This is a qualitative exploratory, descriptive study to ascertain the feasibility of public administrators at the local government level using an Appreciative Inquiry approach to increase direct citizen participation. It is framed by the interpretive paradigm. Twenty city managers or their designees from cities of between 40,000 and 250,000 citizens were interviewed. Specifically, respondents were asked twelve semi-structured interview questions. Content analysis was used to identify six themes in the data. Ultimately, this study found that Appreciative Inquiry may be useful in limited circumstances as long as barriers to implementation were adequately addressed. However, the potential risks may outweigh the benefits. / Ph. D.

Many stories exist within the professional landscape of child weight management programming and health services. Grand narratives within these spaces story fat bodies as “unhealthy”, “risky” and in need of transformation, and often position the family and mothers in particular given gendered caregiving norms, as responsible for their children’s weight and poor health. Mothering stories and experiences are rarely told by the mothers themselves within this professional landscape. This study is a narrative inquiry that explores the in-depth experiences of two mothers who previously participated with their children in an Ontario paediatric weight management program. Given my work as a social worker within child weight management clinics I also explore my experiences alongside the participants. Clandinin and Connelly’s conceptualization of narrative inquiry and the three dimensional framework of temporality (past, present, future), sociality and place, inquiring inward, outward, backward and forward, were used in order to find meaning in mothering experiences of child weight management. Narrative beginnings share my own experiences of mothering and child weight management. Relational ethics were central as the inquiry unfolded, allowing for simultaneous exploration of experiences, continuous negotiation, awareness and re-evaluation with each mother, from recruitment, field work, to field text, interim text and the writing of the final text. Given the current social distancing restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, conversations took place over zoom and telephone and were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Detailed narrative accounts were written for each mother capturing individual experiences of child weight management as they intersected with many other experiences in their everyday lives. Narrative threads weaved together the mother’s experiences throughout the inquiry and focused on disrupting the grand narrative and resisting fragmentation. The inquiry contributes to the scholarship within fields of social work, social justice, mothering and health care by providing new ways of knowing about and engaging in conversations about mothering, weight, fatness and health. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This narrative inquiry explores the in-depth experiences of two mothers who previously participated in a child weight management program. As part of this research, I also explore my experiences in relation to the mothers, as a social worker who historically worked in the clinic. Mothers were often positioned as responsible for their children’s body weight and poor health and stories and experiences were rarely told by the mothers themselves across research and policy in the field. Clandinin and Connelly’s three-dimensional framework was used to find meaning in mothering experiences of child weight management. Conversations took place over zoom and telephone over a year. Detailed narrative accounts capture the individual mothering experiences of child weight management and come together in narrative threads that focus on disrupting the grand narrative and resisting fragmentation. The inquiry contributes to the scholarship within fields of social work and health care, providing new ways of knowing about and engaging in conversations about mothering, weight, fatness and health.

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The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) “Prevention through Design” (PtD) initiative encourages the exploration of different methods to foster dialogue between engineers and healthcare workers. Although engineers are encouraged to follow a user-centered design (UCD) process to identify user needs (ANSI/AAMI, 2009; IEC, 2007), NORA (2009) warns that engineers may “fail to get the full range of healthcare worker input on the usability of a device”. The primary goal of this research was to present storytelling as an elicitation method that addressed the PtD call for methods that improve usability within healthcare. This work provides three contributions to the PtD initiative. First, a conceptual model for the role of storytelling in design, which represents a synthesis of narrative and design research, is presented. The conceptual model explicitly states how the elicitation and analysis of stories results in the identification of a design opportunity that addresses user needs. Second, the Design + Storytelling framework, which guides designers’ use of storytelling, is presented. An instantiation of the framework specific to the identification of a design opportunity within an emergency room (ER) is investigated to determine the framework’s impact on design. Findings resulted in the study’s third contribution: design guidance comprised of storytelling guidelines, decision support tools for storytelling method selection, and traceability support for design evaluation. The investigation of the framework focused on two primary stages: (1) story elicitation and (2) story analysis. Storytelling sessions, which varied in context, collected 573 stories (i.e., 441 habitual, 132 hypothetical) from 28 ER nurses. Qualitative analysts used the framework’s instructions to identify and specify 383 user needs within the narratives. Empirical comparisons of the compiled needs across groups informed decision rules for elicitation method selection. The impact of the framework’s analysis instructions during design practice was investigated. Student design teams analyzed nurses’ safety stories to create a conceptual design for an identified design opportunity. Findings indicated a trend for stakeholder experts to rank conceptual designs created by teams with the instructions as more usable than teams without the framework’s instructions. The theoretical and practical exploration indicated a positive impact on design. / Ph. D.

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This thesis explores the possibility of dialogue between leader and follower in order to further develop the theory and practice of relational leadership. It draws from and contributes to Relational Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien 2006) and Buber’s concept of ‘I- Thou’ dialogue (Buber 1958). Using first-person and co-operative inquiry methods (Reason and Bradbury 2008b) the ‘space between’ (Bradbury and Lichtenstein 2000, Buber 1958) leader and follower is explored in order to reveal the complexities inherent within leadership relations. Four main findings are detailed which enrich our understanding of how leadership relations operate from ‘within living involvement’ (Shotter 2006). Firstly, the quality of leader-follower encounter could be affected by levels of ‘busyness’ and the ensuing assessment and prioritising process. Secondly, the pressure to ‘seem’ rather than ‘be’ may strengthen the construction of a façade which might be dismantled, in part, through disclosure, though this may feel extremely risky given organisational ‘rules’. Thirdly, mutuality between leader and follower may be crucially influenced by the way in which ‘leader’, ‘leadership’ and ‘power’ are constructed in the between space. Finally, ineffable dialogic moments may occur through sensing a particular quality of encounter amidst and despite the complexity of a myriad of micro-processes vying for attention in the between space. This thesis contributes a further strand to RLT constructionist work focused on the quality of leader-follower encounter which has not been previously revealed. Leadership constructs and macro-discourses relating to power, ‘busyness’ and the need for ‘worthwhile meetings’ encourages transactional relating. Consequently, opportunities for genuinely encountering others in organisational settings are suffocated. This holds important implications for ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’ who wish to creatively address pressing organisational issues in the 21st century through dialogue. Fundamentally this thesis suggests we pause to consider the implications that the nature of our encounters in our work-life have upon us as human beings wishing to know what it is to be fully human.

Le propos de cette tâche est d’établir une méthode de sélection des experts dans deux champs particuliers : celui du degré de responsabilité pénale des « malades mentaux » et celui des déclarations d’abus sexuels d’enfants.Il est d’usage dans les cours de justice de sélectionner les experts ayant simplement un diplôme de psychologie ou de psychiatrie par nomination ou cooptation.Nous utilisons un modèle combiné.Le premier concerne la sélection des meilleurs par deux traits majeurs : la Discrimination et la Cohérence.Le second concerne la validité de la crédibilité d’enfants entre cinq et douze ans à propos de déclarations d’abus sexuels.La mesure de la performance sélectionne les professionnels les plus efficients. Puis, nous avons comparé ces résultats à ceux d’autres groupes d’une population générale dans un souci démocratique. Nous avons constaté par exemple que les professeurs d’Université et parfois d’autres praticiens (en droit, psychologie ou psychiatrie) étaient capables d’avoir des performances aussi bonnes que celles des experts professionnels. L’usage d’un étalon peut améliorer conséquemment la performance de tous. Mais une certaine différence persiste entre professeurs et autres catégories à l’avantage des premiers nommés. Nous pouvons subsumer ce résultat par une maxime disant : « Einstein, bien que n’étant que prix Nobel de physique est éventuellement un meilleur mathématicien qu’un professeur agrégé de mathématiques ». On peut affirmer que la Discrimination et la Cohérence aidées par un étalon, pour une intelligence sélectionnée et générale, sont souvent plus efficientes que celles d’une intelligence seulement spécialisée. / This task tries to establish a method of selection of experts in a peculiar field: children sexual abuses declarations and the one of guilty responsability degree of mental sick persons. Usually courts ought to select experts only by nomination and cooptation of professionals simply with a diploma of psychology or psychiatry. We used a combined model. The first selects between experts the best ones with two mains skills discrimination and consistency and the second one explores credibility declarations of children between five and twelve about sexual abuses. Measuring the performance is the task. Then wa have compared these results to those of other groups of general population in a democracy worry. We noticed that professors and other practioners in law or psychology or psychiatry can perform as good as professional experts.