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This study is a micro-analysis of a particular educational milieu: a history of the development of rural schools and community in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia from 1874 until 1930, focussing mainly on the period from 1920 to 1930. The teacher, or more specifically the female teacher, is the main subject. A series of oral interviews conducted with surviving rural teachers and pupils from the 1920s comprise the primary data. Personal narratives form the core of the text. Also used were the pertinent printed and manuscript records of the Department of Education, penned by teachers, school inspectors and other officials, local histories, the 1931 Census of Canada and photographs. The purpose of the study is two fold. First, it is to delineate what the job of teaching in a rural school in the 1920s entailed. The physical and pedagogical conditions of that work are described. The role and status of the teacher in the local community are also highlighted. Teaching in an isolated community, especially for the novice, was an arduous assignment and one that demanded the acceptance of considerable physical, professional, mental and emotional hardships. The underlying relationship that existed between the individual teacher and the local world of education in rural districts and how the nature of that relationship influenced the quality of teacher experience is a central theme of the study. Social background and up bringing, as well as personal disposition, were found to be key variables determining the extent to which teachers were able successfully to adapt to living and working in a remote rural district. Second, the study examines the social context and meaning of the experience of teaching as work for women. By focussing on how involvement in the profession fitted into the larger structure of the female life course, a more complex, yet clearer, vision emerges of what teaching actually did for women in terms of how they used the profession to accommodate their own personal agendas. For many women their experience as a teacher, albeit brief, played an important, and for some a profound, role in their lives. Despite the strenuous and often frustrating nature of their working and living circumstances many teachers enjoyed their jobs. Motivated by a determination to succeed many regarded their experiences in rural schools as a challenge. They had their sense of self-worth and confidence enhanced by their ability to prove to themselves that they could survive under such adverse conditions. Teaching also afforded women economic independence and relative autonomy and thus expanded their personal and career horizons beyond the traditional domestic roles. Moreover for a substantial number of women teaching was by no means just a prologue to anticipated marriage but rather a life-time commitment. At the same time women's career pathways, unlike that of the majority of their male collegues, were not organised to enhance career aspirations. Women negotiated their work interests with traditional sex role and family expectations. Decisions concerning work were deeply entrenched within, and contingent upon, their changing personal and family circumstances. Home and family obligations, both real and perceived, defined their lives and played a key role in their life planning. Pursuing a "career" as a teacher in the traditional sense was not necessarily always the main priority in women's lives and certainly had little to do with what they viewed as commitment to the job. The study contributes to a fuller understanding of the phenomena of rural schooling and teaching in British Columbia and provides some insights into rural life itself. It also raises important questions as to the meaning of teaching as work to women and the nature of their participation in the workforce. It demonstrates that any evaluation of women's work must be derived from women workers' own perceptions and definitions of work and career.

The recent shift from behaviorist to cognitive views of teaching premises the role of teachers’ knowledge in their instructional practice. In light of dramatic changes in literacy theory and policy, teachers’ knowledge of reading instruction is a particular interest in both teaching and literacy instruction research. The purpose of this study was to construct a description of grade three reading instruction in Canada (BC) and to explain differences between teachers’ instructional approaches on measures of teacher background, student background, and student achievement. To accomplish these purposes, this study reanalyzed data from a representative sample of provincial teachers (N=154) and students (N=2813) from the 1991 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Reading Literacy Study. Analysis was planned in two stages, exploratory followed by confirmatory. Exploratory first-and second-order factor analyses of the teacher data were conducted and two factors of reading instruction were identified. Based on interpretative frameworks of Traditional, Whole Language, and Strategic perspectives of reading instruction, the factors were named Strategic Whole Language and Programmatic Skills. The Strategic Whole Language factor seemed to emphasize students’ use of comprehension strategies in learner-centered, literature-based classrooms. The Programmatic Skills factor indicated an instructional approach that is teacher-centered and focussed on students’ mastery of hierarchial skills. Following identification of the reading instruction factors, exploratory cluster analysis based on teachers’ factor scores identified four groups of teachers. None of the four teacher groups consistently reflected the properties of either the Strategic Whole Language or Programmatic Skills factor. Finally, analyses of variance and chi square analyses revealed no statistically significant differences among these teacher groups on measures of teacher background, student background, and student achievement. Major findings from this study suggest that grade three teachers’ personal practical knowledge of reading instruction is an interaction of independent factors rather than a subscription to one of the perspectives defined in the literature. In this way, the eclectic approaches to instruction found in this study challenge the assumption of a paradigm shift declared in the reading literature. Second, students’ similar achievement across instructional approaches, as measured in this study, suggests equivalent effectiveness of several kinds of instruction for some, but not all, aspects of students’ reading development. Findings from this study provide a foundation for teacher and curriculum development, particularly by identifying the minimal attention currently being paid to students’ strategic reading abilities. Finally, a number of methodological issues in large-scale assessement studies are discussed and suggestions concerning research instruments and data analysis are given.

This study is a micro-analysis of a particular educational milieu: a history of the development of rural schools and community in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia from 1874 until 1930, focussing mainly on the period from 1920 to 1930. The teacher, or more specifically the female teacher, is the main subject. A series of oral interviews conducted with surviving rural teachers and pupils from the 1920s comprise the primary data. Personal narratives form the core of the text. Also used were the pertinent printed and manuscript records of the Department of Education, penned by teachers, school inspectors and other officials, local histories, the 1931 Census of Canada and photographs. The purpose of the study is two fold. First, it is to delineate what the job of teaching in a rural school in the 1920s entailed. The physical and pedagogical conditions of that work are described. The role and status of the teacher in the local community are also highlighted. Teaching in an isolated community, especially for the novice, was an arduous assignment and one that demanded the acceptance of considerable physical, professional, mental and emotional hardships. The underlying relationship that existed between the individual teacher and the local world of education in rural districts and how the nature of that relationship influenced the quality of teacher experience is a central theme of the study. Social background and up bringing, as well as personal disposition, were found to be key variables determining the extent to which teachers were able successfully to adapt to living and working in a remote rural district. Second, the study examines the social context and meaning of the experience of teaching as work for women. By focussing on how involvement in the profession fitted into the larger structure of the female life course, a more complex, yet clearer, vision emerges of what teaching actually did for women in terms of how they used the profession to accommodate their own personal agendas. For many women their experience as a teacher, albeit brief, played an important, and for some a profound, role in their lives. Despite the strenuous and often frustrating nature of their working and living circumstances many teachers enjoyed their jobs. Motivated by a determination to succeed many regarded their experiences in rural schools as a challenge. They had their sense of self-worth and confidence enhanced by their ability to prove to themselves that they could survive under such adverse conditions. Teaching also afforded women economic independence and relative autonomy and thus expanded their personal and career horizons beyond the traditional domestic roles. Moreover for a substantial number of women teaching was by no means just a prologue to anticipated marriage but rather a life-time commitment. At the same time women's career pathways, unlike that of the majority of their male collegues, were not organised to enhance career aspirations. Women negotiated their work interests with traditional sex role and family expectations. Decisions concerning work were deeply entrenched within, and contingent upon, their changing personal and family circumstances. Home and family obligations, both real and perceived, defined their lives and played a key role in their life planning. Pursuing a "career" as a teacher in the traditional sense was not necessarily always the main priority in women's lives and certainly had little to do with what they viewed as commitment to the job. The study contributes to a fuller understanding of the phenomena of rural schooling and teaching in British Columbia and provides some insights into rural life itself. It also raises important questions as to the meaning of teaching as work to women and the nature of their participation in the workforce. It demonstrates that any evaluation of women's work must be derived from women workers' own perceptions and definitions of work and career. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

A relationship between the perceptions of the Learning Assistance Teacher (LAT), the Classroom Teacher, the School Principal and the District Staff of the role of the LAT is examined through the use of a questionnaire employing a Likert-type scale. The study explored, described and attempted to compare the perceptions of these key observers in one school district in British Columbia. This study involved a comparative study method. Questionnaires were sent to key observers to obtain their perceptions of the role of the LAT within their school. The individuals represented two levels of district organizational structure - within school personnel and district personnel. The within school personnel could be further sub-divided into administrative and teaching personnel. The data were analyzed descriptively, a comparative analysis between the key observers was taken, the inter-group correlation for the key observers was examined, and the relative ranking of responses for the four groups was examined. It is argued that these findings can be attributed, in part, to the speculative conclusions in the following areas: 1. The consultation area of the LAT role is still a significant problem. 2. The out-of-school and within-school groups have differing perceptions. 3. The within-school personnel have highly correlated perceptions which may be due to the level of inservice training and/or written district policy and school objectives and goals for the LAT. 4. The increased level of education for the classroom teacher and LAT may have led to an increasing commonality of perception of the LAT role. 5. This district rates consultation and cooperative planning much higher than Dugoff, Ives and Shotel's (1985) research. This may be due to the increasing trend to service children with mild handicaps within the regular classroom. This district is moving toward total integration. Further research is needed to see to what extent the perceived role matches the actual role, what the desired or preferred role of the LAT is for these key observers, and what value the role has on learner outcomes. Possible pilot studies of other ways to meet students needs are suggested. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

The recent shift from behaviorist to cognitive views of teaching premises the role of teachers’ knowledge in their instructional practice. In light of dramatic changes in literacy theory and policy, teachers’ knowledge of reading instruction is a particular interest in both teaching and literacy instruction research. The purpose of this study was to construct a description of grade three reading instruction in Canada (BC) and to explain differences between teachers’ instructional approaches on measures of teacher background, student background, and student achievement. To accomplish these purposes, this study reanalyzed data from a representative sample of provincial teachers (N=154) and students (N=2813) from the 1991 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Reading Literacy Study. Analysis was planned in two stages, exploratory followed by confirmatory. Exploratory first-and second-order factor analyses of the teacher data were conducted and two factors of reading instruction were identified. Based on interpretative frameworks of Traditional, Whole Language, and Strategic perspectives of reading instruction, the factors were named Strategic Whole Language and Programmatic Skills. The Strategic Whole Language factor seemed to emphasize students’ use of comprehension strategies in learner-centered, literature-based classrooms. The Programmatic Skills factor indicated an instructional approach that is teacher-centered and focussed on students’ mastery of hierarchial skills. Following identification of the reading instruction factors, exploratory cluster analysis based on teachers’ factor scores identified four groups of teachers. None of the four teacher groups consistently reflected the properties of either the Strategic Whole Language or Programmatic Skills factor. Finally, analyses of variance and chi square analyses revealed no statistically significant differences among these teacher groups on measures of teacher background, student background, and student achievement. Major findings from this study suggest that grade three teachers’ personal practical knowledge of reading instruction is an interaction of independent factors rather than a subscription to one of the perspectives defined in the literature. In this way, the eclectic approaches to instruction found in this study challenge the assumption of a paradigm shift declared in the reading literature. Second, students’ similar achievement across instructional approaches, as measured in this study, suggests equivalent effectiveness of several kinds of instruction for some, but not all, aspects of students’ reading development. Findings from this study provide a foundation for teacher and curriculum development, particularly by identifying the minimal attention currently being paid to students’ strategic reading abilities. Finally, a number of methodological issues in large-scale assessement studies are discussed and suggestions concerning research instruments and data analysis are given. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Over the last twenty-five years, women's historians have striven with the problem of how to uncover women's lives in the past. The early concern with merely "retrieving" women's life stories has recently been augmented by a more theoretically- informed approach which takes into consideration issues of experience, voice, and representation, and which challenges the notion of absolute objectivity. This study was designed as a contribution to the latter type of historical research informed by the sociological debates on these issues, and was influenced by feminist materialist approaches that insist on accounting for both the content of experiences and the various discursive positions occupied by subjects. Specifically, it examines the bases of identity construction in the lives of two women teachers (Susan Abercrombie Holmes and Susan Suckley Flood) in nineteenth-century British Columbia, a context in which relatively little work on the history of women has been done. Identity is not perceived as given or static, but rather as constructed, changing, and sometimes contradictory. Even those markers of identity commonly called upon to describe a person- such as gender, race, class, religion, and nationality-are seen as problematic, and their ambiguities are discussed in relation to the life stories of the two women. Subsequently, the effects of these "markers" are further adumbrated through an examination of some of the less obvious ways in which the women's identities were constructed. These are all seen as interrelated, and include the influences of their families of origin on the women's earlier lives, especially regarding their education and marriage decisions, their functions as economic agents, their social relationships, and their self-images or self-representations. To the extent that these were fashioned by their gender identity, many similarities can be seen in their lives, but their experiences also diverged (widely or narrowly) as a result of their differences in other aspects, notably racial identity. These differences had a profound effect on the type and degree of material and ideological constraints placed upon them, and thus on the degree to which they were able to shape the construction of their own identities.

This study investigated community college faculty productivity from within the overall context of faculty vitality. The study was conducted at Fraser Valley College in Abbotsford and Chilliwack, British Columbia, and Red Deer College in Red Deer, Alberta. Two research problems were addressed. First, which work related factors, as reported by continuing contract teaching faculty at the two community colleges, facilitated or hindered the productivity of instructors? Second, to what extent are a composite set of factors, based on those suggested in the literature as affecting faculty vitality, perceived by faculty at these colleges to affect their productivity? The research was descriptive, extending faculty productivity and vitality inquiry into the community college context using a case study approach. A questionnaire employing the critical incident technique was used to collect data from faculty about incidents they perceived as having had a personally significant effect on their productivity. A definition of community college faculty productivity for use in the critical incident process was developed using a 12 member Delphi group consisting of three faculty and three administrators from each college. Rating of the composite set of vitality factors was accomplished by asking the respondents to rate each factor on a five point bipolar rating scale based on their perception of the priority each factor had in affecting their productivity. The 330 incidents collected by the questionnaire (171 facilitating, 159 hindering) were classified into 15 incident categories which in turn were able to be grouped into four major areas each of which provides a theme for the related categories they contain. All factors in the composite set of vitality related factors received a minimum mean rating of three on the five point scale. Conclusions drawn include: (1) the frequency of incidents by category should not be the only measure of category importance because frequencies may vary by institution, by instructor, and over time; (2) the categories reflect an open rather than closed classification system and as such are interrelated; (3) the categories reflect both facilitating and hindering incidents; (4) factors suggested by the literature as affecting vitality are perceived by faculty to affect their productivity but these results may hide a diversity of views for a particular situation; (5) the factors identified as facilitating or hindering community college faculty productivity should not be interpreted as applicable in all situations or for all faculty. Research results suggest increased awareness by administrators (at the colleges in the study) of the facilitating/hindering productivity factor category scheme should lead to a working environment more facilitative to faculty productivity if either facilitating incidents are increased and/or hindering incidents are reduced. The productivity factor assessment section of the questionnaire results suggests administrators at the two colleges should be sensitive to any actions which are perceived as undermining quality of performance. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

It is believed that one of the overriding factors that has contributed to the resistance to curriculum change on the part of teachers is that some of the new curricula seem to require a major change in teaching methodology and style. This change amounts to a conflict between paradigms. If this belief is correct, then one can argue that there will have to be a shift in teachers' functional paradigms in order for these curriculum innovations to be implemented. The study focuses on the goals, problems, exemplars, and routines, which constitute the "functional paradigms" of teachers. The term "functional paradigm" is meant to convey the idea that the characteristics which unite a community of practitioners are likely to be centered on practical matters: Why do teachers function in particular ways? Do teachers attach "common meanings" to particular situations or entitles? The following specific research questions were examined: 1. What are some of the factors which influence the formulation of teachers' functional paradigms? 2. What is the nature of teachers' functional paradigms? 3. a) What are the perceptions of teachers with regard to curriculum change? b) What is the relationship between teachers' functional paradigms and their perceptions of curriculum change? c) To what extent do teachers' functional paradigms become idiosyncratic when they are faced with a curriculum change? The methodology involved interviews with teachers. A pilot study was conducted prior to the main study. The interviews in the main study were analyzed in terms of six main categories. The results seem to indicate: 1. There are common categories and sub-categories that contribute to the formation, development, and maintenance of teachers/ functional paradigms. They include: o past educational experiences. o background in general. o practicum experiences. o past and present teaching experiences. o curriculum materials. o constraints on teaching. o school, students, and other workers in the school. 2. There seems to be a "core" of common categories among teachers. The intersection of elements within these categories composes the functional paradigms of teachers in general. Although the paradigms are functional in an active sense, they are relatively stable within the "culture", and over the long term. This stability must be considered if innovators in education ever contemplate a change which would require a shift in teachers'" functional paradigms. This commonality of beliefs, routines, problems, and exemplars is probably greater among teachers within the same small segment of the organization than within the entire profession. 3. Evidently, teachers select, interpret, and utilize learning materials in different ways dependent on the nature of their personal functional paradigms. A number of differing elements in teachers'' functional paradigms have been identified. These elements determine how teachers teach in terms of their use of curriculum materials. Curriculum change agents must consider the functional paradigms of individuals and determine how common these paradigms are before attempting a major pedagogical change. This study has shown that if these factors are not considered, then the curriculum change that is contemplated will be reduced to a mere change in content. The teachers will utilize the curriculum materials according to their own functional paradigms. 4. The inertia against curriculum change is most difficult to overcome with more experienced teachers, and more easily overcome with beginning teachers. This suggests that the focus of curriculum implementation needs to be aimed at certain segments of the profession. Somehow the change agents must assist educators to change their functional paradigms to meet the desired ends of the new curriculum prior to implementation. The alternative is the disparity that seems to exist between the curriculum that is intended by the policy makers, the curriculum that is implemented by the teachers, and the curriculum that is ultimately attained by the students. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Over the last twenty-five years, women's historians have striven with the problem of how to uncover women's lives in the past. The early concern with merely "retrieving" women's life stories has recently been augmented by a more theoretically- informed approach which takes into consideration issues of experience, voice, and representation, and which challenges the notion of absolute objectivity. This study was designed as a contribution to the latter type of historical research informed by the sociological debates on these issues, and was influenced by feminist materialist approaches that insist on accounting for both the content of experiences and the various discursive positions occupied by subjects. Specifically, it examines the bases of identity construction in the lives of two women teachers (Susan Abercrombie Holmes and Susan Suckley Flood) in nineteenth-century British Columbia, a context in which relatively little work on the history of women has been done. Identity is not perceived as given or static, but rather as constructed, changing, and sometimes contradictory. Even those markers of identity commonly called upon to describe a person- such as gender, race, class, religion, and nationality-are seen as problematic, and their ambiguities are discussed in relation to the life stories of the two women. Subsequently, the effects of these "markers" are further adumbrated through an examination of some of the less obvious ways in which the women's identities were constructed. These are all seen as interrelated, and include the influences of their families of origin on the women's earlier lives, especially regarding their education and marriage decisions, their functions as economic agents, their social relationships, and their self-images or self-representations. To the extent that these were fashioned by their gender identity, many similarities can be seen in their lives, but their experiences also diverged (widely or narrowly) as a result of their differences in other aspects, notably racial identity. These differences had a profound effect on the type and degree of material and ideological constraints placed upon them, and thus on the degree to which they were able to shape the construction of their own identities. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate