These combined manuscripts explore the intersections of rural education, community influences, and diverse identities by challenging rural monoliths and deficits while working to address opportunity gaps for rural youth and educators. Theories throughout this work include critical pedagogies of place (Bass and Azano, 2024; Greenwood, 2003), critical theories disrupting power (Freire, 1970), a pedagogy of love (Darder, 2017), and poetic explorations for a sense of belonging and a celebration of place (bell hooks, 2008; 2012) allowing for my own poetic voice to "cry out" (hooks, 2012, p. 12). The critical engagement with place norms and influences on identity development is further rooted in Queer studies, binding these manuscripts as a "tool of incessant unsettling" (Luciano and Chen, 2015, p. 192) by challenging the role of cis-heteronormativity (Berlant and Warner, 1995) in rural contexts. These combined manuscripts situate knowledge production and identity development in educational spaces in conversation with rural education, local and federal policies, issues of access, histories of erasure, and local and societal cis-heterosexual norms. Literature informing these manuscripts focused on rural schools and the unique challenges embedded in those communities, such as rural poverty (Lewis and Boswell, 2020; Tieken, 2022), geographical inequities (Lichter et al., 2012; Showalter et al., 2023), fewer resources for Queer youth (Kosciw et al., 2022; Movement Advancement Project, 2019; Ramos et al., 2014), and limited enrichment opportunities (Azano et al., 2020; Callahan and Azano, 2019; Rasheed, 2019), with a focus on how these challenges influence rural identities and widen opportunity gaps for rural learners. As a manuscript style dissertation, each manuscript centralizes parts of these theories and literatures. Manuscript 1 is a grounding theoretical piece that explores how Queer rural narratives are tangled in a spectrum of visibility. Manuscript 2 is a literature review that navigates how rural education and Queer identities have been discussed in research and reports. Manuscript 3 is a policy brief that presents a framework to critique federal and local anti-Queer policies and their influence on rural Queer youth and educators. Manuscript 4 is an empirical study exploring how rural youth explore their own sense of place and identity while attending a residential summer camp aimed to address an opportunity gap for rural gifted learners. While each manuscript stands alone, combined, they present themes about (a) the internalizations and externalizations of rural identity, (b) the value of diverse rural representation, and (c) the influence of policy and place norms in rural schools. These manuscripts suggest the need to uplift vulnerable and historically marginalized narratives in rural schools in order to challenge rural monolithic narratives, the possibilities of alternative learning spaces to address opportunity gaps for Queer and gifted youth, and the hope for more safe spaces that celebrate diverse rural identities and experiences to increase authentic learning opportunities to celebrate place and self together. / Doctor of Philosophy / This manuscript style dissertation explores rural education, community influences, and diverse, under-served rural populations. Each manuscript engages with issues of deficit narratives, addressing assumptions, and monolithic perspectives of rurality that widen opportunity gaps that allow for all rural youth to access authentic learning. The theoretical framings in the embedded manuscripts center a critical pedagogy of place (Greenwood, 2003), Queer studies (e.g., Berlant and Warner, 1995; Luciano and Chen, 2015,), critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), and concepts of belonging (hooks, 2008, 2012). The four manuscripts address this central research topic by: (a) engaging with the role of visibility in rural spaces from Queer narratives; (b) exploring how research has discussed the intersections of rural education and Queerness in K-12 schools; (c) addressing anti-Queer policy implementation in rural schools; and (d) analyzing how rural, gifted learners explored their sense of place and identity at a summer enrichment experience designed to address an opportunity gap for rural, gifted learners. Overarching themes illuminate the importance in uplifting and celebrating diverse, rural experiences, especially Queer, to (re)root a sense of place value and authentic identity in a rural educational experience, which works to address educational opportunity gaps that uniquely influence rural youth while also challenging monolithic rural narratives.

The nurturance of creative capacity and cultural awareness have been identified as important 21st century concerns, given the ways that globalisation has challenged cultural diversity. This thesis explores the share that the art classroom, as a formative place, has in supporting such concerns. It specifically examines artmaking strategies that visual arts teachers may use to help adolescent students to develop and negotiate their senses of self, place and community. Held within this goal is the assumption that both student and teacher perspectives are important to this endeavor. This thesis, accordingly, draws upon empirical work undertaken with lower secondary school level visual art students in Christchurch, New Zealand and teacher-trainees in Kingston, Jamaica to explore this potential in multi-dimensional ways. The research employs a qualitative, arts-based methodology, centred on the transformative capacity of ‘visual knowing’ to render this potential visible. A/r/tography as a particular strand of arts-based methodology, served to also implicate my artist-researcher-teacher roles in the study to facilitate both reflection and reflexivity and to capture the complexity and dynamics of the study. Multiple case studies provided the contexts to furnish these possibilities, and to theorize the intrinsic qualities of each case, as well as the complementary aspects of the inquiry in depth. The conceptual framework that underpins this study draws widely on scholarship relating to contemporary artmaking practices, visual culture, culturally responsive and place-conscious pedagogical practices. The research findings reveal that when the artmaking experience is framed around the personal and cultural experiences of the participants, both students and teachers participate in the enterprise meaningfully as co-constructors of knowledge. In this process, students develop the confidence to bring their unique feelings, experiences and understandings to the artmaking process, and develop a sense of ‘insideness’ that leads to strong senses of self, place and community. This also creates a space where the authentic interpretation of artmaking activities goes beyond the creation of borders around cultural differences, and instead generates multiple entry points for students to engage with information. The findings also indicate that while the nature of artmaking is improvisatory and emergent, structure is an integral element in the facilitation of habits toward perception and meaning making. Accordingly, emphases on structured, open-ended artmaking experiences, framed aesthetically, as well as exposure to both the products and processes of contemporary art serve this endeavor. Artmaking boundaries and enabling structures also help to supplement this process. Though this research is limited in scope (in terms of the community engagement), there exists evidence that collaboration with community resource persons enlarges students’ conceptions of artmaking. It presents the potential to address broad issues of local and global import, which also have relevance for the ways students understand their relationships with the world. For researchers outside of the school and community culture however, this process requires close working relations with school personnel to ensure its effectiveness and to facilitate those school-community bridges. The undertaking is also best realized when participants have their own senses of its value, and, as such, are more inclined to participate. A/r/tography, as an arts-based methodology presents much potential for examining the complexities of the artmaking experience. As a form of active inquiry it helps those who employ its features to be more attuned toward enquiry, their ways of being in the world, the ways the personal may be negotiated in a community of belonging, and the development of practices that address difference. This contributes to evolving and alternative research possibilities that value visual forms of ‘knowing’. Finally, this thesis addresses the paucity of research on visual arts education at the secondary level, especially in the Jamaican context. A significant feature of this research is the evidence of its effectiveness with both lower secondary school students and teachers across geographical contexts. It therefore presents the potential for similar studies to be undertaken internationally. Given that the results are site specific however, it is recommended that the adaptation of the framework of this study for future purposes also respond to the specific realities of those contexts.

No description available.

La recherche en titre réalisée au Québec, avait pour but de valider si une approche utilisant le lieu réel pour l’apprentissage des concepts de géographie, permettait à des élèves du secondaire éprouvant des difficultés d’apprentissage, le développement de compétences. L’approche d’éducation traditionnelle autochtone (Cajete, 1994), la Red Pedagogy (Grande, 2004). la pédagogie du lieu Place Baseci, (Gnicnewaid, 2003) de même que l’écoformation de Cottereau (1997). ont constitué les fondements théoriques qui ont étayé la proposition de développement de situations d’apprentissage utilisant le milieu de vie des élèves. Ces approches, presque ignorées des systèmes d’éducation formelle, installent l’objet d’apprentissage dans son contexte réel et non dans une intellectualisation de l’objet. Quittant le paradigme industriel d’éducation et privilégiant une approche dite par le réel, nous présentons ce que la recherche a permis (le développer en installant dans les scénarios d’apprentissage des manières informelles d’accéder aux savoirs formels par un autre médium que l’écrit. Les situations proposées ont été conçues et expérimentées selon deux modèles s soit à partir du manuel scolaire, soit à partir d’un modèle inspiré des principes pédagogiques sélectionnés. Les conclusions de l’ensemble de la démarche ont permis d’évaluer les impacts tant sur les enseignants que sur les élèves ainsi que les retombées pour le milieu et permettent de dégager les caractéristiques essentielles retenues de même que des éléments transférables issus des résultats de la recherche.

Developing positive relationships with nature through outdoor play and education may lead to increased environmental consciousness in adults. Building on past research showing the influence of early memories on adult decision making, this study strives to understand how childhood play outdoors relates to adult values of nature and their potential desire to share similar outdoor experiences with others. Utilizing the Nature Relatedness Scale and semi-structured qualitative interviews, I have explored a deeper understanding of the relationship between parents' memories of play outdoors and their subsequent decisions for their children. Reflecting on many of my own meaningful outdoor experiences alongside those of my parent participants, I have discovered that nature experiences are valued across different perspectives. Due to memorable outdoor experiences, these adults have taken action to offer their children similar meaningful opportunities in nature.

This thesis investigates the relationship between access to public gathering spaces and self-reported health with indicators of community life as the intervening variables. This study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between the access to public space and self-rated health status in multicultural communities. A survey of 785 randomly-selected households was conducted across four low-income Toronto neighbourhoods. The investigation is framed by the 'production of healthy public space' model, which conceptualizes the pathways between the lived experience of space and health as impacting an individual’s likelihood of establishing place attachment. The results support the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the lived dimension of space and health. Mental health appears to be the outcome most affected by indicators of place attachment. Several of the aforementioned relationships were found more commonly in the densest of the four neighbourhoods and variations were found between foreign- and Canadian-born subpopulations.

This thesis interweaves two strands of inquiry, one educational, the other philosophical. The educational inquiry is seeded by the need to understand both embodiment and learning within experiences of place in education. The second strand is prompted by Evernden’s insight that the environmental crisis is a ‘crisis of being’ (1985). Evernden argues that our perceived separation from the world is at the root of the environmental issues we face. Highlighting the role that ‘place’ might have in both these inquiries, I examine the educational and philosophical debates around place, drawing especially on place-based education (Gruenewald & Smith, 2008), and phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). Arguments from within these literatures indicate that experiences of, and in, place hold the potential to reexamine what it means to be part of the world, here, now. Three key research questions emerge from my examination of the literature: 1 – what role do experiences of place have in education? 2 – what is the ontology of place? and 3 – how does place affect thinking and learning? This third question is the meeting point of the philosophical and educational threads of the inquiry, and also reflects back on the process of the inquiry itself. Given the focus of these questions on the lived experience of place, phenomenology is chosen as a suitable methodology. However, I argue that the full potential of phenomenological research can only be met through a more participative and experiential approach. Drawing on literature on participative research, grouped under the term ‘action research,’ (Reason & Bradbury, 2001), a series of collaborative phenomenological research workshops were run in 2009 and 2010 with two groups of practicing educators. Descriptions of experiences of place and place-based education, from within the workshops and the participants’ workplaces, were distilled into themes by the groups. These themes served two purposes: the first was to explore the possibilities of place-based education in various working contexts, an inquiry which was completed during the workshops. The second was to seed a phenomenological investigation into the ontology of place, exploring questions from the philosophical debate on place. This second part of the inquiry was completed by myself. Both groups felt place-based education revealed aspects of place taken for granted or un-explored. This was summed up by one participant in the phrase ‘bringing place to life.’ The participants’ understandings of the different aspects of placebased education including the pedagogy involved, and the possible outcomes, show how place-based education was understood and applied in different contexts. The phenomenological analysis which builds on the participants’ understandings, describes a contrast between un-examined place and the intimate and immersive experience that can occur when place is ‘brought to life.’ The final part of the thesis explores in further depth the role of the mind in ‘bringing place to life,’ putting forward the idea of mind as a phenomenon which can adopt different scales. When learning and thinking on the same scale as the body, the mind is brought to place, and the dualism between mind and body breaks down. ‘Thinking in place’ is put forward as a way of understanding both the experience of learning in context, and the phenomenological immersion of both body and mind in place. The conclusions explore the implications of this research for the various fields touched on in the study: educational approaches such as environmental education, philosophical approaches to place, and research methodologies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the assumption that classrooms are the most appropriate places for the Teaching of English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL) to adult learners in contemporary global society. It considers the success of postmodern general education curricula that systematically dissolve the boundaries between the classroom and the community and seeks to show why such a place-based approach might be particularly useful in transforming TESOL curricula which for the most part overlook informal learning. This study offers 15 successful non-mother tongue English users the opportunity to reflect on their language learning in two separate open-ended interviews. Subsequently, it analyses the range and properties of the places of their acquisition as they emerge from the interview data. The study finds that the classroom is an insufficient place because its social relations necessarily limit learner agency and generally render it ineffective for ESOL acquisition. This suggests the need to transform TESOL into a practice from within which quite new places of learning with more equal social relations emerge where English language can be effectively acquired. This study recommends that English language learners and teachers collaboratively negotiate opportunities for participation in real-world English speaking communities of practice in order to acquire language rapidly and thoroughly. It suggests that this might be achieved by transforming tertiary level English classrooms into laboratories for critical reflection where students are encouraged to discuss problems of significance to them and subsequently deliver real world solutions to the local community. This exploration of place-based TESOL employs Critical Discourse Analysis as its methodology and is situated within the critical paradigm of language education research.

Policymakers who wish to combat poverty or inequality are faced with a choice between policies that target particular individuals in need and those that select geographies with high need. When policymakers choose the latter, “place-based” economic development policies, the beneficiaries of the policy may not be those who policymakers intended, particularly if migration to the targeted area is possible. I study these issues in the context of the California Enterprise Zone program, which distributed hiring subsidies and tax credits to businesses operating in specific areas within the state judged to be economically depressed. Working with a model in which individuals will migrate to enterprise zone areas if they have higher wages and employment and lower cost of living, I hypothesize that enterprise zone designation will raise housing costs as well as income, although the latter may be mitigated by expanding labor supply. I use individual and household level data from the American Community Survey from 2005 to 2014 and a difference in difference regression approach to empirically analyze the program. I find a statistically and economically significant relationship between enterprise zone designation and both rental costs and income from work, and mixed effects on the proportion of rent to household income. I find that effects on income from work, household income, and rental costs vary by race and demographic group. My results have significant implications for the design of local economic development policy as well as the analysis of any public policy under open borders and racially stratified labor networks.

abstract: Ethnogeology is the scientific study of human relationships with the Earth as a system, typically conducted within the context of a specific culture. Indigenous or historically resident people may perceive local places differently from outside observers trained in the Western tradition. Ethnogeologic knowledge includes traditional indigenous knowledge (alternatively referred to as traditional ecological knowledge or TEK), which exceeds the boundaries of non-Indigenous ideas of physical characteristics of the world, tends to be more holistic, and is culturally framed. In this ethnogeological study, I have implemented several methods of participatory rapid assessment (PRA) from the discipline of field ethnography to collect culturally framed geological knowledge, as well to measure the authenticity of the knowledge collected. I constructed a cultural consensus model (CCM) about karst as a domain of knowledge. The study area is located in the karst physiographic region of the Caribbean countries of the Dominican Republic (DR) and Puerto Rico (PR). Ethnogeological data collected and analyzed using CCM satisfied the requirements of a model where I have found statistically significance among participant’s agreement and competence values. Analysis of the competence means in the population of DR and PR results in p < 0.05 validating the methods adapted for this study. I discuss the CCM for the domain of karst (in its majority) that is shared among consultants in the countries of PR and the DR that is in the form of metaphors and other forms of culturally framed descriptions. This work continuing insufficient representation of minority groups such as Indigenous people, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Hispanic/Latinxs in the Earth Sciences. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Geological Sciences 2018