In spite of a multi-decade mandate to enact inquiry in science, research reports that a large gap continues to exist in Ontario between the vision of science education presented in curriculum documents and what is enacted in the classroom. A three-staged, mixed methods design was chosen to examine teachers’ beliefs and practices that contribute to an understanding of this longstanding gap in teaching practice related to inquiry. The participants in this study were secondary school science teachers currently employed by one medium-sized, urban & rural district public school board. Quantitative data was first collected through a self-reporting survey designed to explore teachers’ beliefs related to teaching and learning in inquiry. Completed questionnaires were submitted by 80 % (n = 83) of the population of science teachers. Qualitative data, collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 17), were used to confirm and expand the quantitative findings. Quantitative analysis resulted in the development of an empirical framework to illustrate the dimensionality of teachers’ beliefs and practices related to inquiry. Four types of science teachers were identified during qualitative analysis, each associated with a preferred type of inquiry and each identifiable by a cluster of beliefs. A stance was determined for each of these types of teachers representing their generalized view of teaching and learning related to inquiry including: utilitarian science, content-based science, authentic contextual science, and citizenship science. Additionally, each group of teachers could be associated with one of the four quadrants in my framework. Lastly, a beliefs profile was produced to represent each quadrant in this framework based on integration of the quantitative and qualitative findings. Challenges to enactment and types of program support to foster enactment of open-ended inquiry were identified by science teachers associated with each stance. A few of these challenges and types of program support represent newer areas for research that can inform educational leaders and teacher-educators and support decision-making so as to meet the diverse needs of both pre-service and in-service science teachers, thereby, fostering the enactment of open-ended inquiry as practical science.

In spite of a multi-decade mandate to enact inquiry in science, research reports that a large gap continues to exist in Ontario between the vision of science education presented in curriculum documents and what is enacted in the classroom. A three-staged, mixed methods design was chosen to examine teachers’ beliefs and practices that contribute to an understanding of this longstanding gap in teaching practice related to inquiry. The participants in this study were secondary school science teachers currently employed by one medium-sized, urban & rural district public school board. Quantitative data was first collected through a self-reporting survey designed to explore teachers’ beliefs related to teaching and learning in inquiry. Completed questionnaires were submitted by 80 % (n = 83) of the population of science teachers. Qualitative data, collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 17), were used to confirm and expand the quantitative findings. Quantitative analysis resulted in the development of an empirical framework to illustrate the dimensionality of teachers’ beliefs and practices related to inquiry. Four types of science teachers were identified during qualitative analysis, each associated with a preferred type of inquiry and each identifiable by a cluster of beliefs. A stance was determined for each of these types of teachers representing their generalized view of teaching and learning related to inquiry including: utilitarian science, content-based science, authentic contextual science, and citizenship science. Additionally, each group of teachers could be associated with one of the four quadrants in my framework. Lastly, a beliefs profile was produced to represent each quadrant in this framework based on integration of the quantitative and qualitative findings. Challenges to enactment and types of program support to foster enactment of open-ended inquiry were identified by science teachers associated with each stance. A few of these challenges and types of program support represent newer areas for research that can inform educational leaders and teacher-educators and support decision-making so as to meet the diverse needs of both pre-service and in-service science teachers, thereby, fostering the enactment of open-ended inquiry as practical science.

The key postulation of the research is: learning an additional language should go together with learning its culture. Through personal experience as an EAL learner and EFL teacher, the researcher examines the interconnected system of the learner’s motivations, premising that language cognition could engage a meta-cognitive search for L, as a symbol of the researcher’s inner world, and arising from L such concepts as Language, Learning, Life, Love, and Led Zeppelin. Quest and examination of those concepts analyze sense-data, the researcher’s short literary works written in Russian and translated into English. The canvas of the author’s writing is presented in a symbolic form of literary and musical Islands with which she creates her arts-informed research of new learning-teaching interactions with the learning component as dominating in this interaction. The researcher looks for new perspectives on education as a lifelong process that takes place between I-world and They-world through internalization-externalization.

Bullying has severe consequences for school-aged adolescents who have experienced repeated victimization and for the families as well. While there is a considerable body of research on bullying and its effects on victims, very little research has been devoted to studying the experiences and resistance of the targeted young people and their families in the bullying situations. The literature on bullying characterizes victims as unable to defend themselves; this depiction is limited, simplistic, and one-dimensional. This dissertation presents an alternate view, focusing on the experiences and responses of victims and their families. The thesis draws on a poststructural view and a response-based framework to present a new perspective on the victims of bullying—a perspective that contrasts with the common depiction of “helpless, powerless victims” and foregrounds the personal agency of young people who have responded to bullying. Data for this study was collected in the form of narratives from the families and eleven to fifteen year old school adolescents who have been targets of ongoing bullying. The sample consisted of four families and five adolescents. The interview questions were based on Allan Wade’s response-based approach. The participants’ narratives focused on their responses to bullying. Each narrative was read thoroughly for themes related to the skills and the knowledge adolescents have used in responding to peer aggression. Similarly, parents’ narratives were examined for themes of their responses to the bullying of their children. The conclusion from the findings indicated that the parents and adolescents responded to bullying in many small but prudent and resourceful ways.

This study explores the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators have experienced working together as allies for social and racial justice. The study is grounded in anti-oppressive, decolonizing, and participatory action research paradigms. Theoretically, it is framed by anti-racism and anti-oppressive approaches that highlight oppression, exploitation, and power. Within the theoretical field of antiracism, there is a tendency to ignore Indigeneity, and the ongoing oppression and racialization of Indigenous peoples (Lawrence & Dua, 2005; St. Denis, 2007). This study puts Indigeneity and oppression at the forefront of ally development research. The research was modeled upon an action research method called co-operative inquiry (Heron, 1996). The inquiry group involved seven group members, including the researcher. These group members came from diverse racial and social backgrounds. They were all women who work in diverse educational capacities (adult educators, nurse educator, counselor, teacher, lawyer). The inquiry spanned 11 weeks, with 18 hours spent together over six group sessions. Two Indigenous leaders joined the group in two sessions, to lend their experiences and insights on the role of allies. Group members retained a high level of commitment throughout the study. The study was a success in terms of analyzing many of the issues Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators face when working together. It also highlighted the roles of allies and useful strategies for allies to use. The study was shown to have a high level of catalytic validity (Herr & Anderson, 2005) as many group members reported a high degree of both epistemological (what they know) and ontological (how they become) learning. The results of this study lead to new insights on how allies have traditionally been conceptualized and the role that ontology plays in learning. The study also discusses how the congruence between topic and method was navigated, and how that in turn led to the creation of an allied space. / Graduate

The Greater Victoria School District has undergone a reconfiguration to include middle schools in their public education system. This reconfiguration has students from grades six to eight learning in a new setting. Cedar Hill Middle school is an example of one of the middle schools that is now in its eighth year of existence. The school is the centre of the learning community that is made up of students, staff and parents. As part of an ongoing review and reflection, this research used an Appreciative Inquiry methodology to try to identify the strengths found within the learning community. Through a dialogic interview process, a sample of staff, parents and most importantly students were interviewed to collect the best experiences that they had experienced as a part of the learning community. The data was open coded to identify best experiences, categorize them, and then identify the themes or relationships between the experiences of the different members of the learning community. These relationships were then used to create a set of powerful propositions that can be used to potentially guide the growth of the Cedar Hill learning community. Through this process two main themes emerged. The first was the importance of connections within the system and the second was the need for diversity within the system. This supported the assumption that the learning community was indeed a complex system and reinforced the idea that Appreciative Inquiry is a tool that can be used to support and develop complex systems. / Graduate

Educational leaders are immersed in and arguably responsible for the construction of the delicate yet complex world of education. As such, Van der Mescht (2004) poignantly observes, “to develop a clearer picture of what it is that some leaders possess (or do, or are) that makes their leadership effective has perhaps never been more urgent” (p. 3). This research is a response to Van der Mescht’s observation. The purpose of this study is to engage prospective educational leaders in a deep interrogation of their personal, philosophical and pedagogical beliefs around leadership and its application in contexts representative of Canadian diversity and the complexity of the learning environments using collaborative inquiry (Bray, Lee, Smith & Yorks, 2000) as a methodology. The study is based on leadership as a practice where educational leaders enable, empower and support the diverse and complex learning community and where the application of leader extends beyond title and position to qualities and actions understood through collaborative reflection and dialogue. / Graduate / 0515 / 0514 / 0727 / lisa.starr2@mcgill.ca

Abstract: My inquiry, involving participant-observation and self-study, explores the stories of four older women through verbal and visual narratives. Showing how two specific types of visual narratives—sandpictures and collages—stimulate experiential story-telling and promote understanding about life experiences, I also illustrate how engagement with images extends learning and meaning-making. Effective in carrying life stories and integrating experience, the visual narratives also reveal archetypal imagery that is sustained and sustaining. Considering how visual narratives may be understood independently, I describe multiple strategies that worked for me for entering deeply into the images. I also elaborate on the relationship of visual narratives to accompanying verbal narratives, describing how tacit knowing may evolve. Through this process, I offer a framework for a curricular approach to visual narratives that involves feeling and seeing aesthetically and associatively and that provides a space for learners to express their individual stories and make meaning of significant life events. Salient narrative themes include confrontation with life-death issues, the experience of “creating a new life,” an avid early interest in books and learning, and a vital connection to the natural world. New professions after mid-life, creative expression, and volunteerism provide fulfillment and challenge as life changes promote attempts to marry relationships with self and others to work and service. My therapy practice room was the setting for five sessions, including an introduction, three experiential sandplay sessions, and a conclusion. Data derive from transcripts from free-flowing conversations, written narratives, photographs of sandpictures, and field notes written throughout the various phases of my doctoral process. This study of older women, with its emphasis on lifelong learning, visual narratives, and development of tacit knowing, will contribute to the field of narrative inquiry already strongly grounded in verbal narrative and teacher education/development. It may also promote in-depth investigations of male learners at a life stage of making meaning of, and integrating, their life experiences. New inquirers may note what I did and how it worked for me, and find their unique ways of extending the study of visual narratives while venturing into the broad field of diverse narrative forms.

The purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of visualization of natural phenomena via computer simulation and manipulations of concrete objects, in a physics laboratory, on the development of students’ inquiry skills in mechanics. A quasi-experimental method that employed the 2 Learning Tools x 2 Time of learning split-plot factorial design was applied in the study. The sample consisted of 54 Grade 11 students from two physics classes of the university preparation section in the Ottawa-Catholic School Board. One class was assigned to interactive computer simulations (treatment) and the other to concrete objects in physics laboratory (control) as learning tools. Both tools were embedded in the general framework of the guided-inquiry cycle approach. The results showed that the interaction effect of the Learning Tools x Time of learning was not statistically significant. However, the results also showed a significant effect on the development of students’ inquiry skills (indicated by the pre- and post-inquiry skills test) regardless of the type of learning tool they had used. The findings suggested that these two strategies are effective in developing students’ inquiry skills in mechanics.

What I Meant to Say about Love is an ever-differing interstitial text which has left open spaces for artists, researchers, and teachers, called a/r/tographers, to contest the curriculum and pedagogy of reduction and pragmatic means-ends orientations that monopolize schools. This text wanders, meanders, and digresses to places where, through poetic inquiry, the notion that there is no pedagogy without love can be explored. In a broad understanding of midrash, as it is performed poetically, three years of an English teacher's life are recorded fictionally. James, the main character, discovers that love is a physically potent force that structures and deconstructs, just as it connects and disconnects. His story considers how the professional emphasis in education compartmentalizes and separates the inner life from the outer life. In love with life, with learning, and with others, the James of this story writes poetry to acknowledge love's power, and to restore its credibility in the classroom—that the lovers' discourse might be trusted again. This un/authorized autobiography ruptures the predictable stories of what it means to be a successful teacher by considering one teacher's journey as a limit case, examining phenomenologically how he connects his life of love and poetry to his classroom practice and how his students respond to his poetically charged way of being. My hope is that it might be possible to offer here, in this place, one poet's understanding and celebration of difference in the world. Recognizing the relationship between what is original and what is shifting, I hope to keep complexity and diversity alive, to resist answers, to continue to converse and traverse and transgress. Thus, with careful attention to poetry as a way of knowing and unknowing, and by attending to the paradox, humour, and irony in one poet's lived experiences, both public professings and inner confessings, as they are understood in relations of difference, or as they are understood in relations of decomposition and fertility, it is possible to consider how powerful emotive experiences, oftentimes relegated to the personal and therefore insignificant, can and do have profound transformational effects on praxis.