Background: Child and adolescent mental health is an important public health issue within the UK. Providing support to young people, to help them cope with everyday life, is a key aspect of the school nurse’s role. Yet there is a paucity of published research within the UK and internationally about how this support is provided. Methodology: Using a narrative inquiry approach, presented as a performative text, this study set out to address the following research question, ‘How do school nurses provide support to young people?’ Stories were gathered from eleven school nurses to explore their experiences of providing support to young people using purposive sampling. The stories were analysed using an adapted version of the interpretivist-interactionist model (Savin-Baden, 2004). Poetic re-presentations were used to tell the stories of individual school nurses; an approach seen to be a novel in school nursing research. Using Soja’s (1996) spatiality theory as a framework the stories were analysed collectively, to explore different spaces used when providing support to young people. Findings: This study extends school nursing current literature about what it means to provide support. The importance of regular support and building trusting relationships is identified. Yet challenges exist in terms of the amount of emotional investment required by the nurses, as well as a lack of workforce capacity and organisational demands. It provides an original contribution to the body of school nursing knowledge by using an approach new in school nursing research, and distinguishing different and new spaces in which they perform to provide support to young people. Recommendations: Further research is necessary to gather stories from young people themselves. Additional support and training is recommended to enhance school nurses’ knowledge and skills in providing support. Findings should be conveyed to commissioners to provide insight into the school nurses’ role.

The impact of Internet technology on critical thinking is of growing interest among researchers. However, there still remains much to explore in terms of how critical thinking can be fostered through online environments for higher education. Ten years ago, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) published an article describing the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework which provided an outline of three core elements that were able to describe and measure a collaborative and positive educational experience in an online learning environment, namely teaching presence (design, facilitation, and direct instruction), social presence (the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally), and cognitive presence (the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse). This dissertation extends the body of research surrounding the CoI framework and also the literature on developing critical thinking in online environments by examining and exploring the extent to which teaching and social presence contribute to cognitive presence. The researcher was able to do this by offering 189 learners enrolled in 10 research methods courses and educational research courses an opportunity to use an innovative online resource (Research Design Learning Resource – RDLR) to assist them in learning about educational research and developing research proposals. By exploring how participants used this resource the researcher was able to gain insight into what factors contributed to a successful online learning experience and fostered cognitive presence. Quantitative and qualitative research approaches (mixed methods) were used in this study. The quantitative results indicated that both social and teaching presence had a strong positive relationship with cognitive presence and that learners generally perceived to have a positive learning experience using the RDLR. The qualitative findings helped elaborate the significant quantitative results and were organised into the following themes: making connections, multiple perspectives, resource design, being a self-directed learner, learning strategies, learning preferences, and barriers to cognitive presence. Future directions for critical thinking in online environments are discussed.

Although interpersonal communication studies have focused on various aspects of interpersonal relationships, research on the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation in romantic relationships has received little attention. This narrative research inquiry was undertaken to explore perceptions of men and women related to the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation. This investigation used social construction as a theoretical perspective to understand three areas of investigation that include: the existence and relevance of the player identity, the player’s relation to emotionally manipulative behaviour, and the connection between socially constructed gender conventions and the player identity. Hesse-Biber’s (2006) feminist interviewing approach guided semi-structured interviews with six male and six female participants. Respondents reported the existence and relevance of the player identity in romantic relationships today, connecting this identity to emotionally manipulative behaviour, as well as relating this identity to traditional gender conventions. Finally, implications for men and women in romantic relationships today and future areas of research are discussed in light of these findings.

L’idée m’est venue, après 35 ans de carrière en éducation de faire des études doctorales, question de boucler ma vie professionnelle par un exercice de synthèse significatif. Or au cours de cette carrière, j’ai eu à travailler quelques années avec des directions d’écoles élémentaires qui avaient à jongler, à la fois, avec le mandat de cette école particulière qu’est l’école de langue française en milieu minoritaire, avec la présence majoritaire d’enfants issus de l’immigration et avec les exigences de performance et d’efficacité telles que précisées par le ministère de l’Éducation de l’Ontario. Je me suis demandé comment le care et l’éthique du care interviennent dans le processus de conciliation de ces différentes exigences dans ce contexte. L’approche narrative (narrative inquiry) m’a offert la structure méthodologique requise pour réaliser mon travail de recherche. J’ai fait des entrevues phénoménologiques avec quatre directions d’école. Leurs récits d’expérience jumelés au mien ont permis d’explorer notre paysage du savoir professionnel puisque l’expérience est source de savoir. Les récits institutionnels issus du ministère et des conseils scolaires de district ont aussi offert une toile de fond à la réflexion. Le phénomène du care, sa forme et ses modalités d’expression dans le milieu scolaire a été au cœur de mes interrogations et de ma démarche. Cette démarche, en fait, se présente sous la forme d’une thèse/récit en mode narratif qui se veut un collage esthétique de trois livres. Ainsi, dans le Livre des savoirs, j’explicite le care et présente la méthodologie de recherche. Ensuite, dans le Livre des conversations, j’ai organisé mes données sous la forme de onze conversations qui me permettent de livrer les propos des directions d’école ainsi que les récits institutionnels. Chaque conversation est suivie d’une décantation, premier niveau d’interprétation. Vient en troisième lieu, le Livre des méditations qui est le résultat de mon effort interprétatif, herméneutique et systémique pour expliciter et cerner le care et l’éthique du care dans le milieu scolaire. Je me suis appuyée sur les phases du care et les qualités morales qui y sont inhérentes (Tronto, 1993, 2009) pour présenter, à travers les propos de directions d’école, comment le phénomène du care prend forme dans leur paysage professionnel. J’ai jeté un regard particulier sur les besoins distinctifs des personnes et des écoles en contexte linguistique minoritaire dégageant ainsi que, s’il est possible de parler de care au plan individuel, il est aussi important d’en considérer la forme et les exigences au plan institutionnel. En supposant que le care est le reflet d’une éthique relationnelle, il m’a fallu intégrer la notion d’éthique écologique dans ma réflexion sur les écoles en milieu linguistique minoritaire pour refléter l’importance de la composante communautaire dans la vision du care. De cette façon, ma recherche contribue à placer le care en éducation dans le domaine public et à élargir les pourtours de la conception du care en tant qu’outil de consolidation ou de développement communautaire.

Ethical hacking is one important information security risk management strategy business and academic organizations use to protect their information assets from the growing threat of hackers. Most published books on ethical hacking have focused on its technical applications in risk assessment practices. This thesis addressed a gap within the organizational communication literature on ethical hacking. Taking a qualitative exploratory case study approach, the thesis paired technoethical inquiry theory with Karl Weick’s sensemaking model to explore ethical hacking in a Canadian university. In-depth interviews with key stakeholder groups and a document review were conducted. Guided by the Technoethical Inquiry Decision-making Grid (TEI-DMG), a qualitative framework for use in technological assessment, findings pointed to the need to expand the communicative and social considerations involved in decision making about ethical hacking practices. Guided by Weick’s theory, findings pointed to security awareness training for increasing sensemaking opportunities and reducing equivocality in the information environment.

This qualitative study aimed to enhance our understanding of youth engagement experiences from the perspective of Aboriginal youth living in the Canadian North, as positive youth development programs can foster community engagement among youth and may have implications for Aboriginal youth involvement in community healing. With an asset-based orientation that recognizes that youths’ strengths co-exist with, and are understood in relation to, environmental challenges, narrative inquiry was used to explore the experiences of six Aboriginal youth who participated in a program that promotes community engagement. Rich participant accounts resulted in better understanding youth engagement as a profound culture-bound process rather than simple participation in a program, and illuminates the importance of positive relationships, adult support, and pre-program community involvement to building subsequent engagement. This study has implications specific to Aboriginal youth as having a role in promoting health and healing in their communities through their engagement.

The term “evidence-based” is ubiquitous in practice and policy-making settings around the world; it is de rigueur to claim this approach. This dissertation is an inquiry into the work of evidence-based policy-making with a particular focus on the social practices of policy work/ers involved with developing policies relating to chronic disease at the Ministry of Health in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada. I begin with an examination of tensions in the policy-making literature germane to the relationship between knowledge, its production, and policy-making: the environment into which evidence-based policy-making emerged in the 1990s. Drawing on the theorising of knowledge, discourse, and power – particularly from Foucault’s work – for the analytic approach, I present the commitment to claims of “evidence-based” practices found in key government policy framework documents and policy workers’ accounts of their practices, gathered through interviews. I then show the unravelling of this commitment in those accounts. This research reveals how the policy frameworks construct chronic disease as a financial burden on the health care system and direct policy workers to develop policies with this construction in mind. The discourses associated with evidence-based policy-making narrow how policy workers can think about evidence and its production to positivist, scientific methods and numerical measures that will provide proof of cost cutting. Proponents of evidence-based policy-making laud it as keeping politics and ideology out of the policy-making process. However, the policy workers I interviewed reveal the power relations organising their deeply political work environment. Furthermore, the minutiae constituting policy-making practices produce a “managerialist approach to governance” (Edwards, Gillies, and Horsley, 2015, p. 1) in which people with chronic disease are noticeable by their near-absence. When they do appear, they are responsibilised to decrease the burden on the health/care system and the economy. I argue that as a governing project with an appearance of failure, given the many cracks in the commitment to the claim and the practices of being evidence-based, the discourse of evidence-based policy-making is actually quite successful. It has continuous effects: people are separated (so-called apolitical policy workers into imagined neutral space and decision-makers into political space), knowledge is divided, costs and responsibilities are downloaded to individuals, and evidence-based discourses appear in countless settings. The governing works. / Graduate

This research project explores and evaluates the usefulness of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a methodological framework for Educational Psychology consultations with young people. A significant part of the role of an Educational Psychologist (EP) can be to hold consultations with young people in secondary schools who are perceived to be experiencing difficulties or challenges. These difficulties can often prevent young people from engaging positively in the learning opportunities available to them putting them at risk of under achievement and possible exclusion from school. AI is more commonly known as an organisational development methodology, however by drawing explicitly from the philosophical and theoretical paradigms of social constructionism and the social model of disability, this project’s unique contribution to knowledge is to reconfigured AI as a framework to engender the inclusion and participation of young people in identifying positive changes at school. AI is a change methodology that begins with the premise that within any system or organisation there already exist success, positive experiences, and strengths that are life giving and life affirming. The nature of the exploration is centred on uncovering narrative accounts of what is already working in order to inform any future change.The project was based within a secondary school and was designed specifically to run concurrently with an ‘in house’ programme of support run by the school’s Learning Mentor, so that data from the AI consultations could be used to inform and support the work of the Learning Mentor. The findings (both content and process) indicated that AI consultations with students can support their inclusion and participation. Students identified change through co-constructing alternative narratives that challenged the ‘authority’ view of the students’ difficulties. The process of using AI as a methodology in this way is described as a multidirectional cycle (differing from traditional AI cycles which are presented as unidirectional). Being fluid, flexible and emancipatory the AI consultation framework is considered both useful and appropriate in providing an epistemological basis for Educational Psychology practice.

The aim of this thesis is to develop an understanding of primary school teachers’ knowledge of Inquiry- and Context-Based Science Education (IC-BaSE) from different perspectives: what it is, how to use it and why these strategies are used. There are at least two reasons for performing research in this field. First, there is a need for professional development in teaching science among primary school teachers. Second, IC-BaSE has been suggested to provide useful instructional strategies for stimulating students’ interests in learning science. The thesis contains four papers with the overall research question: How do primary school teachers reflect on Inquiry- and Context-based Science Education as a framework for teaching and learning in the primary school classroom? Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been used. The main participants in the studies were twelve primary school teachers working with 10-12 year old students. The results are discussed with reference to theories mainly based on pragmatism, but also from a sociocultural perspective. Primary school teachers found IC-BaSE to provide useful instructional strategies in the primary school classroom, as it engaged their students and developed their skills in planning inquiries. The teachers developed their knowledge about IC-BaSE, what it is and how to use it.  Furthermore, the primary purpose of using IC-BaSE seemed to be that students should have fun. Students also responded positive to the use of IC-BaSE. However when teachers were informed about their students’ responses to IC-BaSE, they became more aware of the importance of informing the students about the purposes of the activities. The findings presented show that teachers need to move forward, not only be “doing”, but also knowing why they are doing the activities and how to do them. Students’ experiences can contribute to this awareness among teachers and develop the teaching practice. / Inquiry- and context-based science education (IC-BaSE) have been suggested as useful, stimulating students´ interests in learning science. The aim of this thesis is to develop an understanding of primary school teachers’ knowledge of IC-BaSE from different perspectives: what it is, how to use it and why these strategies are used. The results are discussed with reference to theories mainly based on pragmatism, but also from a sociocultural perspective. The findings show that primary school teachers found IC-BaSE useful in the primary school classroom, as it engaged their students and developed their skills in planning inquiries. Students´ experiences of IC-BaSE are included and show positive responses to the use of these strategies. However, when teachers were informed about their students’ responses, they became more aware of the importance of informing the students about the purposes of the activities, and to reflect on why they themselves choose IC-BaSE as instructional strategies. The findings presented show that teachers need to move forward, not only be “doing”, but also knowing why they are doing the activities and how to do them. Students’ experiences can contribute to this awareness among teachers and develop the teaching practice.

Amidst calls to incorporate inquiry meaningfully into the practice of laboratory work in secondary school chemistry and calls to investigate how teachers negotiate their professional identities under widespread reforms in education, this study sought to explore the interface of teacher professional identity and how teachers facilitate inquiry for learners during practical activities. Utilising a social constructivist lens and a qualitative case study approach, the study focused on three inquiry actions; namely, question posing, experiment procedure design and articulation of solutions through a teacher identity lens. Data capture comprised a mix of semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, observations, field notes and a research journal. Data was analysed utilising the content analysis method. Findings were fourfold. First, teachers displayed four identity positions in Inquiry-based Laboratory work, which was interwoven with their professional training, personal school experiences, beliefs and attitudes and sense of agency. Second, teachers’ professional identity influenced how they engaged learners in question posing, experiment design procedure and giving solutions as inquiry actions. Third, teachers held strong beliefs in chemistry as a two-pronged subject and utilised laboratory work to consolidate and develop learner understanding of scientific concepts and theories. And fourth the manner in which teachers facilitated inquiry in the chemistry laboratory manifested as an interface between teacher professional identity and the principles of IBLW. / Thesis (PhD--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / Unrestricted