This dissertation explores collaborative approaches to policy and planning across multiple policy areas and stakeholders, and contributes to research in international education development as well as collaborative governance and management on the structures and processes through which persons work collectively-crossing institutional, sectoral and disciplinary divides-to achieve shared goals. Given the growth in policy attention and experimentation among countries to develop and implement approaches and mechanisms to facilitate collaboration across policy boundaries and sectoral silos, the specific goals of the study were to: (a) analyze how collaborative approaches emerge at the national level; (b) identify what factors support the implementation of collaborative approaches; and (c) assess how collaborative approaches affect systemic outcomes. The dissertation uses qualitative research methods of document analysis and interviews, and develops analytical frameworks to address the emergence, implementation and assessment of collaborative approaches policy and planning at the national level. Through its comparative case study of Early Childhood Development (ECD) in two Commonwealth Caribbean countries, Guyana and Jamaica, the dissertation contributes to governance and systems scholarship in ECD. In unpacking the stages through which the establishment of collaborative approaches unfold, the dissertation finds that political factors in the countries’ political contexts held the greatest explanatory value for differences in establishment, and specific drivers motivated progression within and between stages, for example, advocacy, and events that prompt collaborative action, recognition of interdependence, a prior history of collaboration, political will and leadership. The dissertation also provides a framework of the factors (i.e., contextual, structural, technical, and relational) that can influence the implementation of collaborative approaches and applies this framework to the case studies. Findings indicate that each set of factors was important in explaining how stakeholders were able to work collaboratively, but technical and relational factors were the most highly valued and least addressed in the case studies. Finally, the dissertation develops a framework that links key features of collaborative approaches to the systemic outcomes of equity, quality, and sustainability by offering analytical pathways to trace how collaboration can change the way a system functions-in the areas of system resilience, system integrity and system performance. The dissertation combines conceptual and empirical insights to analyze how the functioning of the collaborative entity and process in the case countries influenced their abilities to support equity, quality and sustainability at the systems level.

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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

<p>This theses examined adult learners' experiences of group work in management education. Group work is an integral part of learning and teaching methods at most business schools because it develops team skills demanded by today's workplace. Furthermore, group work in education is grounded in the belief that much learning happens through social interaction and that diversity within groups promotes learning. This study analysed learners' group experiences in a business school. The study also aimed to identify conditions that hinder and promote group interaction with a view to enhance learning.</p>

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Philosophy

Research in cooperative learning in education generally and second language education in particular has documented the apparently successful and simultaneous achievement of a number of educational goals. For second language learners, these goals include developing the second language (L2), maintaining the first language (L1), and acquiring content knowledge. However, little research has examined the opinions of the learners themselves with regard to cooperative learning together with the process of cooperative interaction. This study explores the opinions and interactions of Chinese immigrant students engaging in cooperative learning in English as a second language (ESL) classes. Drawing on qualitative research and discourse analysis traditions, the study used multiple methods of data collection in a Canadian secondary school ESL program: (1) individual interviews were carried out with 49 Chinese students; (2) 120 hours of observations in natural classroom settings were conducted; and (3) 30 hours of audio taped recordings of Chinese students' interactions during cooperative learning activities were also analyzed. The findings of the study present a complex picture of cooperative learning in the ESL classroom. The Chinese students seemed to be sitting on the horns of cooperative learning dilemmas between cooperation and individualism, between achieving results and sharing understandings of the task, and between using L1 to help with L2 / content learning and developing L2 for academic purposes. Particularly with cooperative learning goals of developing L2, maintaining L1, and acquiring content knowledge, Chinese students had difficult choices to make between developing L2 and maintaining L1, between using L1 for academic language and developing academic language in L2, and between learning content in L1 and learning content in L2. At a detailed level, tensions and dilemmas that Chinese students confronted appear to be intrinsic to the simultaneous pursuit of the three cooperative learning goals claimed for L2 learners. Cummins' (1991b, 1992) bilingual proficiency theory, which offers a possible theoretical model of how these goals are related, needs to address the various conflicts and dilemmas involved in these three cooperative learning goals. While recognizing other contributing factors, this work suggests that cooperative learning dilemmas may arise from conflicts of socially shared values and beliefs, and that discrepancies between Chinese students' home educational culture and their present Canadian secondary school culture add a layer of complexity to the dilemmatic situation of cooperative learning in an ESL context.

<p>This theses examined adult learners' experiences of group work in management education. Group work is an integral part of learning and teaching methods at most business schools because it develops team skills demanded by today's workplace. Furthermore, group work in education is grounded in the belief that much learning happens through social interaction and that diversity within groups promotes learning. This study analysed learners' group experiences in a business school. The study also aimed to identify conditions that hinder and promote group interaction with a view to enhance learning.</p>