While most of the teachers of English around the world are non-native speakers, numerous cases of discrimination against non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) have been reported in the literature (Braine, 1999). The present study examines the perceptions of students, native English speaking teachers (NESTs), and non-native English speaking teachers towards NESTs and NNESTs in three Intensive English Programs (IEPs) from three universities in the Bekaa governorate of Lebanon. The study examines the similarities and differences between the perceptions of teachers and students and those of NESTs and NNESTs towards the definition of the labels NEST and NNEST, learning with NESTs and NNESTs, strengths and weaknesses of each of the two groups, and classroom behavior and responsibility. Finally, the study examines students’ and teachers’ perceptions regarding NESTs’ and NNESTs’ personal interactions with their students. The study administered Likert-scale questionnaires and semi-structured interviews for teachers and students. The findings revealed that for both groups, teachers are considered native if they grew up in a native speaking country and if they carry any of the accents of the countries of the “middle” (Kachru, 1982).The findings also showed that NESTs are better teachers of oral skills, such as pronunciation, listening, and speaking whereas NNESTs are perceived as better teachers of grammar and culture, more capable of predicting students’ difficulties, and more empathetic to the needs of students. Both groups also agreed that NESTs vary their use of materials more than NNESTs do and that NNESTs communicate better with students because they share their culture and first language and because they are more empathetic with them.

My thesis will first discuss the motivation for my project. I will talk about my personal experience with Native literature and its impact on me as a Native person. I discuss what Native scholars and writers have said about why they write and what they hope Native literature can do for Native readers, people and communities. As a Native person carrying out a research project in my home community I struggled with how I could approach this endeavour in a respectful way. I share my thought process and journey throughout this thesis. This is my methodology. In chapters four and five, I present the responses of community members to Native literature, their thoughts on what Native literature did for them and what it can potentially do for other Native people and communities. I draw out and share my thoughts on what I believe to be is an important point made by each participant and the commonalities I see among participant responses. And while it may be my interpretation of these responses that presents community based theory at the end of this thesis, at the heart of that interpretation lies the words of each participant. All I can do is offer how I see things and what I know.

My thesis will first discuss the motivation for my project. I will talk about my personal experience with Native literature and its impact on me as a Native person. I discuss what Native scholars and writers have said about why they write and what they hope Native literature can do for Native readers, people and communities. As a Native person carrying out a research project in my home community I struggled with how I could approach this endeavour in a respectful way. I share my thought process and journey throughout this thesis. This is my methodology. In chapters four and five, I present the responses of community members to Native literature, their thoughts on what Native literature did for them and what it can potentially do for other Native people and communities. I draw out and share my thoughts on what I believe to be is an important point made by each participant and the commonalities I see among participant responses. And while it may be my interpretation of these responses that presents community based theory at the end of this thesis, at the heart of that interpretation lies the words of each participant. All I can do is offer how I see things and what I know.

No description available.

Arid and semi-arid ecosystems of the southwestern U.S. are experiencing major changes that have profound impacts for community structure and ecosystem function. First, these ecosystems are experiencing dramatic shifts in vegetation composition as a result of the invasion of non-native species. Second these ecosystems are predicted to undergo substantial shifts in climate regime, which include increases in the variability and frequency of extreme temperature and precipitation events. It is not well understood how these current and predicted changes will affect the physiological performance of different plant types in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. To address the effect of these changes, this dissertation focused on the photosynthetic response of a native and non-native grass species, and dominant shrub species to precipitation across contrasting soil surfaces in southeastern Arizona. The native and non-native grasses were exposed to wet and dry seasonal precipitation and responses to precipitation events ('pulses') were measured over the course of a summer growing season. To gain a mechanistic understanding of these patterns, the biochemical and diffusion limitations to photosynthetic function were measured over the course of a pulse period. Building on this foundation, natural stands of the non-native grass species were exposed to sequences of different sized pulse events. The physiological performance of a dominant shrub species, Larrea tridentata, was measured in order to determine the biochemical and diffusional constraints to photosynthetic function across seasons and contrasting soil surfaces. The results showed that leaf area development of these grass species affects water availability and time lags in photosynthetic response. Initial soil moisture conditions across contrasting soil surfaces influence the magnitude of photosynthetic response in grasses. Large photosynthetic responses of the non-native grass require large and consecutive precipitation pulses. Co-limitation of photosynthesis of Larrea tridentata by diffusion and biochemistry does not illustrate typical trends across seasons and soil surfaces. Overall results demonstrate the importance of determining the mechanisms responsible for observed leaf-level photosynthetic patterns across individual pulse events, seasons, and contrasting soil surfaces. This is especially important for predicting the magnitude of the response of plant communities in arid and semi-arid ecosystems to species invasions and changes in climate.

In past decades historians have become increasingly focussed on Native political activism in Canada. This has brought greater understanding to Native political issues and a degree of legitimization to Native political activism. Despite historians interest in Native politics, however, some general weaknesses remain within the historiography. In particular, there has been a general tendency to document the political actions only of eras known to be politically prominent. This practice has led to an abundance of studies focussed on the Riel Uprisings and the surge of Native activism in the 1960s but has left other periods such as the interwar era significantly underrepresented. When the interwar era is mentioned, it is generally done in order to frame such political activities as context for other issues. These tendencies have created the impression that Native political activism was sporadic and reactionary, and therefore, not an established and legitimate response to longstanding grievances. This thesis attempts to rectify this gap within the historiography of Native political activism in Saskatchewan by illustrating the extent to which Native peoples during the interwar era were politically active. In establishing that Saskatchewan Native political activism was a force throughout the interwar era, this thesis elucidates the reasons for the rise in political activism within Saskatchewan Native communities, tracing the development of First Nations and Métis political organizations which began in the early 1920s and 1930s. This work then draws attention to the political strategies developed by Natives to achieve their political goals. Highlighting the period between 1922 and 1946 as a politically significant era for Natives in Saskatchewan, this work fundamentally demonstrates that the challenges facing Native political actions did not result in a failure of Native political identities as one might expect, but rather forced adaptation and growth.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--Concordia University, 1997. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Queen's University, 1999. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. Includes bibliographical references.

This work explores the impact of the “vanishing Indian” paradigm on historical, museological, and anthropological interpretations of Native American Indian peoples along the Quinneticook—the middle Connecticut River Valley of west-central Massachusetts. The seventeenth century documentation of the region’s Agawam, Nonotuck, Pocumtuck, Quaboag, Sokoki, and Woronoco people is surprisingly dense, but their presence after that time is poorly understood. Sophisticated systems for reckoning and maintaining Indigenous governance, trade, kin relations, and inter-tribal alliances, and various means of preserving localized knowledges, were in operation long before colonial settlement, and survived after colonization. The records of this activity and the movements of Native families to other locales were obscured, during the nineteenth century, by local White historians. Accurate understandings of local Native histories have subsequently been difficult to reconstruct, given the lack of ethnographic information in Euro-American records, the flawed representations of Native people and events in local town histories, and the failure to recognize the lineal descendants of middle Connecticut River Valley Native families among today’s Western Abenaki populations. I suggest that the “invisibilizing” of the valley’s Native peoples is a trick of misdirection, caused, in part, by the research interests of three local collectors: geologist Edward Hitchcock Jr. of Amherst College, antiquarian George Sheldon of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, and zoologist Harris Hawthorne Wilder of Smith College. These men unearthed numerous Native individuals from local gravesites, and amassed thousands of artifacts, portraying the skeletal remains of dead Indians as “real,” while representing their descendants as “unreal” remnants of the presumably more authentic Native past. This project, therefore, discusses the ways in which local Native histories and oral traditions were marginalized, ignored or colonized, at the same time that Native bodies were being exoticized, fetishized, and commodified. One means of decolonizing the valley’s Native history is a four-part process that: first, reveals the discursive processes that disconnected living Native peoples from their own histories; second, investigates the physical interferences of archaeological collectors; third, articulates the persistence of Native families over time by linking oral traditions, family names, and material evidence; and fourth, begins to repair some of the damage done by restoring and repatriating the scattered archaeological collections. To illustrate the impact of misrepresentation on local Native histories, I discuss the appearances, in various documents over time, of one local Native family lineage (from Shattoockquis to Sadochques to Msadoques to Sadoques), and their repeated efforts to make their presence known to Deerfield historians. This case study directs attention to some of the Indigenous knowledges and territorial understandings that could be used to construct more accurate regional narratives. In sum, this work aims to demonstrate how decolonizing methodologies can reveal heretofore missing connections, while establishing a more equitable social venue within which the real work of restorative history can begin.