues: the commitment of the CHD to the empowerment of the community, of volunteers and of women; the role of dialogue and education about women, their potential and possibilities; the alleviation of women's burdens of labour and responsibilities; the placement of women's health and development at the centre of the CHD agenda; and the training of CHD staff in the full spectrum of community participatory development.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Helen Lenskyj.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Helen Lenskyj.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers' College, Columbia University, 1951. / Typescript. Type C project. Sponsor: Marjorie Hillas. Dissertation Committee: Ruth Cunningham, Patricia Hagman, . Includes bibliographical references: (leaves [109]-[112]).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1966. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburgh, 1994. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 171-183).