'When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi he put this question to his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the Prophets." "But you," he said, "who do you, say I am?" Then Simon Peter spoke up and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew, 16: 13-16)'. This thesis reports the findings of an empirical study conducted in England investigating young people's conceptions of Jesus. The study, which adopted a qualitative approach, employed an open ended questionnaire completed by over five hundred students, and follow up semi-structured interviews with twenty four of those students. Findings from this study confirmed those of previous studies in the field (Alves, 1968; Astley & Francis, 1996; Claerhout & Declercq, 1970; Cox, 1967; Francis & Astley, 1997; Hyde, 1965; Loukes, 1961; Madge, 1965, 1971; Savin-Williams, 1977). As in previous research, the majority of young people in this sample expressed generally favourable views towards Jesus; emphasised Jesus’ humanity rather than his divinity; and expressed reservations regarding the miracles of Jesus and the reliability of the Gospel accounts. In addition, this study extended the findings of previous studies by demonstrating that the conceptions of Jesus held by participants were largely determined by their predominantly scientific and positivist world-views. Moreover, responses from young people participating in this study indicated that students were often unaware that the views they held were contingent and grounded in particular ontological and epistemological assumptions. So whilst religious beliefs were subject to critical scrutiny, the assumptions underpinning the students’ own positions were not. Consequently, this thesis argues that to engage fully with the beliefs of others, students need to be more cognisant of the principles underlying their own beliefs, religious or otherwise. Furthermore, drawing upon the hermeneutical framework of Hans-George Gadamer (2004), this thesis proposes that commitment to genuine dialogue should be at the heart of contemporary religious education. Finally, this thesis concludes by making recommendations for future research in religious education.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

This thesis examines both contemporary and historical meanings surrounding human body FAT in order to illuminate, chiefly, the forces that have rendered it both an omnipresent and negative entity in Western societies. It explores the apparent contradiction that we must exist amidst hyper-consumptive capitalism yet display no bodily evidence of such consumption. Along with an investigation into alternative bodily conceptions to that of the hegemonic West, a discourse analysis is employed to challenge the key assumptions that underpin the current 'obesity epidemic' and its ensuing 'war on obesity' so that body FAT may be configured differently. It is shown that, because bodily conceptions and ideals are complex cultural constructions, body FAT, as a substance, is not the scourge it is presently portrayed, but rather a substance that signifies most of what consumer society despises and fears. It is argued that the 'war on obesity' has not been successful, and will continue to be ineffective, because the focus should not be on losing body FAT but rather on the conditions of poverty that generate overall ill-health. It is concluded that such a 'war', if sustained in its current fashion, will only serve to further malign the situations of those deemed 'overweight and obese'.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of idea a group of students in third grade, who attends a school in the Stockholm area, have on group work in school and how they think it affects their learning. The study is based on two questions: What opinion do the students have about group work? What opinion do the students have about how group work affects their learning? The method I have used to retrieve information has been to interview six different students, where the interviews were both individually and in groups. I started by interviewing students individually and then had a group interview. The idea with the group interview was to end it all with a brief discussion about the thoughts that came up during the individual interviews. I chose a selection of six students, four girls and two boys which they all were at the age of 9 and go to the same school. The socio-cultural and structural perspectives, is those theoretical perspectives that my study is based on. I will describe how student’s group work can be linked to theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Piaget's theory focuses on the student's development as the primary constructive, while Vygotsky presents student’s development and socio-cultural. From these two perspectives, I will highlight how students get affected by each other in the context of group work. The core concept in my study is based on cooperative learning, which is a new approach to group work. I will also define other concepts such as group and group work. The results of this study show that students connect group work to collaborative situations both in and outside of school. The learning was connected to both the formal and informal learning in groups. According to the students the concept of teamwork is to work together, and many times the students connected the teamwork with collaborative situations outside of school rather than in school. Students see group work as both an obstacle and an opportunity for learning. Five of the six students were united on the fact that group work in schools do not work because they rarely collaborate. Based on the results of the interviews the students connected "good cooperation" with "learning", and it mostly focused on the informal learning that occurred outside of school. While the concept of "group work in school" was connected to something more complicated. This study shows how student learning is affected by group work in and outside of school.

“Becoming” is a natural phenomenon that is experienced throughout one’s life, and yet it does not appear to involve a simple process. This study was about how preservice teachers become teachers. As such, it was focused on the developmental processes that preservice teachers experience as their conceptions of teaching and their teacher identities change throughout their teacher education program. Although the two developmental aspects have been importantly considered by teacher educators when setting goals for teacher education and have been popular topics to educational researchers, few studies have explicitly observed how conceptions of teaching and teacher identities are related to each other in preservice teachers’ professional development trajectories. In a longitudinal study that tracked eight preservice teachers for three semesters of their teacher preparation, naturalistic observations of student teaching and semi-structured interviews served as the primary data sources. Data analysis was inductive and interpretative, using the qualitative methods of grounded theory. All of the preservice teachers in the study experienced conceptual change in their conceptions of teaching toward the direction aligned with their teacher education program, though their developmental patterns varied in terms of nature, speed, and distinctiveness. In the process of conceptual development, preservice teachers’ attention shifted from a focus on self to a focus on students, which I called an outward journey. They also evolved their teacher identities throughout the program with increasing confidence in becoming a teacher every semester. The formation of their teacher identities began by recognizing self as a teacher as positioned by others and continued with self-cultivation as a teacher, a process I called an inward journey. Needing continuous validation and reflection, the two journeys were closely related, sharing some characteristics and mechanism of growth and reciprocally influencing each other. Through interpretation of the data, I concluded that these two journeys cannot be separated from each other but, instead, should be integrated into external and internal development of becoming a teacher. As lifelong learners, preservice teachers are beginning the continual journey of becoming a good teacher throughout their career. / text

Geologically young gullies have been proposed to be evidence of recent liquid water on Mars. This dissertation details work I have done to address issues surrounding the Martian gullies and recent water on Mars. In order to determine the elevations at which gullies occur, I created a set of Interactive Data Language programs and Unix C-shell scripts to coregister Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter topography with high resolution Mars images. My scripts represent the first public method that does this. Recently, the Mars Orbiter Camera detected changes in the form of new bright deposits in two gullies. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera detected more gullies with bright deposits. I used my scripts to identify some of the best candidates for liquid water formation based on their shallow average slopes. A Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was produced using HiRISE stereo images of my selected candidates in Hale Crater. I model two gullies with bright slope deposits in Hale Crater and find that both water-rich and sediment-rich flows could reproduce the bright deposits’ locations and morphologies. Since liquid water is rarely stable on Mars today, I suggest that dry flows formed the bright deposits. The channel gradient where flows deposit, the apex slope, can tell us whether a flow was likely dry and non-fluidized (slopes ~21°) or fluidized (shallower slopes). I measured the apex slope of 75 gullies located in five HiRISE DEMs. I find that 72% of the gullies studied were likely emplaced by a fluidized flow. I also find that modified gullies are more likely to have a fluidized emplacement than relatively fresh gullies. My results suggest that there is no evidence requiring water-rich flows in gullies today. Understanding the concept of water on Mars is crucial to understanding NASA’s Mars Exploration Strategy, “Follow the Water.” I undertook a study investigating alternative conceptions about water on Mars held by middle school science teachers to understand what they hear when scientists say “water on Mars.” All study participants had alternative conceptions about water on Mars. I suggest focus topics for space science education programs.

Depression in adolescents is a ubiquitous mental health problem presenting ambiguities, uncertainties, and diverse challenges in its conceptualization, presentation, detection, and treatment. Despite the plethora of research on adolescent depression, there exists a paucity of research in regards to obtaining information from the adolescents themselves. In a mixed method, cross-sectional study, adolescents (N= 332) in grades 8 and 11 provided their conceptions of depression. Adolescents' self-recognition of depression was examined in association with depressive symptomatology and reported pathways to talking to someone. Adolescents' social and emotional competence was also examined in association with severity of their depressive symptomatology. Developed categories and subcategories of adolescent depression were guided by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) criteria for Major Depressive Episode (MDE) (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000). Adolescents' definitions of depression were dominated by subjective, holistic interpretations and add new information and depth to the previous research on adolescent depression. Depressed Mood and Social Impairment were the core categories, both contained intricate subcategories. The frequencies of these constructs provide a map of the themes and subthemes that pervade adolescents' personal philosophies regarding adolescent depression. About half of the adolescents who self-recognized depression within two weeks (45%),qualify into screened depression (Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale -2" version [RADS-2];Reynolds, 2002) criteria based on the DSM-IV-TR for MDE (APA, 2000). However, this study's findings showed that the mean for screened Depression Total Score (RADS-2; Reynolds, 2002)was significantly higher in those adolescents who self-recognized versus those who did not self-recognize depression. The majority of lifetime self-recognizers of depression thought that they needed to talk to someone and reported that they talked to someone when feeling depressed. Poor Emotion Awareness was a strong contributor to increasing vulnerability to depressive symptomatology. This study provides new theoretical insights regarding the concept and detection of adolescent depression, and links between social and emotional competence and depressive symptomatology. These findings extend previous research (APA, 2000), provide new understanding to guide future research, and have direct implications for research, policy, and practice strategies aimed to better communicate with and help young people with and without depression.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Depression in adolescents is a ubiquitous mental health problem presenting ambiguities, uncertainties, and diverse challenges in its conceptualization, presentation, detection, and treatment. Despite the plethora of research on adolescent depression, there exists a paucity of research in regards to obtaining information from the adolescents themselves. In a mixed method, cross-sectional study, adolescents (N= 332) in grades 8 and 11 provided their conceptions of depression. Adolescents' self-recognition of depression was examined in association with depressive symptomatology and reported pathways to talking to someone. Adolescents' social and emotional competence was also examined in association with severity of their depressive symptomatology. Developed categories and subcategories of adolescent depression were guided by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) criteria for Major Depressive Episode (MDE) (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000). Adolescents' definitions of depression were dominated by subjective, holistic interpretations and add new information and depth to the previous research on adolescent depression. Depressed Mood and Social Impairment were the core categories, both contained intricate subcategories. The frequencies of these constructs provide a map of the themes and subthemes that pervade adolescents' personal philosophies regarding adolescent depression. About half of the adolescents who self-recognized depression within two weeks (45%),qualify into screened depression (Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale -2" version [RADS-2];Reynolds, 2002) criteria based on the DSM-IV-TR for MDE (APA, 2000). However, this study's findings showed that the mean for screened Depression Total Score (RADS-2; Reynolds, 2002)was significantly higher in those adolescents who self-recognized versus those who did not self-recognize depression. The majority of lifetime self-recognizers of depression thought that they needed to talk to someone and reported that they talked to someone when feeling depressed. Poor Emotion Awareness was a strong contributor to increasing vulnerability to depressive symptomatology. This study provides new theoretical insights regarding the concept and detection of adolescent depression, and links between social and emotional competence and depressive symptomatology. These findings extend previous research (APA, 2000), provide new understanding to guide future research, and have direct implications for research, policy, and practice strategies aimed to better communicate with and help young people with and without depression.

This study explores the qualitatively different ways in which the phenomenon of environmental education is understood or experienced by a purposeful sample of year seven students in Queensland and Saskatchewan. In 'directing the activities of the young', environmental education has, since its genesis, existed in an epistemological quagmire surrounding the development of 'responsible' environmental behaviours. Yet, after some thirty years of research and pedagogical initiative, this is one of only a few studies that have looked at the reality of environmental education through the eyes of young people. Contested and debated, environmental education has received much attention in many countries from educators interested in merging the complexities of the terms environment and education. In the context of this study it is significant to note that environmental education's history bears witness to scholarly discourse and educational initiatives in Australia and Canada. However, while environmental education has continued to expand its presence in pedagogical and didactic endeavour, its history also demonstrates contested ideological foundations regarding its implementation in schools. Queensland and Saskatchewan offer pertinent examples of this contestation. From a global perspective, the goals and objectives of environmental education have been driven, developed and established around international agendas developed at a number of conferences designed and delivered through UNESCO. These global initiatives were then left to local interpretation that often resulted in very different didactic and pedagogic frameworks. Such is the case with Queensland and Saskatchewan where environmental education is situated within a social science framework in Queensland and a science framework in Saskatchewan. However, the pedagogical structure of environmental education was not the focus of this study per se. Instead, this phenomenographic research project looks at how the phenomenon of environmental education is experienced by a group of Year 7 children in each region. These children's experiences of environmental education can be encapsulated in a limited number of qualitatively different conceptualisations. The study finds that, regardless of their country of origin, the children conceptualise environmental education in five ways; Environmental Education as: 'Human Being'. 'Human Escaping'. 'Human Doing'. 'Human Complying'. 'Human Distancing'. Specific components of these conceptions are detailed through 'categories of description' which lend themselves to a structural framework referred to as an 'outcome space'. Through this 'outcome space' it becomes apparent that for the year seven students who participated in this research project, environmental education is, at is best irrelevant, and at its worst depressing. For the goals of environmental education and those who aspire and work towards meeting those goals, this 'cumulative movement of action (environmental education) toward a later result' as noted by Dewey and quoted above, appears to be growing in the wrong direction.