The purpose of this research study was to explore why some Aboriginal students participate in senior secondary Biology, Chemistry, or Physics and achieve a high level of academic success (67% or higher) in these courses. The following key questions were addressed: 1. What are the experiences and perceptions of Aboriginal students with regard to senior secondary science? 2.What role, if any, does culture play for Aboriginal students who are successful in the senior secondary sciences? 3. What are the factors that either contribute to or hinder success by Aboriginal students in science-related courses? Ten Aboriginal participants were interviewed from the Greater Victoria School District. Metaphor Interviews, Literal Interviews and a Focus Group were used to collect data. The results indicated that Aboriginal ancestry was important to the identity of many of the participants, but it was not a significant contributing factor in their academic success in senior secondary science.

This qualitative exploratory study investigated the implementation of team-building activities into an elementary Physical Education Program. The participating teacher was from an affluent school district and her class consisted of twelve grade four students and seventeen fifth graders. It was proposed that a team-building (TB) initiative, with a teacher facilitator being supported and coached by a knowledgeable instructor, would help identify specific enablers and barriers that existed and provide insights into how to promote team building implementation by classroom teachers. It was also proposed that the study would enable the teacher to reflect on her actions and decisions made as a team-building facilitator to scaffold teacher awareness, growth, and future change. The “researcher,” also referred to as teacher coach, and participating teacher met initially to decide how they wanted the study to proceed and it was explained that the participating teacher had the liberty of guiding and directing the study in ways she deemed suitable and believed fit. Decisions were made that the teacher coach would visit on-site every second week to facilitate team-building activities with the fourth and fifth graders to aid in the facilitation of activities by the participating teacher. The on-site visits were digitally photographed and video-recorded to help build upon the study and work to uncover underlying data and themes. The teacher coach and participating teacher met pre-study, mid-study, and post-study to reflect at length upon the experience and to explore concepts and ideas that arose from the teacher’s reflective journal entries. Data was analyzed using NVivo and CMap, which formulated the following emergent themes: teacher and student development, fostering and enriching classroom and school community, “Ahah!” moments, the TB experience, and insights into a teacher-friendly TB manual. Recommendations for research and practice were considered and presented for researchers and educators.

Research into the phenomenon of youth suicide is typically guided by quantitative methodologies focused on young people who have attempted or died by suicide. Questions related to epidemiology, etiology, and the development of actuarial measures of risk are often the drivers of these particular kinds of research. Similarly, research into school-based youth suicide prevention curricula is predominantly focused on quantitative measures of the degree to which young people acquire knowledge or change attitudes about suicide, after exposure to a delivered program. Grounded in post-structural ideas, the purpose of this thesis is to expand upon these mainstream inquiries into youth suicide prevention education through close exploration and analysis of how “suicide” is discursively produced within the context of a classroom delivered curriculum. This study will pay particular attention to the discursive productions of suicide in the curriculum, as well as how these productions result in the constitution of particular objects, concepts, and subjectivities. Transcripts of “naturally occurring classroom talk” will serve as the site of analysis. Troubling contemporary “truth regimes” about suicide and its prevention through close analysis of the discursive frames by which they are produced offers up the potential of re-imagining new possibilities for thinking about and delivering youth suicide prevention education.

This dissertation examines the manifestations of the development discourse in the context of a bilateral South-South program of educational assistance through scholarships provided by the Cuban government at the secondary and postsecondary levels to students from Ghana. The research assesses the meanings attached to this program on the basis of the observations, understandings and perceptions of a group of graduates, and of former administrators who were involved in the design, implementation and/or administration of the program. The study gives legitimacy to the perspectives of a distinct group of knowers in a country of the postcolonial Global South who were socialized into an educational model that differs from the educational context of their home country. The research aims to illuminate the links between the program graduates’ experiences with the Cuban program and their subsequent contributions to Ghanaian society, with particular emphasis on the process of their reintegration. Research questions focus on the study participants’ perceptions regarding the relevance of the Cuban education in regard to academic and practical preparation; the combination of liberal and utilitarian principles of education; access opportunities; and ways in which the Ghanaian government may have encouraged the graduates’ return to Ghana in the context of the global brain drain phenomenon. Upon their return to Ghana, the graduates encountered challenges with respect to cultural disorientation due to the partial adoption of Cuban norms and values. They experienced difficulties integrating into professional life based on a perceived lack of understanding of certain Cuban credentials among Ghanaian employers, and encountered discrimination based on their education in an Eastern Bloc country. Once they had overcome the initial challenges, the graduates felt that the technical and professional aspects of their education, in particular the strong applied focus of their study programs, were well aligned with the Ghanaian context. There was evidence that early recruitment at the secondary level and a defined recruitment strategy resulted in program participation across the 10 Regions of Ghana. A distinct subgroup of graduates currently residing in the Bahamas provided insights into the reasons for their non-return to Ghana or their decision to leave their home country again.

Philosophers and others have debated for centuries about the concept of “rights” - what they are, where they came from, how they evolved, on what authority they proceed, and in what formulations. Because rights express values and are not simply rules governing an immutable status quo, there will always be debates over some aspects of human rights. It is precisely because of this uncertainty that the international community, in 1948, through the General Assembly of the United Nations, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a standard of measurement for the formulation and interpretation of human rights and freedoms. Acknowledged within the Declaration is the universal right to education. One reason for its acknowledgment is the crucial role that education plays in the promotion of equality and the full realization of all other human rights. A second reason concerns the growing appreciation of the relationship that exists between education and increased social and economic benefits. However, despite its pivotal role as a multiplier of human rights and socio-economic benefits, little has actually been written on the right to education to elaborate upon its direction or define its boundaries. Most of what is documented on the right to education comes from legal and political sources, through the voices of judges, lawyers, statesmen, and politicians. Educators, who are generally held responsible for its actual promotion and implementation, have to date contributed very little to our knowledge of the right to education. Clearly this must change. To prevail in practice human rights require not only articulation but interpretation, validation, legislation, enforcement by rule of law and, finally, to be conceived of in a positive formulation. Thus, rights have to be made, and the purpose of this study is to invite educators into the conversation to assist in the making of the right to education by contributing to its interpretations and validating its claims. This inquiry unfolds in twelve chapters. Chapter 1 sets an autobiographical context and includes my own memories and experiences interpreting the right to education as well as the research questions and methodology. Chapter 2 examines the concept of human rights, their evolution, and the basis for their authority. Chapter 3 examines existing interpretations of the right to education in the literature. Chapter 4 examines the meaning of education in the right to education. Chapter 5 examines the compulsory nature of the right to education and the basis for its distinct status among other human rights. Chapters 6 through 8 examine the concepts of equality and equal educational opportunity and their relationship to the promotion of human rights and the right to education. Chapters 9 and 10 examine the ends of the right to education as proclaimed in the Declaration, contrasting these ends with the goals set out by the Ministry of Education in the Province of British Columbia. Chapter 11 examines parental rights to choose the most suitable kind of education in the context of claiming the right to a free education for their children. The final chapter represents an attempt to make sense of the inquiry and the efforts and contributions of research participants and researchers in the literature towards increasing our understanding of the interpretations and implications of the right to education.

In this dissertation I explore the nature of an internship for high school students in a university science laboratory and the issues that arise from it. The investigation of science internships is relatively new to science education; therefore, this exploration is urgently needed. Twenty-one participants were involved in the internship experience, including 13 students, one teacher, two research scientists, and five technicians. Data sources include observations, field notes, and videotapes. Drawing on four coherent and complementary research tools—cultural-historical activity theory, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and phenomenography, I articulate a variety of phenomena from multiple perspectives. The phenomena identified in the dissertation include (a) the discursive resources deployed by a teacher for interesting and inviting students to participate in science; (b) the discursive resources high school students used for articulating their interests in science-related careers; (c) the natural pedagogical conversations for accomplishing the work of teaching and learning during the internship; (d) the theoretical concepts mobilized for describing the unfolding of science expertise in the internship; (e) participants’ ways of experiencing the science internship; and (f) students’ understandings of scientific practice after participating in the internship. The study identifies many useful resources for understanding the nature of the science internship and provides a foundation for future research. The findings reported here will also serve others as a springboard for establishing partnerships between high schools and science communities and improving teaching and learning in science education.

This research brings the thought of Emmanuel Levinas into play in attempting to understand the responsibility of a group of educators of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal heritage working amidst the tensions of ethno-cultural difference in an inner city public high school in Western Canada. The concept of ‘welcoming’, that is born in the words of Levinas, and that I further fashion into an interpretation framework while relying on the writings of Jacque Derrida and Sharon Todd, is employed in articulating this research. The research involves exploring: if, how and to what extent the responsibility of these educators might be understood as a welcoming of the Other and; if, how and to what extent the notion of welcoming itself, and particularly the thought of Levinas, might be potentially helpful in understanding the responsibility of educators? This study articulates a philosophical hermeneutic that is an interpretation of participants’ stories developed through a close examination of Levinas’ philosophy aided by insight from Derrida, Todd and other writers. This research articulates how educators revise and reenact their responsibility wherein their success and that of their students involves the establishment of a non-coercive relationship educators believe is fundamental and crucial to any other form of success their schooling context. This study offers examples and insight concerning how educators are interrupted by the difference of others; how educators realize their vulnerability to others and respond to others where their relationships with others change from merely being-with others to a “being-for” the Other; how educators negotiate the difficult tension of being an hôte or a guest in one’s own situation and; how educators receive the gift of learning from the Other or learn what their responsibility demands of them as they seek to serve others in amidst ethno-cultural difference. This research is helpful in offering an alternate way to approach how educators’ understand and enact their responsibility amidst ethno-cultural difference and does this by offering an atypical consideration of what is ethical, where responsibility is reconceived as a welcoming of the Other. In this pursuit insight is offered into the helpfulness and use of Levinas’ philosophy with the suggestion that his writings remain challenging to decipher as well to apply, offering few if any specific guides for action. Despite this, I suggest that Levinas’ philosophy when refashioned as welcoming, relying on scholars such as Derrida and Todd, can be helpful in prompting us as educators to think differently about our responsibility and therefore to perhaps act differently. In this capacity this study is potentially helpful to educators in assuring them that what is ethical is not necessarily defined within the confines of convention, legal codes and rules nor is what is ethical solely determined within such confines, but rather in our attentiveness to others and our attentiveness to our attentiveness, where we realize the welcoming nature of responsibility and what is actually demanded of us in being responsible to the Other.

This study explores the conditions in which women teaching and conducting research in the fields of computer science, computer engineering and information technology in six Romanian universities live and work. The research begins from women’s concerns and practices of everyday life, rather than those of institutions and disciplines. This exploratory work asked two fundamental questions of the women interviewed: what does it mean to be a woman academic in these high-tech disciplines, and what does it mean to be a second world academic. Employing a critical feminist ethnographic framework, the study explored the professional lives of seven women academics whose ranks varied from Lecturer to Professor through in-depth, face-to-face interviews. A number of documents were also reviewed in order to create a context for the major social and political changes in Eastern Europe – including its new connections to Europe – that had an impact on the professional journeys of women academics in Romania. Findings convey a multiplicity of conscious and unconscious inclusion and exclusionary practices, and ways in which gender, technology, higher education, neo-liberalism and globalisation are bound together. The findings reveal nuanced systemic gender exclusionary practices suggesting that the theoretical underpinnings and practice of gender equality employed in Romania and by Romanian higher education institutions needs much further study. Women academics in computing face a complex interplay of discouraging factors such as severe financial austerity and the masculine domination of the disciplines being most salient. The implication for educational change is the need to establish structures and mechanisms to foster honest debate around the dilemma: equality of opportunity, equality of outcome versus gender mainstreaming which has been the normative action in Eastern Europe for decades.

Understanding what to do and how to complete academic tasks is an essential yet complicated academic activity. However, this area has been under-examined. The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ understanding of academic tasks with qualitative and quantitative approaches. Ninety-eight students participated in this study. First, the study explored the kinds of tasks students identified as challenging, the disciplines in which these tasks were situated, the types of structures these tasks had, and challenges found in students’ task analysis activity. Second, the study examined the relationships between students’ task understanding and academic performance. The findings indicated that although students struggled with various tasks, they struggled even more when tasks became less pre-scribed. The results also showed that task understanding was statistically significantly co-related to academic performance and task understanding, particularly, implicit aspect of task understanding, predicted students’ academic performance. The findings supported Hadwin’s (2006) model of task understanding.

In this dissertation I explore the nature of an internship for high school students in a university science laboratory and the issues that arise from it. The investigation of science internships is relatively new to science education; therefore, this exploration is urgently needed. Twenty-one participants were involved in the internship experience, including 13 students, one teacher, two research scientists, and five technicians. Data sources include observations, field notes, and videotapes. Drawing on four coherent and complementary research tools—cultural-historical activity theory, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and phenomenography, I articulate a variety of phenomena from multiple perspectives. The phenomena identified in the dissertation include (a) the discursive resources deployed by a teacher for interesting and inviting students to participate in science; (b) the discursive resources high school students used for articulating their interests in science-related careers; (c) the natural pedagogical conversations for accomplishing the work of teaching and learning during the internship; (d) the theoretical concepts mobilized for describing the unfolding of science expertise in the internship; (e) participants’ ways of experiencing the science internship; and (f) students’ understandings of scientific practice after participating in the internship. The study identifies many useful resources for understanding the nature of the science internship and provides a foundation for future research. The findings reported here will also serve others as a springboard for establishing partnerships between high schools and science communities and improving teaching and learning in science education.