The experience of verbal bullying at school may cause a female adolescent much distress. This distress can result in the adolescent experiencing life as traumatic and may influence her sense of well being negatively. Verbal bullying usually takes the form of name-calling, put-downs and insults. This can be very traumatic for adolescents and can lower their self-esteem, which may eventually lead to mental illness. The parents of adolescent learners often have the misconception that bullying is a normal part of a teenager’s life and are unaware of the distress it may cause the adolescent. The victimized adolescent should, therefore, be provided with support in order to avert the occurrence of mental illness. The goals of this study were to: • Explore and describe the experiences of adolescent girls regarding verbal bullying in secondary school settings. • Develop guidelines to assist mental health nursing specialists in helping adolescent girls to cope with bullying in secondary schools. The researcher used a qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual design with a phenomenological approach. The research population consisted of female learners in a secondary school setting. Purposive sampling was used in this study to identify participants. Data was collected by means of naïve sketches, one-to-one-interviews and field notes based on observations. Data was analyzed using Tesch’s method (in Creswell, 1994:190) of descriptive analysis. The identified themes were compared to available literature. The data collected from this study was used to develop guidelines to aid mental health nursing specialists to help adolescents to cope with verbal bullying.

Teenage pregnancy is a worldwide phenomenon. World Health Organisation (2009) reports that teenage mothers between the ages of 15-19 years account for 11% of births recorded worldwide. In South Africa it has been estimated that teenagers aged 17-19 account for 93% of all teenage pregnancies. A large proportion of these adolescents return to school after giving birth. Research has shown that there is a great deal of controversy about not only pre-marital sex, but also concerning whether teenage mothers should be allowed back in school at all. The aim of this study was to gain some insights into the lived experiences of teenage mothers in schools with particular reference to how they cope with school work and the responsibilities of motherhood. A case study of four teenage mothers who returned to school after giving birth was carried out. In-depth phenomenological interviewing designed to elicit the voices of the selected adolescents was done. There were five main findings. First, all four teenagers were minors, under the age of 18 when they gave birth. Two of them were even under the statutory age of consent. Second, upon return to school, teenage mothers experienced stigmatisation from peers and teachers and this forced them to continually negotiate their dual identities as mothers and learners. Third, teenage mothers experienced psychological emotions of stress; low self-esteem; shame and depression. Fourth, they also had sociological experiences in the form of material, financial and social support from family and friends. In some cases they experienced rejection from peers and abandonment by boyfriends who had made them pregnant. Some educators discriminated against and ridiculed teenage mothers. Fifth, teenage mothers reorganised their lives after childbirth and established routines that enabled them to cope with the demands of school work and the responsibilities of motherhood. iii The study concludes that, although viewed with scepticism by sections of the community and some educators, and given that some pregnancies are a result of abuse and unequal power relations between men and women in society, the policy of allowing teenage mothers back to school after giving birth gives them another chance to re-focus their lives. It is recommended that the voices of teenage mothers who return to school after childbirth should be taken into account to inform any planning for future policies on teenage pregnancy by schools and the state. It is further recommended that all educators should also be trained to be able to assist the teenage mothers instead of alienating them. There should also be counselling services available for the teenage mothers to enable them to deal with psychological and sociological problems they might encounter. For further research, students from different backgrounds should be the target of similar research. Another area of research should focus on academic performance of teenage mothers who return to school after giving birth. Lastly, there should be research that seeks to link what is taught in the Life Orientation curriculum and voices of teenage mothers.

Understood sociologically, denial is best conceptualized as a social practice. As a phenomenon, social denial refers to patterned behaviour where actors both know and do not-know about uncomfortable truths (Cohen, 2001). Put simply, social denial is a socially reproduced blindness in the face of traumatic events and processes. In opposition to social denial is a different social practice, bearing witness. Bearing witness is engaged when society’s actors give voice to those who would otherwise be silent. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from Stanley Cohen’s work States of Denial and Fujiko Kurasawa’s work Global Justice, this thesis aims to critically reflect and explore the registers and mechanisms of both social denial and bearing witness. The exploration of social denial is sociologically relevant, and generally important, as a means for understanding the role it plays in society, and to further understanding what social denial is and how it works. The better actors understand an issue the more capable they are of addressing it. This thesis conducts a media frame analysis of selected published articles from the National Post and the Globe and Mail that speak to the issue of MMIWG. This analysis reveals social denial through the frames “culpable victim”, “poster child”, and “the extra”; and bearing witness through the frame of the “honourable victim”. The analysis and research of this thesis reveal how social denial covers up the relevance of colonialism with respect to MMIWG. Furthermore, it suggests that social denial acts to both camouflage the gritty details underlying MMIWG and erase the identities of MMIWG.

This study was designed to examine adolescent girls experience of their parents' divorce. A review of the literature on this subject indicated that little research had been conducted on the adolescents' experience of parental divorce. The literature also indicated that the painful event of divorce can precipitate a number of emotional, behavioural, and cognitive changes in children. This study utilized a phenomenological methodology. Specifically, the study sought to explore the participants' experience of parental divorce and interpret the results in conjunction with relevant theory. Eight girls from age sixteen to nineteen participated in the study. These girls came from a home where a divorce had occurred within a nine year range, but had occurred at least one year since the time of the interviews. The participants were interviewed twice. The interviews were analyzed using the data analysis process described by Giorgi (1975). This analysis revealed twelve topic areas which were descriptive of the participants' experience of divorce. These topics were then organized around four main content areas, or processes. These processes were the experience of the divorce, the process of adapting to environmental changes, the learning and growing process, and the process of restructuring meaning and moving toward resolution. The results were interpreted utilizing the literature on children from divorced homes, attribution theory, and just world theory. The present study shared many similarities with the literature on divorce, but differed in the degree of depression and maladjustment seen among the participants. The participants in this study, generally, were seen to highly-functioning, healthy individuals. The study also showed how the participants need for control in their lives was related to the theories posed by attribution theory and just world theory. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

Girls’ withdrawal from school is posing a major challenge to female literacy in Afghanistan. The aim of this research was to examine the influence of Afghan traditions and cultural norms on girls’ school withdrawal by parents or guardians in Khinjan District of Baghlan Province. To achieve this aim the accounts of 12 mothers with daughters pulled out of school were obtained through semi-structured interviews and analyzed via the theoretical lens of Existentialist Feminism and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Model. The findings suggest that in order to address the problem of girls’ withdrawal from school in Khinjan, the informal communication networks that reinforce the tendency of parents/guardians, especially male ones, to withdraw the girls from school should be influenced by communication channels in the district. Grounded on Paulo Freire’s concept of dialogue for liberation, it is recommended that credible members in the community should initiate and engage in a transforming dialogue about education of girls, with Khinjanis.

This thesis was designed to investigate differences in aggression between girls with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Forty girls with ADHD and 43 girls without ADHD aged 9- to 12- years and their mothers and teachers participated. A multiassessment methodology was used to investigate these differences, employing mothers' reports, teachers' reports, and a laboratory aggression analogue task (a computer game involving simulated girls in other rooms). The results indicated that mothers and teachers saw girls with ADHD as having much higher levels of all types of aggression assessed, including overt, relational, proactive, and reactive aggression, than girls in the control group. On the lab task, girls with ADHD used a strategy that involved more threatening and bragging comments, and social exclusions of their co-players. Expected differences on some of the lab task measures did not emerge. Also, according to mothers, teachers, and the results from the lab task, girls with ADHD were significantly less prosocial than girls in the control group. Where significant group differences had been found, follow-up tests generally indicated that girls with ADHD and comorbid oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) were more aggressive than girls in the control group, with girls with ADHD but not ODD falling in between. In sum, these results indicate substantial cause for concern for the concurrent and future psychosocial well-being of girls with ADHD. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Recent research has revealed a gender gap in reading attitudes and achievement. Broadly speaking, when compared with girls, boys display a more negative attitude towards reading and perform less well on measures of reading achievement. Yet, why boys appear to have such difficulties with reading and why girls appear to have fewer difficulties with it has yet to be fully explored. This thesis examines the talk of a group of grade five and six students at a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, mixed socio-economic urban elementary school, concerning their ideas of gender normative behaviour, gendered reading practices and the consequences of non-normative gender performances or gender crossing behaviour. Using Critical Socio-Cultural theories of literacy and learning and Feminist Post-Structuralist theories of gender and identity, this year long ethnographic study reveals that students' investments in their gender identities may help to create and maintain the gender gap in reading attitudes and achievement. In particular, boys' investment in maintaining a heteronormative masculine identity may interfere with their participation in school based print literacy. The implications of these findings for bridging the gender reading gap are discussed. In addition, this thesis raises questions about the simplicity of current conceptions of the gender reading gap that depict boys as victims and girls as victors in school. This thesis adds to research that calls for a more complex understanding of issues of gender, "race" and class in .contemporary classrooms. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

In affluent western societies, digital communication and information technologies increasingly reshape our social relations and identities, the way we perceive our selves and others. Given that we are all communicative and relational bodies in complex webs of power, the media of communication are central to the ways we are socially structured and relate to one another. The purpose of my thesis is to sketch a framework which can account critically for the dangers and benefits of embodying digital technologies while rethinking the gendered body politics of the everyday world. In this thesis, I develop a set of theoretical abstractions through which to think our bodies. With these theories, I paint images of modern body politics and of the micro- and macro-politics of power over life in larger socio-historical processes. M y textual analysis of Tampax's TRoom (http://www.troom.com), a corporate website exemplifies thinking these broader historical and social issues of embodiment. I focus on this website as a discursive frame that calls girls as free and subjugated subjects into digital texts of feminine protection. Thinking girl bodies through and against the 'civilizing' and disciplinary dimension of digital and sanitary technologies provides us with both liberating and confining images of what it may be like to be or become a girl. In the conclusion, I present the image of cyborgs, as hybrids of human organism and technology, to think our selves through everyday life techniques and technologies. Tamponed cyborgs provide realities that reformulate a bodily unity, capture contemporary issues of "girls" embodiment and incorporation of technology, and contribute to an understanding of the possibilities for discursive remappings of girls' social relations and selves. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This interpretive descriptive study explored the meaning and lived experience of breast cancer for 5 mothers and their 5 adolescent daughters, and for these mother-daughter relationships. Mothers had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 2 and 6 years ago, and their daughters were between 11 and 13 years old at the time of the diagnosis. A series of six in-depth interviews with mothers and daughters, conducted both jointly and separately, afforded a view of aspects of experience that were shared and privately held. Interview data were supplemented with participants' drawings of their experience, and the researcher's observations. The interpretive descriptive framework employed was augmented with the lens of portraiture in the conduct of study, data analysis, and composition of the product of inquiry. Portraiture utilizes five essential features: voice, relationship, context, emergent themes, and aesthetic whole. Individual and relational experience and meaning were described in four themes: (a) Inhabiting Another Landscape, (b) Intending and Acting, (c) Acquiring Wisdom, and (d) Enduring Mother-Daughter Relationships. The theme of Inhabiting Another Landscape described a trajectory of experience and meaning that began with diagnosis, persisted through prolonged effects of treatment, and continued in the present and into imagined futures. Mothers and daughters had privately held concerns about the mothers' breast cancer and the possibility that breast cancer might one day visit daughters as well. The most prominent reminder of vulnerability was recurrence among friends in the social networks of breast cancer. The theme of Intending and Acting described the mutual caring and protectiveness of these mothers and daughters. Mothers and daughters described actions and strategies to minimize the threat of breast cancer for themselves and for the other person. Actions included attempts by both persons to create and maintain a sense of normalcy. Conversations between mothers and daughters on the experience of breast cancer were limited, in particular around prognosis and the possibility of death. The theme of Acquiring Wisdom described personal growth and change after the diagnosis of breast cancer. For both persons, realizations of mortality brought a new perspective on what was important in life. Mothers passed on the wisdom gained from their experience either directly in what was said to daughters or indirectly in the attitudes and behaviours they modelled. The theme of Enduring Mother-Daughter Relationships described the quality of mother-daughter relationships and the import of breast cancer for these relationships. Mothers and daughters described their relationships as close. Daughters described their relationships as closer than most, in part because of their experience with breast cancer. Parenting and being parented was in some cases complicated by breast cancer. Friction between mothers and daughters was described as par for the course during the teen years, but one source of friction was the unexpected and prolonged effects of treatment. The findings in this study indicate the value in attending to the voices of teenage daughters, which remain largely absent in the literature. Mothers and daughters have needs for information and support that are not being met. The emotional landscape of breast cancer, which entails prolonged uncertainty for both mothers and daughters, deserves further study. Personal growth described by both mothers and daughters provides an alternative view of the largely problem-focused perspective in the literature of the meaning and experience of breast cancer. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The Girl Guides of Canada is a youth service organization, serving almost 10% of the Canadian female population aged 5-17, that aims to teach girls and young women to become responsible citizens. In this thesis, I review the curriculum of the Pathfinder branch (for girls and young women aged 12-15) of the Girl Guides of Canada. Using feminist, anti-racist, and queer perspectives, I treat "responsible citizenship" as a discursive concept and conduct a discourse analysis of the Pathfinder programme to discover how it attempts to gain the consent of girls and young women to particular definitions of responsible citizenship. Drawing on feminist citizenship theory developed by Yuval-Davis, Anthias, Alexander, and Ross, I argue that the state implicates select female citizens in nation building practices as biological reproducers and transmitters of culture. I also draw on theories of moral regulation extended by Sangster, Strange, and Loo to illustrate ways in which the state and voluntary organizations attempt to gain the consent of citizens to particular ways of being. I argue that, because its texts authorize particular definitions of responsible citizenship, the Pathfinder curriculum implicates girls and young women in capitalist nation building in Canada. Specifically, I argue that the Pathfinder programme normalizes heterosexuality, whiteness, and ability, and privileges middle-class values. I also demonstrate that a responsible citizen, according to the Pathfinder curriculum, performs caregiving and environmental stewardship as volunteer service, prepares to join the labour force, and is healthy, hygienic, cheerful and obedient. I raise questions about the nature of the organization's efforts to teach about sexism, racism, classism, ableism, homophobia and heterosexism, and suggest some ways in which the curriculum can attend to these social relations to develop a more inclusive image of the ideal responsible citizen. I also suggest a number of directions for future research. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate