In this essay, an analysis of Lucy Montgomery's bildungsroman Anne of Green Gables has been conducted. The story of the protagonist Anne Shirley’s development into adulthood displays many aspects of the gender roles of the twentieth century in Canada as a result of her gendered upbringing. Anne's conformity to the private sphere stems from a need to solve her inherent crisis as an orphan but has the purpose of making domestic life seem desirable to the young reader. Anne of Green Gables was released in the twentieth century when women were considered to have universal traits that benefited the conservative gender roles. Therefore this essay analyses the didactic purpose of the novel, theorizing to find that the novel's purpose is to steer the reader's development toward conservative gender roles. Feminist theory provides this essay with explanations of the cause and effect of the notion of gender roles and is used as a guideline throughout the analysis. The results of this essay demonstrate that the bildungsroman Anne of Green Gables has a didactic purpose of steering the development of the reader toward the acceptance of conservative gender roles.

By examining critical studies of the dystopian genre from Gregory Claeys, Fátima Vieira, and Keith Booker as well as the studies of young adult dystopian novels from Roberta Trites, Kenneth Donnelson, and Sean Connors, I argue that young adult literature (YAL) has literary merit and is worth studying. This literariness stems from a novel's ability to explore complex themes like religion, sacrifice, and societal contracts. I introduce and analyze a subgenre of YA dystopian literature, which I classify as the medical dystopia, a genre that is uniquely positioned to explore the complex moral questions that surround advancing medical technologies and their impact on society. To demonstrate how YAL can deal with the complex ideas inherent to themedical dystopian genre, I analyze Neal Shusterman's Unwind and Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion. The analysis concludes that novels like these do not lack substance and have literary value due to their ability to invite young adults to view the darkness that exists within society from a position of safety and light.

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Education should provide the academic support to promote every child's potential. In my experience, schools often neglect the population of gifted students. One way to support any population is to provide books that include positive role models (Purves & Monson, 1984). Therefore, my study will attempt to answer the question: Are gifted students represented in children's literature? In particular, fictional Caldecott Medal books. The copyright dates range from 1938 to 2007. After creating a random sample of Caldccott Medal books, the selections were read and analyzed by the researcher for five specific traits of the gifted. As a means of analyzing these books, I created a schema to determine if the protagonists exemplified any of the gifted traits identified by prior research. My research revealed that out of 26 books, 14 characters were creative, 20 were intellectual, 6 were high achievers, 3 showed academic aptitude, and 4 were in the visual/performing arts. Next, the analysis revealed the protagonist characters were 17 males to 9 females; however, most surprising was the discovery that of all five characters identified as gifted, all were male and over the approximate age of eighteen. Certainly, the dominant educational implication from this study is the need for positive gifted role models that more equally represent both genders and that are school-age children.

Often teachers are faced with the challenge of teaching more content with less time and resources. The use of trade books within the content areas allows teachers to integrate multiple skills in one lesson. The Magic Tree House series has been popular with students and teachers on the elementary level. Using books such as these would be a good way for teachers to use their allotted time to teach all of the content that they are accountable for. This thesis will explore the historical accuracy and educational connections within the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. The purpose of my thesis research is to determine, through the methodology of content analysis, if the facts provided within the Magic Tree House series are accurate enough to use as supplements within the classroom as well as what Next Generation Sunshine State Standards might be linked to particular books.

The intent of this thesis is to examine and interpret the representation of the Holocaust in young adult literature. The tone, style, and emotion used to convey the Holocaust experience, both in fiction and nonfiction stories, in eyewitness and indirect accounts, affects its representation to a young adult audience. I will study the effects of sentimentality, realism, and fun and their impact on our understanding and remembrance of the Holocaust. I will analyze several texts, including Island on Bird Street, The Book Thief, and Night. The paradox of finding an appropriate balance between presenting a realistic portrayal of the Holocaust and understanding that we could never fathom the horrors of the Holocaust is one that plagues both writers and readers of this genre of literature and I plan to critique the ways in which different works discuss the subject. Ultimately, I will consider the conflict of how we negotiate between complete repression versus obsessive memorialization. What is the role of memory? What is the proper way to move on from the horrors of the past while still honoring the innocent people who lived and died? Through my analysis, I hope to attempt to answer these questions and, perhaps, provide suggestions for appropriate representation and memorialization.

Social Work education is focused on helping students identify triggers and biases prior to entering the workforce, with an aim towards cultural competence. Class discussions and homework assignments are particularly intentional: through various assignments, students are urged to work on those issues before entering clinical practice. Young Adult (YA) literature has been successfully used in the field of Education to teach empathy and reflectivity regarding diversity to preservice teachers. The use of YA literature may hold promise for Social Work education as a teaching tool, but the extent of current use in Social Work education is unknown. An anonymous survey of Social Work faculty at Florida universities was conducted using Qualtrics. The survey was sent to approximately 250 instructors of undergraduate and graduate courses. Eighteen surveys were completed, and 17 were used in data analysis. It was found that the majority of respondents used non-textbook and print material at least some of the time in their courses. Of those who used YA Literature in their courses, more than half the time it was used to facilitate cultural and diversity learning. Based on the data, YA literature holds promises for social work education in the area of development of cultural empathy. This study lays the groundwork for further research on how YA literature can be incorporated into cultural competency coursework.

This research examined the use of award-winning children’s literature for social and emotional learning, focusing on its use for children in third through sixth grades. The world is ever-changing, and, as a result, the need for children to learn necessary social and emotional skills continues to increase. These skills include, but are not limited to, perseverance, friendship, grit, caring, and the like. It has been found that teaching social and emotional skills through bibliotherapy is an engaging and successful method that can be used by schools and teachers. Teachers or other educational stakeholders can use this document to begin to understand the need for social and emotional learning and the benefits of bibliotherapy. Additionally, this document can be used as a reference to guide literature selection based on social and emotional traits and themes. At the time of the research, there were few other guides and references as such.

The intent of this thesis is to (1) examine the prevalence of diverse populations in the pieces of children’s literature found in three Title I third grade classrooms, and (2) to examine if the diverse populations are authentically and relevantly represented. Researchers have emphasized the impact and importance of children’s literature that represent student’s diverse backgrounds authentically and relevantly, as they have the potential to affect students’ motivations, aspirations, and how they view themselves and the world at large. Particularly, Bishop (1990) suggested that students need books that act as “mirrors” that allow them to see themselves, their experiences, and their cultures, and books that as “windows” that allow them to learn about others, other experiences, and other cultures. However, the mere presence of diverse populations in children’s literature alone is not enough; the diverse populations must be represented authentically and relevantly as to not perpetuate stereotypes about certain non-dominant groups (Christ and Sharma, 2018). The content analyses conducted on the children’s literature with human characters found that the libraries were dominated by White main characters; 77.98% of the main characters were White and 22.02% of the main characters were from diverse populations, despite the school population being only 8% White. Additionally, the content analyses showed that while all the books with diverse main characters were culturally authentic, 35.14% were not culturally relevant. The findings of the content analyses should encourage educators to examine their classroom libraries to see if the diverse populations in their classrooms, and ones not present in their classrooms, are represented authentically and relevantly.

Adolescents and young adults (AYAs, 15-39 years of age) with cancer face unique challenges. Efforts have been made to improve both care and outcomes for this population. Metrics to evaluate AYA cancer care efforts help to ensure that objectives and outcomes are being met. This thesis comprises 7 papers which explore system performance metrics for cancer care and control in AYAs. A scoping review introduces the topic and addresses the current state of indicator metrics for the AYA cancer population. The second paper extends this work and develops a consensus-based list of relevant indicators. The subsequent papers focus on further development of two of the identified indicators for implementation in Canada (identification of patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) for assessing distress; a referral indicator for oncofertility care). This thesis describes 14 indicators in 5 care areas. Two identified indicators were further developed to aid in implementation (“Proportion of AYA patients screened for distress with standardized AYA specific tools” and “Proportion of AYA patients who had fertility preservation discussion before treatment”). Criteria from the National Quality Forum (NQF) were used to assess commonly used PROMs for distress. It was found that although all PROMs had acceptable psychometric properties, only the “Impact of Cancer” scale of the CDS-AYA had strong content validity for AYA with cancer. For Oncofertility, the indicator “Proportion of cases attending a fertility consult visit ≤ 30 days from diagnosis of cancer” was recommended for use. Finally, factors associated with attending such a fertility consult were identified. Important factors for both men and women included: age at diagnosis, risk to fertility, year of diagnosis, treatment with radiation or chemotherapy, region of care, income and residential instability. The information presented in this thesis can be applied to national system performance initiatives to identify and implement metrics to monitor and evaluate cancer care in AYA. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / A person 15 to 39 years old with cancer will face many challenges. This is a time of life with many changes such as continuing schooling, getting married, starting a career, or starting a family. To make sure that young people with cancer are getting the best care, and that they have the best chance to achieve their goals and contribute to society, we need to measure what is important to this group. These measures can be used to compare hospitals, or changes over time to help make care better. This paper looks at what we already measure in this group, and what patients, researchers and healthcare workers think also should be measured to help provide the best care for these patients. Measures discussed in this paper could be used in programs to monitor the quality of care given to young people with cancer.