abstract: Understanding sources of knowledge (e.g., seeing leads to knowing) is an important ability in young children’s theory of mind development. The research presented here measured if children were better at reporting their own versus another person’s knowledge states, which would indicate the presence of introspection. Children had to report when the person (self or other) had knowledge or ignorance after looking into one box and not looking into another box. In Study 1 (N = 66), 3- and 4-year-olds found the other-version of the task harder than the self-version whereas 5-year-olds performed near ceiling on both versions. This effect replicated in Study 2 (N = 43), which included familiarization trials to make sure children understood the question format. This finding is in support of the presence of introspection in preschool-aged children. In the same studies, children also showed evidence for theorizing about their own and others knowledge states in a guessing task (Study 1) and in true and false belief tasks (Study 2). These findings together indicate both introspection and theorizing are present during young children's theory of mind development. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2015

What is metaphor and how do we learn to think analogically? Education by Metaphor explores these questions from two perspectives: poetics and curriculum theorizing. Through this discursive inquiry, I develop arguments and hypotheses on the origins, mechanics, and educative possibilities of metaphor, often by drawing from Zwicky’s philosophical work and interviews I conducted with six Canadian writers. I sought conversations with these writers because the works they publish display deft and provocative analogical play. I wanted to know what they know about metaphor, and how they came to know such things, and how these ideas inform their critical, artistic, and pedagogical practices. I also asked for their thoughts on particular discursive conflicts and metaphoric models, and I asked them about their curricular experiences, both formal and otherwise. Excerpts from these transcripts are interwoven throughout the manuscript, according to their connections with the topics at hand. The first chapter of this dissertation traces metaphor’s discursive history and delineates its conflict with philosophy. From that foundation, I critique contemporary models for metaphor that stem from Black’s and Richards’ theorizing; after explaining why they are ill-suited to poetic terrain, I develop a less reductive model. Much of this work informs subsequent chapters, hence its preliminary positioning. In the second chapter I approach metaphor anthropologically and advance hypotheses for how we, as a species, might have come to think metaphorically. These hypotheses emphasize empathy and anthropomorphism, two important notions nested within the inner-workings of analogical thought. In turn, these hypotheses inform the third chapter’s explorations of poetic and ontological attention. This theoretical work reveals concepts integrally related to metaphor’s emergence, for example aesthetic experience, defamiliarization, and the interplay of pattern and anomaly. In the fourth chapter, I revisit these concepts from a more empirical perspective and use comments from my interviewees to illuminate intersections amongst play, pedagogy, and analogical thought. Lastly, the fifth chapter asks, what good is the study of metaphor? I respond to this question by addressing metaphor’s imaginative, ethical, and educational consequences. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2013-02-19 12:13:38.213

Global competence--a necessary attribute in an increasingly interconnected world--describes having the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to act creatively and collaboratively on important global issues. In urban settings comprised of racial, ethnic, and/or linguistic-minority students, especially, a logical but seemingly underutilized facilitator of global competence would be instruction that draws from students’ funds of knowledge--the home-based practices central to a household’s functioning and well-being. In response to a need for deepened insight into how these concepts may interact in practice, the goal of this qualitative study was to better understand the experience of urban teachers as global competence educators, specifically, the extent to which they consider and utilize their students’ funds of knowledge in developing global competence. In this study, 30 Boston area teachers were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol to draw out their understandings of students’ funds of knowledge and their awareness of how these funds of knowledge might be used to further the development of global competence. Data produced in this study were analyzed through a multi-phase thematic coding process. A conceptual framework built upon existing definitions of global competence and funds of knowledge was developed to inform the design and methodology of this study, and was used as a guide for viewing and understanding the produced data. The two major findings of this study were that: (1) teachers, while seemingly able and willing to talk about global competence and funds of knowledge in relation to their students, did not seem to synthesize (or speak about their synthesis of) these concepts in practice, and, (2) in teacher interviews, potential global competence-supporting funds of knowledge were most often recognized in immigrant and/or economically privileged White students. The potential global competence-supporting funds of knowledge possessed by non-immigrant, minority, and presumably, low-income students were not routinely recognized or accessed.

The focus of this thesis is to investigate how gender related concepts have used in practice from Simone De Beauvoir’s “The second sex”, to Judith Butler’s “Bodies that matters”. The other texts used are “the traffic in women” by Gayle Rubin, “Gender: an ethnomethodological approach” by Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna and “Gender and power” by Robert Connell. In my theoretical part I use the idea that categories are human inventions, that no categories including those important to the gender issue are more correct than any other and that the usefulness of categories can only be measured by the usefulness of the theories attached to them. I am also inspired by the theory of critical realism that claims that research must focus on the internal mechanisms that causes the effects that we are observing. The method used is an adaptation of philosophical conceptual analysis where I have analyzed how gender related concepts such as “men” and “women” are used in my empirical material. The focus was to create an understanding of how gender categories where used in the texts that I where analyzing. There is also a metatheoretical approach where the empirical material is used in order to get an understanding on how to create new theories. The conclusions of this thesis is that the theoretical concept of gender has developed from a description of how social forces affected people in the category “women” different from those in the category “men” to a more and more intricate philosophical and theoretical discussion of how to understand and analyze this difference. The second conclusion is that all the authors of my material are struggling with how the relation between the sexed\gendered bodies and the social characteristics of men and women should be explained. This leads to a number of problematic conclusions that I claim can be solved by not using specific theories about gender but instead focusing on general social theories based on causality and internal relations that explains the phenomena that are studied.

Resource integration, as it relates to value creation, has recently been a key aspect of the discussions about service-dominant (S-D) logic. However, the majority of research pays relatively little explicit attention to the process of theorizing and the epistomological and ontological assumptions upon which the theorizing process is based. This article addresses these issues. The processes that relate to theorizing and developing strong theory are discussed. We then examine how to conceptualize ‘resources’ and ‘resource integration’ following differing ontological and epistemological assumptions that guide the theorizing process. Research recommendations to help navigate through the finer details underlying the theorizing process and to advance a general theory of resource integration are developed.

This thesis adopts a practice-based approach to understanding how power, knowledge and knowing intermingle in organizations to facilitate/constrain individual access to opportunities for knowing-in-practice (learning). It explores how organizational mechanisms and technologies of regulation (re)construct and (re)produce organizational dimensions of knowledge as power/knowledge resources by which intermingling modalities of power are enacted to continuously sanction and (re)constitute individual meanings and identities.

<p>Black women are inventing new epistemologies to better fit their own experience, and they are putting these new ways of knowing into action within their communities to generate collective change through art. Black women’s theories of their own lived experience publicly have been consistently limited by narrow definitions of what it means to create a “Theory.” In this thesis, I will analyze the work of three contemporary Black woman performance artists, Ntozake Shange, Jamila Woods, and Nitty Scott, to identify the ways in which Black women do indeed theorize within these public spaces in ways that are innovative and complex. I focus on these artists insights on three critical sites: home, school, and community. I read Shange’s <i>for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf,</i> Woods’ <i>Legacy!Legacy!</i>, and Scott’s <i>Creature!</i> alongside Patricia Hill Collins’ <i>Black Feminist Thought</i> and bell hooks’ <i>Teaching to Transgress</i> to explore the innovative theoretical spaces Black women have created in their art. Ultimately, I argue that acknowledging this process of using popular culture as a space for theoretical discourse can provide innovative tools for expression for Black women who do not, cannot, or do not wish to participate in academic discourses. Understanding these tools can empower Black women to explore their humanity and to understand the contexts, which Collins refers to as “domains,” in which Black women can claim and expand their power.</p>

<p>The purpose of this study was to examine high school students conceptions of young people who run away or get thrown out of their homes. Earlier research shows that this group of young people often come from families were physical, psychological and sexual abuse is reappearing factors. They often face a life of homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution. Still there is little research done about this phenomenon and what kind of help and support these young people could need. This study was done in a qualitative approach with the use of focus groups. The results were analyzed through the theoretical views of socialconstructivism and theorizing childhood and were also compared with earlier research. The results showed that about half of the participants had in some point in their life run away from home. They expressed that they thought that there are many young people who run away or get thrown out of their homes each year and that many of them probably don´t come to the knowledge of the social services. Their thoughts of what risks youths may encounter on the streets accord with results from earlier research. They also think that friends are the most valuable in terms of help and support.</p>

The purpose of this study was to examine high school students conceptions of young people who run away or get thrown out of their homes. Earlier research shows that this group of young people often come from families were physical, psychological and sexual abuse is reappearing factors. They often face a life of homelessness, drug abuse and prostitution. Still there is little research done about this phenomenon and what kind of help and support these young people could need. This study was done in a qualitative approach with the use of focus groups. The results were analyzed through the theoretical views of socialconstructivism and theorizing childhood and were also compared with earlier research. The results showed that about half of the participants had in some point in their life run away from home. They expressed that they thought that there are many young people who run away or get thrown out of their homes each year and that many of them probably don´t come to the knowledge of the social services. Their thoughts of what risks youths may encounter on the streets accord with results from earlier research. They also think that friends are the most valuable in terms of help and support.

The purpose of this study is to examine how young people with experience of running away and/or getting thrown out look upon and understand the phenomenon. Another purpose of thestudy is to examine how the youth evaluate the help and support they did or did not receive at the time of their experience, as well as to examine what the ultimate help and support would be according to them. The study was done in a qualitative approach with the use of focus groups and individual interviews. The results were analyzed through the perspective of the ‘sociology of childhood’. Results show, in accordance with earlier studies on the subject, that the youth run away or are thrown out from homes where constant conflicts as well as psychological, physical and sexual abuse are recurring factors. The youth expressed that social services do not listen to them and that their reports of abuse and neglect are not taken seriously. Results further show that the youth consider help finding a new home as well as emotional and economical support to be appropriate kinds of help in this situation. They stress that help and support efforts have to be individually adjusted.